Making Vinegar

[liuzhou]

4 minutes ago, joancassell said:

If you drink wine with dinner, you might consider making your own red wine vinegar.  You need to get some vinegar mother (I suspect it's available on the Internet) and then just pour leftover red wine into a bottle with the mother.  Takes time, but the results are delicious, and it's satisfying to make and use your own.  

 

 

What is leftover red wine?

[TicTac]

How would one make a 'vinegar mother'?

 

Surely I can google it, but perhaps some of you have first hand experience to share.

[Anna N]

1 hour ago, TicTac said:

How would one make a 'vinegar mother'?

 

Surely I can google it, but perhaps some of you have first hand experience to share.

Cheat and buy an unpasteurized apple cider vinegar. Comes with a mother. Braggs is one brand.  I think Eden Mills might make one too.  

[weedy]

do you think your homemade red wine vinegar is superior to commercial ones?

 

or is this like buying hydrogen and oxygen to make your own water?

[Anna N]

1 hour ago, weedy said:

do you think your homemade red wine vinegar is superior to commercial ones?

 

or is this like buying hydrogen and oxygen to make your own water?

Not sure who you are addressing so I will just say I have never attempted to make my own vinegar but I am very aware of the mother in my bottles of unpasteurized vinegar.  

[TicTac]

4 hours ago, Anna N said:

Cheat and buy an unpasteurized apple cider vinegar. Comes with a mother. Braggs is one brand.  I think Eden Mills might make one too.  

 

I only buy (organic) unpasteurized ACV.  Got the last batch from Ambrosia (love that place).  In fact I just checked and it is the BRAGG brand.

 

So I just start adding 'un-used' red wine to some of that?  How much vinegar as the 'base'?

 

 

Edited January 7, 2017 by TicTac (log)

[Anna N]

5 minutes ago, TicTac said:

 

I only buy (organic) unpasteurized ACV.  Got the last batch from Ambrosia (love that place).  In fact I just checked and it is the BRAGG brand.

 

So I just start adding 'un-used' red wine to some of that?  How much vinegar as the 'base'?

 

 

 

Well you might start by reading through this thread.  Here is one of the posts. 

[nickrey]

2 hours ago, weedy said:

do you think your homemade red wine vinegar is superior to commercial ones?

 

or is this like buying hydrogen and oxygen to make your own water?

I use predominately wine that we have opened that is not faulty but not really that appealing. Much of this has seen oak during production. As a consequence, the red wine vinegar is much more complex than the commercial ones and, as a consequence, superior.

[TicTac]

13 minutes ago, Anna N said:

Well you might start by reading through this thread.  Here is one of the posts. 

 

Thanks Anna - very interesting.

 

So I strain the mother out of the vinegar, use the vinegar as per normal - what type of vessels are you folks storing the mother in?  From my limited reading it must be open?

 

Lastly, can I use both red and white wines together?  Has anyone tried this?

 

Or keep the colors separate?

 

Cheers

[nickrey]

I use a small glass demijohn (carboy). It needs to be left open but if you do so here you will have an invasion of vinegar/fruit flies. I put a single layer of stocking over the top secured with an elastic band.

 

Keep them separate, otherwise you will have rose vinegar.

 

Edited January 7, 2017 by nickrey
edited to answer second question (log)

[quiet1]

1 hour ago, nickrey said:

I use predominately wine that we have opened that is not faulty but not really that appealing. Much of this has seen oak during production. As a consequence, the red wine vinegar is much more complex than the commercial ones and, as a consequence, superior.

 

'We rarely have wine because we hardly ever finish the bottle. Why didn't it occur to me to make vinegar?

 

how warm does the vinegar need to be while it is 'brewing'?

[nickrey]

7 hours ago, quiet1 said:

 

'We rarely have wine because we hardly ever finish the bottle. Why didn't it occur to me to make vinegar?

 

how warm does the vinegar need to be while it is 'brewing'?

I live in Australia and keep it in my garage, which is relatively dark with a consistent temperature.

 

http://extension.psu.edu/food/preservation/faq/making-cider-vinegar-at-home

 

The article at the link above says to keep the vinegar between 60 and 80 F (18 and 26C).

 

 

 

 

Edited January 8, 2017 by nickrey (log)

[quiet1]

2 hours ago, nickrey said:

I live in Australia and keep it in my garage, which is relatively dark with a consistent temperature.

