Vinegar Breweries
Vinegar has been around for several thousand years and is mentioned several times in the Bible. Vinegar is popular in cooking in northern latitudes where lemons don't grow. By the later 19th century many British towns had a 'vinegar brewery', these could be any suitably large industrial building although many purpose built establishments resembled (beer) breweries as the processes used are similar. Some former beer breweries were subsequently switched to vinegar production.
Vinegar is made from ethanol (the alcohol you can drink), the same stuff you get in beer and wine. The word Vinegar is derived from the French 'vin aigre' or sour wine and if you leave beer or wine open to the air it tends to turn into vinegar by itself as the bacteria are widespread in the air. For commercial production the ethanol may be produced by making wine, cider, beer or fermented fruit juice. The most common of these is beer, producing so called 'malt vinegar'. These days it is also made synthetically from natural gas and petroleum derivatives). Commercial manufacture involves brewing up something with sugar using yeast to make the alcohol, then adding the bacteria to ferment the mix. The vinegar making bacteria 'eat' the ethanol to produce vinegar and cellulose.
The most common method used to make vinegar prior to the 1850s was the Orleans method, in which you drilled some holes in the end of a 50 gallon barrel, half-filled this with the 'mash' and left it on its side for a few months to ferment. During the process a non toxic slime is created comprising the bacteria and soluble cellulose, this is the 'mother of vinegar' used to start off the next batch (any non-pasturised vinegar would have some of this in it, by the later 1930s (I believe) most vinegar was pasturised to prevent this building up and putting off the buyer). In the early 18th century a Dutch chemist by the name of Boerhaave improved on this method by adding the residue from grape crushing (called pomace) to increase the surface area and switched to a vertical tub.
In the 1820s a German by the name of Schutzenbach replaced the pomace with better materials and increased the size of the tub, reducing the time taken from months to days and offered a lot more control over the strength of the resulting vinegar. This became known as the 'quick vinegar process'.
In the quick vinegar factories the wooden 'generators' were anything from 6 to 14 feet in diameter and from 6 to 16 feet high, these had a series of holes are drilled into the sides of the tub to allow the air in. There is a mesh filter set about two feet from the bottom of the tub and on to this is piled the beech shavings (or other materials)used to increase the surface area. The mash is poured in over the shavings usually using a rotating arm to get an even distribution. The mash then dribbles down through the tub, passing over the shavings (known as the 'oxygen area') and exiting at the bottom. By cycling the mash repeatedly in this way the required strength of vinegar can be produced.
In about 1952 a new approach appeared in which air was bubbled up through the mash from fine holes in pipes arranged at the bottom of the tub.
The wooden tubs remained the norm for many years as you cannot use cast iron, aluminium, copper or brass as these all react with the acid. Other options include enamelled metal, or glass lined tubs, but the wood worked well enough and probably cost less. I understand that more modern factories, certainly those built post world war two, favour stainless steel.
All the 'quick' methods produce a lot of heat and the tubs are cooled to maintain them at about 30 deg C (the optimum for vinegar bacterial to thrive).
Modelling a Vinegar Brewery
I am most grateful to Mr Phil Coker, who has been researching the industrial Vinegar Branch line in Worcester, and who e-mailed several corrections and suggestions for this section
Vinegar manufacture requires a plentiful supply of fresh water and many breweries were built near a river, not for the river water but because the local water table would be higher. The Sarsons factory in Bermondsey was built on the Thames flood plain in around 1800, they imported a couple of million tons of earth from local civil engineering works to build an 'island' to put it on.
There were no particularly distinctive buildings required, any large industrial structures would do for a model railway representation of the works.
Vinegar breweries needed a large 'vat house', in which the wooden tubs were set up, factories pre-dating the 'quick' method needed a big building for this due to the lengthy fermentation time. By the 1930 some vinegar factories had large cylindrical storage tanks set up outside (the Sarsons plant in London had the latter).
