DIFFICULTIES OF FERMENTATION : PERSISTENT I SULPHUR : SALICYLIC ACID. 
148 
by destroying these Yeast Plants. Bearing these facts always in mind the difficulties most 
commonly met with may now be briefly considered. 
Active Fermentation .—When the weather is hot, and the juices rich, the fermentation soon 
becomes very active, and may cause both waste and trouble by out-pour from the barrel. In its 
earlier stages however, fermentation can scarcely be too active if it is not too long continued ; and 
all that need be said about it here is, that the windows of the cider house should be thrown open 
and cold water sprinkled about for evaporation, and every thing be done to cool the temperature. 
Dilatory Fermentation .—This is a much more frequent and troublesome difficulty when cold 
weather sets in suddenly as it so often does in late Autumn; and especially when the juice is of 
inferior quality. If it is simply a matter of temperature, and the tight closing up of the cider house 
is not sufficient, the introduction of a small stove or two will be the best remedy. This will be 
aided too by drawing out two or three gallons of the juice from the cask, warming it up to 70° and 
returning it again, when the must should be well stirred up. The French recommend this stirring up 
to be done frequently with a long rod of birch twigs through the bunghole. There is a fancy often, 
followed, of adding a little old Cider or Perry to the cask, and some go so far as to add a little 
ordinary yeast from malt liquor, but this is a proceeding of very doubtful benefit. 
Persistent Fermentation .—The first fermentation will sometimes continue in a more subdued 
form, when its active stage is over. This is called “ fretting fermentation,” and if allowed to go on, 
it will quickly exhaust the Saccharine principle, while the liquor will lose its sweetness and strength 
and become acid. The practical cider maker judges by the smell and taste of the liquor when this 
period has arrived, but the Saccharometer is more to be relied upon, and when this shows that the 
density is below 1040, the fermentation must be at once arrested or the quality of the Cider will be 
injured. It then becomes necessary to use one or other of the anti-ferments or plant destroyers, 
such as Sulphur, Sulphurous Acid water, Bisulphites of Lime or Soda, Salicylic Acid, &c., &c. The 
two first named are the most safe, and the most effectual, and indeed they form the base of most of the 
others. They are easy of application, economical, and ought not eventually to produce any percep¬ 
tible effect on the liquor, either to smell or taste. They are the only ones that need be alluded to 
here. 
Sulphur has been used to arrest fermentation from time immemorial in all the great Wine 
districts of the Continent ; and in all the Cider and Perry districts of England ; and it may be said, 
that the custom of late years has prevailed universally. When everything is ready for the 
racking, the fresh clean cask is filled with the fumes of burning Sulphur, “ stummed ” or 
“stunned” as it is termed, (a contraction doubtless from brimstoned). It is done in the 
following manner:—A strip of clean canvas cloth, or linen, some 10 or 12 inches long by 2 or 3 
wide, having been dipped into melted Sulphur and allowed to harden, is attached to a long 
piece of wire. This cloth-match is lighted, and immediately passed into the barrel, the wire 
being fixed by the bung. It is thus suspended until it has exhausted the atmospheric air and 
filled the barrel with fumes of Sulphurous Acid Gas. The match is removed when it goes out, 