 

http://extension.psu.edu/food/preservation/faq/making-cider-vinegar-at-home

 

The article at the link above says to keep the vinegar between 60 and 80 F (18 and 26C).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hrm, our basement might get too cold. I'll have to rig something up to check. We don't have a pantry so I was hoping the basement would be a good out of the way but accessible place for it. (The garage is under the house as part of the basement.)

[chromedome]

Winter is a good time to play with vinegar-making. 

 

As I've observed on another forum in the past, "Anyone who says 'You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar' has never tried the experiment."

[blue_dolphin]

There is a wealth of vinegar making information in this thread but it can be a challenge to comb through and assemble it all.  I found this How To Make Vinegar guide from Sunset magazine helpful to pull things together.

 

An interesting note to close the loop back to eG is that the authors of that Sunset article got their vinegar mother from Paula Wolfert  (@Wolfert) who got it from @Abra, who shared much vinegar making information in this very thread and in her eG blog and also offered, years ago, to share that old French mother of hers with other eG members. 

Edited January 8, 2017 by blue_dolphin (log)

[Nyleve Baar]

I've been making this maple vinegar for several years and it is a fantastic substance. Mellow, like a good balsamic, but with its own flavour. I buy crappy maple syrup from a local producer - I ask him for the stuff he can't sell because it's too dark, or old or whatever. As far as I know it's not being made commercially, so this is definitely worth making for yourself.

http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016211-maple-vinegar

[blue_dolphin]

29 minutes ago, Nyleve Baar said:

I've been making this maple vinegar for several years and it is a fantastic substance. Mellow, like a good balsamic, but with its own flavour. I buy crappy maple syrup from a local producer - I ask him for the stuff he can't sell because it's too dark, or old or whatever. As far as I know it's not being made commercially, so this is definitely worth making for yourself.

http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016211-maple-vinegar

 

That sounds good.  What kind of vinegar are you using to start with? My first thought was apple cider vinegar but I pulled out Ideas in Food and they recommend red wine vinegar over that, though they say that both work.  

[Nyleve Baar]

I use apple cider vinegar as a starter. I buy one of those live, unfiltered vinegars - like Braggs or similar. You really want a flavour that doesn't assert itself too much as maple is so very delicate. Red wine vinegar would be too intense, I think. But I'm sure either one would work as long as the "mother" is in it.

[Kerry Beal]

On 1/8/2017 at 11:50 AM, Nyleve Baar said:

I've been making this maple vinegar for several years and it is a fantastic substance. Mellow, like a good balsamic, but with its own flavour. I buy crappy maple syrup from a local producer - I ask him for the stuff he can't sell because it's too dark, or old or whatever. As far as I know it's not being made commercially, so this is definitely worth making for yourself.

http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016211-maple-vinegar

 

Working on a batch - accumulated all the ingredients today. Bet I've forgotten about it by the time 4 weeks roll around.

[Nyleve Baar]

Great! It may very well take much longer than a month, especially in the winter when our homes are cooler. Be patient. It will come around eventually.

 

[Anna N]

7 minutes ago, Nyleve Baar said:

Great! It may very well take much longer than a month, especially in the winter when our homes are cooler. Be patient. It will come around eventually.

 

Wait!  Whaddya mean?  I just created a calendar entry to remind Kerry on Feb. 8.   

[Nyleve Baar]

Change that to...April...or so.

 

I'm just ready to filter the batch that I was originally supposed to check in mid-august. It's MAPLE VINEGAR! Thus, special and worth the wait.

Edited January 12, 2017 by Nyleve Baar
oopsie (log)

[blue_dolphin]

I just set up a batch of this maple vinegar today.  I put it in a little, non-working fridge out in my garage.  Hopefully that will insulate it a bit from the daily temp swings and allow it to do its thing!

[Kerry Beal]

I added a nice big slug of mother today to the batch that I've had going since Jan 11 - mother found lurking at the bottom of an almost empty bottle of vinegar in Anna N's cupboard.

[Anna N]

Just now, Kerry Beal said:

I added a nice big slug of mother today to the batch that I've had going since Jan 11 - mother found lurking at the bottom of an almost empty bottle of vinegar in Anna N's cupboard.

You hope!  That it was a mother!  It it has been lurking long enough it may be a great great grandma.