The single largest vinegar brewery in the UK (and for many years in the world) was the establishment of Messirs Hill, Evans & Co. of Worcester, founded by two chemists in 1830. They soon expanded and laid claim to the world largest vat (40 feet high and holding over 100,000 gallons). They produced malt vinegar and also a range of wines.
Phil Coker advised that a very good article about this branch and its operation appeared in the Great Western Railway Journal No. 54 Spring 2005 ('The Worcester Vinegar Branch' by Chris Turner). Some sources refer to the branch line as the 'Lowesmoor Tramway'.
This firm paid to have an existing railway branch to a nearby iron works extended into their factory in the early 1870s, by this time the 'works' extended over seven acres and the branch soon became known as 'the vinegar branch'. This line crossed a canal and three roads and at one of the road crossings a railway type lower quadrant semaphore signals were used to control the road traffic (not often you get to model that!). The line was worked by GW pannier tanks, hauling rakes of up to twelve vans with a Toad brake van at either end. Other traffic included open wagons of coal, and presumably occasional other loads of equipment for the factory.
There was no run-round available at the works so the rake was shunted into a siding at another works on a slight gradient, the engine moved clear and the guards on the brake vans allowed the rake to roll down into the vinegar works. The engine would then follow to collect the returning wagons and vans from a second siding (the shunting inside the works was, in post war years,handled by a shunting tractor).
For a model railway you can use this approach by adding a wire-in-tube plunger to the siding on the gradient, however the big problem with this is the positioning of the uncoupling system. To get round this a double action plunger can be used, with a wire-in-tube laid along side the track and the end of the wire bent into a hook shape. The wire can be twisted to move over the track and can also be pushed or pulled to position the hook against the wheel of a wagon in the rake. The engine then moves clear and the wire is twisted back, releasing the rake to roll back down the gradient.
Fig ___ Wire-in-tube gradient catch
I gather operations to the vinegar works ceased in the mid 1960s but several of the buildings remain. One is of particular interest in the present context, the 1850's 'Great Filling Hall' (now a grade 2 listed building), which had a large arched opening to allow railway vans into the building.
Incoming traffic would be as for a brewery, mainly sacks of malt and sugar, mostly in vans and sheeted opens (for the malt sacks, these would be stacked high on the wagon).
The vinegar was either bottled at the factory (shipped in wooden cases) or shipped out in 36 gallon wooden barrels or smaller kegs, as shown below. From the photographs I have seen the casks or barrels used for vinegar seem to have been generally smaller than those used for beer, typically about 30 inches (75cm) long and about 20 inches (50cm) in diameter (see illustration below) with some about twice that size. I have seen no photographs of barrels the size of the 'hogsheads' favoured by breweries, but that may be due to the lack of photographs.
Fig ___ Vinegar casks
Britain had quite an export trade in Vinegar, shipped in wooden barrels. I gather that most went in standard 36 gallon types, as shown in the illustration below.
In the November 1950 edition of Model Railway Constructor an article by G. H. Swann described a 6-wheel tanker with 20 ton capacity used by this firm, complete with 7mm scale drawings. The six wheel milk tanks appeared in about 1931 but Mr Swann described this wagon as 'modern'. That may have been down to its sheer size however, it had a 14 foot wheelbase and was 25 feet over the buffers with an access ladder on one side only. The body colour he describes as a deep rich blue similar to Great Eastern loco blue. According to Mr Swann the tank body was designed to be lifted off in the goods yard for delivery to the vinegar works by road (the works was in central London). There were no related lifting lugs on Mr Swann's drawing however, so this must have involved using canvass covered strops run under the tank body. The sketch below is not a scale drawing but shows the general appearance of this wagon.
Fig ___ British Vinegars tank wagon
A limited edition tank wagon has been offered in 4mm by 'Buffers' (produced by Dapol, I believe using their standard 6 wheeled tank wagon model). The model is supplied with a 'red oxide' tank, however this may have been as supplied by the builder. Given the lifting on and off the wagon the paint would have been worn over time and the blue body of Mr Swann's time (1950) may have been a post war re-paint (blue paints are notorious for colour instability and were uncommon prior to World War Two.
