04. Fermentation

Fermentation The laws of fermentation are fixed facts, operating always in the same way, and requiring always and everywhere the same conditions.

Donovan, in his work on Domestic Economy (in Lardner’s Cyclopaedia), says:

“1. There must be saccharine (sugar) matter and gluten (yeast).

“2. The temperature should not be below 50° nor above 70° or 75°.

“3. The juice must be of a certain consistence. Thick syrup will not undergo vinous fermentation. An excess of sugar is unfavorable to this process; and, on the other hand, too little sugar, or, which is the same thing, too much water, will be deficient in the necessary quantity of saccharine matter to produce a liquor that will keep, and for want of more spirit the vinous fermentation will almost instantly be followed by the acetous.

“4. The quantity of gluten or ferment must also be well regulated. Too much or too little will impede and prevent fermentation”—Anti-Bacchus, p. 162. Dr. Ure, the eminent chemist, fully confirms this statement of Professor Donavan—Anti-Bacchus, p. 225. The indispensable conditions for vinous fermentation are the exact proportions of sugar, of gluten or yeast, and of water, with the temperature of the air ranging between 50° and 75°.

Particularly notice that a “thick syrup will not undergo vinous fermentation, and that an excess of sugar is unfavorable to this process.” But it will undergo the acetous, and become sour. This our wives understand. For, when their sweetmeats ferment, they do not produce alcohol, but become acid, sour. This is not a secondary, but the first and only fermentation—by the inevitable law that where there is a superabundance of saccharine matter and more than 75° of heat, then the vinous fermentation does not take place, but the acetous will certainly and immediately commence. It may be well to notice just here a few items in relation to the production of alcohol.

Count Chaptal, the eminent French chemist, says, “Nature never forms spirituous liquors; she rots the grape upon the branch; but it is art which converts the juice into (alcoholic) wine”—Bible Commentary, p. 370.

Professor Turner, in his Chemistry, says of alcohol, “It does not exist ready formed in plants, but is a product of the vinous fermentation”—Bible Commentary, p. 370.

Adam Fabroni, an Italian writer, born 1732, says, “Grape-juice does not ferment in the grape itself”—Bible Commentary, p. xxxix.

Dr. Pereira (Elements of Materia Medica, p. 1221), speaking of the manufacture of wine, says: “Grape-juice does not ferment in the grape itself. This is owing not (solely) as Fabroni supposed, to the gluten being contained in distinct cells to those in which the saccharine juice is lodged, but to the exclusion of atmospheric oxygen, the contact of which, Gay Lussac has shown, is (first) necessary to effect some change in the gluten, whereby it is enabled to set up the process of fermentation. The expressed juice of the grape, called must (mustum), readily undergoes vinous fermentation when subjected to the temperature of between 60° and 70° F. It becomes thick, muddy, and warm, and evolves carbonic acid gas”—Nott, London Ed., F.R. Lees, Appendix B, p. 197.

Professor Liebig, the eminent chemist, remarks: “It is contrary to all sober rules of research to regard the vital process of an animal or a plant as the cause of fermentation. The opinion that they take any share in the morbid process must be rejected as an hypothesis destitute of all support. In all fungi, analysis has detected the presence of sugar, which during their vital process is not resolved into alcohol and carbonic acid; but, after their death, from the moment a change in their color and consistency is perceived, the vinous fermentation sets in. It is the very reverse of the vital process to which this effect must be ascribed.” “Fermentation, putrefaction, and decay are processes of decomposition”—Bible Commentary, xxxix.