Читать книгу The Raisin Industry - Gustavus A. Eisen - Страница 36

—The dipping process is one of the greatest importance, and gives the peculiar characteristics to the Valencia or Denia raisins. As a similar process will sometime or other be more generally used in California, a more detailed description may prove interesting to California growers. We can probably not do better than to imitate them, although in mechanical appliances we will readily improve upon their methods. The dipping is always done at the drying ground or secadero. The larger part of the dipping apparatus, or the kettles, are placed under the ground so as to save heat and fuel. A trench eight or nine feet in length is dug to the depth of three or four feet. At one end is built a chimney protruding three or four feet above the level of the ground. In the other end of the trench is built a brick wall with an opening for feeding the fire. Some trenches are lined inside with bricks, making them more permanent and solid. On the top of this flue, and on a level with the ground, are built the kettles or boilers, containing not less than twenty gallons each. The boiler nearest the fire entrance is destined to contain a solution of lye or ashes, the one next to the chimney being for boiling water only.

The lye is made from the ashes of burnt vine cuttings, together with lime and sometimes some salt, by men who have acquired the art from years of experience, and who know by the appearance of the scalded grapes whether the solution is too strong or too weak. If too weak, the skins of the grapes will be insufficiently cut, which will delay the drying of the grapes, and cause them to rot if the weather is damp and foggy. If, again, the lye solution is too strong, the skin will be destroyed and the berries seriously injured.

The grapes to be dipped should be perfectly ripe. If dipped before, they will become inferior both as to color and taste. The perfect ripeness is a most important point. The grapes are picked in baskets of about ten pounds each, and carried to the scalder. The man nearest him on the right fills a perforated ladle with about twenty pounds of the grapes. The ladle is made either of wire netting or of tin or zinc, with large perforated holes about three-eighths of an inch wide. There is a scalder at each boiler. The first scalder dips the grapes in the scalding water for a second, and immediately hands them to the second scalder, who dips the same ladle in the boiling lye solution for not over two seconds. The grapes are then carefully turned out on trays to dry.

The dipping first in scalding water is of the greatest importance, both in washing off the dust of the grapes and in preparing them to receive the alkali wash with more effect. Since the hot-water process was introduced, the Valencia raisins have materially improved in quality. The grapes are never rinsed in cold water after being dipped, and it is more than likely that the lye prevents molding, as, according to A. B. Butler, dipped raisins are sometimes exposed to the rain for three weeks without being totally ruined. In California, our dipped and washed raisins spoil quickly if exposed to rain. The object of dipping is, of course, to slightly crack the skins so as to allow the water to readily evaporate. Dipped raisins dry sometimes in five days, while undipped raisins would require as many weeks. Efforts to produce sun-dried raisins without dipping them have repeatedly been made in Denia; but they are invariably spoiled by the rain, and lately two firms were ruined in their attempts to dispense with the dipping process.