Types of Vinegar
There are two broad strengths of vinegar, the stuff you have on the table will typically be about five percent acetic acid, the stuff used for pickling things is typically eighteen percent acid.
There are a great many types of vinegar, you can even buy vinegar made from honey in France and Italy. In the UK the two most popular table vinegars are 'malt vinegar' and 'non-brewed condiment' (NBC), the latter is diluted acetic acid and (legally) is not vinegar. Technically non-brewed condiment cannot (in the UK) be described, whether or not free of charge, as ‘vinegar’ and cannot be provided in a distinctive container which customers may associate with vinegar. Acetic acid (as opposed to vinegar) has the code E260. At some point the law was changed so NBC could no longer be sold as 'vinegar' but more recently the supermarkets seem to have instructed the government to change the rules as they now sell NBC as 'Chip shop vinegar'.
Malt vinegar is by far the most common type brewed in the UK, made by brewing ale using malt (as in a brewery) then letting this 'go off' so the alcohol turns into acetic acid (vinegar). White vinegar is made by distilling the malt type to produce a clear liquid (although non-brewed condiment is sometimes sold as white vinegar I believe).
Non brewed condiment is made by distillation rather than fermentation, it is even cheaper than malt vinegar and is widely used in chip shops to go on the chips (malt vinegar is stronger tasting). Non brewed condiment is colourless and sometimes called 'white vinegar', but it often has caramel added to tint it brown. Non brewed condiment is also popular with Temperance Movement (tea-totalers) and Mohammedan's, who avoid anything associated with alcohol, it also preferred for use on roe (fish eggs), I am told that the maltodextrin in brown vinegar reacts with the amino-nucleotides in the roe which damages the flavour. Strong non brewed condiment is used for pickling things and people who like strong vinegar decant the juice from pickled onions into a vinegar bottle.
Wine vinegar is made from wine, this is the most popular type in the Mediterranean area, the better quality types have to sit in barrels for up to two years to achieve their full flavour.
Cider vinegar, as the name suggests, is made from cider. It is often sold unpasturised and has reputed health benefits for people with arthritis. It tends to be very strong (it is usually taken in a diluted form) and was never very common in the UK. Today it is usually only sold unpasturised by 'health food' shops.
Distilled vinegar is made from any of the common types, usually from malt vinegar as this is cheap. Once distilled you get a solution of about five to eight percent acetic acid in water. Distilled vinegar is also known as spirit or white vinegar. Probably its main use is for pickling foods to preserve them but it is also used for medicinal, laboratory and cleaning purposes.
Notable British Vinegar Brewing Companies
It should be noted that vinegar brewers also produced a range of other goods, mainly sauces and often wines (one Norfolk firm was even listed as being a gin distiller at one time).
In 1914 notable vinegar brewers in the UK included Hill, Evans & Co., Beaufoy and Co, T. J. Brewer and Co, Sir Robert Burnett and Co, Cambrian Vinegar Co, Grimble and Co, Hills and Underwood and of course Sarsons.
Several firms merged to form a nation wide company called British Vinegars in 1932. The companies involved were Beaufoy, Grimble and Co., Champion and Slee Ltd., Sarsons Limited and Dufrais and Company (all with registered offices in London but factories in various locations around the country) along with Panter, Woodward and Co. (with registered offices in Bristol) and the Cambrian Vinegar Co. (who had offices in Leeds).
I believe Sarsons was their main brand (some of their other popular brand names may have been retained, but I am not sure on that).
I believe British Vinegars was absorbed by Crosse and Blackwell in the 1970s, this firm was then taken over by Nestle in 1970 and in turn the British arm was taken over by Premier Foods Ltd.
^
Go to top of page