By boiling down five gallons of sap to one, and when just a little above
the heat of new milk, putting in a cupful of barm (hop-rising will do if
it be good), and letting the vessel remain in your kitchen chimney-
corner during the summer, and perhaps longer, you will obtain a fine,
cheap, pleasant, and strong vinegar, fit for any purpose. This plan I
have pursued successfully two years. Care must be taken that the cask or
keg be well seasoned and tight before the vinegar is put in; as the
dryness of the summer heat is apt to shrink the vessel, and make it
leak. If putty well wrought, tar, or even yellow soap, be rubbed over
the seams, and round the inner rim of the head of the cask, it will
preserve it from opening. The equal temperature of the kitchen is
preferred by experienced housewives to letting the vinegar stand abroad;
they aver the coldness of the nights in this country is prejudicial to
the process, being as speedily perfected as if it underwent no such
check. By those well skilled in the manufacture of home-made wines and
beer, excellent maple-wine and beer might be produced at a very trifling
expense; i.e. that of the labour and skill exercised in the making it.
Every settler grows, as an ornament in his garden, or should grow, hops,
which form one of the principal components of maple-beer when added to
the sap.