A Practical Treatise on the Manufacture of Vinegar: With Special Consideration of Wood Vinegar and Other By-products Obtained in the Destructive Distillation of Wood (Classic Reprint)

PART I. VINEGAR. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY AND HISTORICAL. Ordinary vinegar consists of a weak solution of acetic acid in aqueous fluids prepared by the oxidation of alcoholic liquors by means of acetic acid bacteria, Bacterium aceti, of which there are many varieties, the best races being propagated by pure culture methods, and used for impregnating the alcoholic liquors to be fermented. The color of vinegar and, to a certain extent, also its odor and taste are influenced bv the ma-terials from which it is prepared. In this form it has been known from the earliest times, and it must have been used contemporaneously with wine, because it is evident that at the temperature of the Eastern countries, where the first .experiments with the juice of the grape were made, fermentation must have set in rapidly and the wine been quickly transformed into an acid compound. Vinegar is mentioned in the Old Testament, and Hippocrates made use of it as a medicine. That the solvent effects of vinegar

Table of Contents

CONTENTS; PART I VINEGAR; CHAPTER I Introductory and Historical; p; Nature of vinegar; Early knowledge of vinegar; Use of vinegar as a medicine by Hippocrates; Anecdote of Cleopatra; Use of vinegar by Hannibal for dissolving rocks ; The process of increasing the strength of vinegar by distillation described by Gerber in the eiglith century; Other early historical data about vinegar; Stael's method of strengthening vinegar; Count de Laragnais and Marquis de Courienvaux' experiments ; Loewitz's method of strengthening vinegar; Glacial acetic acid; Historical data regarding the formation of an acetic body in the destructive distillation of wood; Determination of the exact chemical constitution of acetic acid by Berzelius, and that of alcohol by Saussure; Historical data relating to the generation of acetic acid; Introd