412 
CHAPTER XXVIL 
The Time to Bottle off Cider—Effects of Frost upon it—Processes that 
make it very Spirituous. 
A clear dry weather in March is very often chosen to bot¬ 
tle off cider. If it is new, it is to be feared, that, in the course 
of the following summer, the gas will make the bottles fly. 
It is preferable to do it in October, when it has then, »n a 
great measure, discharged that fluid, both with regard to 
economy and health. 
Though one maybe influenced by the oldness of the liquor, 
when to bottle it off, yet it is its taste that must ultimately 
decide this point. The bottle does not change it materially. 
Some is fit for it within the year, while some other would 
hardly be so in two. This depends on its quality, the capa¬ 
ciousness of the vessel, the place where it is to be set, carried, 
and the like. • 
When the new is bottled off, it is proper to leave about two 
inches empty, and to defer corking it for at least twelve hours 
after. 
Some persons are in the habit of putting one raisin fig into 
each bottle, but the gas which disengages itself from it, when 
it is expanded by heat, is only proper to make them fly. 
Hall assures us, in his Static of Vegetables, that the gas 
which is exhaled from a piece of oak ot an inch cube, accord¬ 
ing to the experiment he had made of it, occupies, in an ordi¬ 
nary atmosphere, a space of two hundred and fifty times the 
volume of the wood. 
Those, who know the prodigious quantity of carbonic acid 
gas extracted frdm t It e shells of shell-fish, from chalks, marls, 
marbles, and all other soils of calcareous stones; from the 
nitric of saltpetre; from the oxy-muriatic of sea-salt and man¬ 
ganese, and the like, will, by no means, be surprised at this 
expansion. 
* on i 
T he re 
