How Is Vinegar Made
Chopped host Ted Allen has the perfect solution for all that leftover holiday wine in December's issue of Food Network Magazine: Make your own vinegar.
Get your starter. The starter's job is to provide acetic acid bacteria, which converts ethanol into acetic acid (the primary ingredient in vinegar). • Unpasteurized, unfiltered vinegar. It's important to use vinegar that hasn't been processed in a way that interferes with the acetic acid bacteria. • Mother of vinegar. This slimy looking thing consists of acetic acid bacteria and cellulose.
It's a natural product of the vinegar-making process. If you have a friend who makes vinegar, you may be able to get a piece of theirs, or you can make your own. You can make your own by mixing unpasteurized and unfiltered vinegar with an alcoholic liquid and putting the mixture in a sunny spot for two weeks, but in that case, you might as well use the vinegar itself as a starter; a mother will form with your vinegar that you use next time.
• Mycoderma aceti. You may be able to find it in a wine-making store. It's clear and comes in a jar. Put the container in a warm, dark place and let nature do its thing. Download Aplikasi Translate Offline Untuk Android. Keep the mixture between 60 degrees and 80 degrees Fahrenheit (around 15 to 27 degrees Celsius). During the course of about 3-4 weeks, it should start forming a mother of vinegar; you can observe this if you used a glass container.
The amount of time it takes for the vinegar making process, however, depends greatly on the type of alcoholic liquid you used, and how much of it you're converting. The range is anywhere between 3 weeks to 6 months. • Some sources suggest stirring the mixture daily in order to provide oxygen, and taste testing a little bit at a time towards the end of the 3-4 week period to see if the vinegar's ready. Other sources recommend leaving the mixture undisturbed, so that the mother doesn't sink. • If you decide to leave the mixture undisturbed, it'll be a little trickier to see if it's ready. Smell it through the cheesecloth; it's done when there is an intense vinegary smell that almost burns in your nostrils.
If, based on this, you taste it and it's not ready after all, let it ferment undisturbed for another period of time, depending on how close it is to your desired vinegar flavor. • A container with a spout at the bottom would make this much easier, since you can taste the vinegar without disturbing the mother at the top. Bottle and store your delicious, homemade vinegar! Strain out the vinegar through cheesecloth or a coffee filter, separating the mother, which can be kept for making more vinegar. • Unless you ferment the vinegar for a very long time, there is probably alcohol still left in it, which you can remove by boiling.
While you're at it, you can pasteurize and reduce the vinegar, so that you can store it for longer and concentrate the flavours, respectively. To achieve pasteurization, heat the vinegar to 170 degrees Fahrenheit (77 degrees Celsius) and hold it there for 10 minutes.
Crock Pots are perfect for holding food for a long time below the boiling point. Use a thermometer to check your crock pot's temperature at each setting to determine which setting is closest to 170 degrees. • Unpasteurized vinegar can be stored in sterilized, capped jars in the refrigerator for a few months. Pasteurized vinegar can be stored in sterilized containers with tight-fitting lids at room temperature for more than a few months, as long as they are kept out of direct sunlight.
Last week, Jarod gave us some. This week he’ll be explaining how to turn old or undrinkable wine into a mother of vinegar, and then how to make vinegar from the mother.
About a month ago, I was fortunate enough to attend a dinner party given by Jarod. My boyfriend and I brought a bottle of wine to share, but were disappointed when it was found to be “corked” — a term given to unopened wine that has that vinegary, wet-dog-musty-cave taste associated with the presence of 2,4,6 Trichloroanisole. (While the cork is often thought to be culpable, other variables such as the barrel and storage conditions can also be the cause.) Jarod didn’t miss a beat, he grabbed the wine, added a splash of vinegar, put the cork back in and placed the bottle atop his fridge saying, “No problem, I’ll make it into mother of vinegar.” “Mother of vinegar?” we asked, wide-eyed. “What’s that?” Mother of vinegar (MOV or Mother for shorthand purposes) is essentially a fermenting bacteria culture used to make vinegar — an acetobacter that develops in fermenting alcohol and converts the ethanol into acetic acid (what gives vinegar its sour taste) in the presence of oxygen. Fermenting bacteria can be found in other food products like kombucha, sourdough, and, well, in vinegar. MATERIALS AND TOOLS Your old wine, 16oz or so for the Mother, and more when you make your vinegar Vinegar, just a splash Iodine, for sterilization Storage vessel, such as ice tea container Sterilized containers, for bottling your vinegar Cheesecloth & rubber band Ripe fruit, to feed your Mother Optional: fine sieve, funnel, fruit juice Make Your Mother To make an MOV, take your corked or leftover wine (red is most common, but you can use white), and add a splash (tablespoon) of red wine or apple cider vinegar. Re-cork the bottle and put it somewhere dark and warm to encourage the bacteria to attack residual sugar in the wine and start the fermentation process.
Temperature is not entirely crucial, but a good rule of thumb is: if you are comfortable, the MOV will be too. You want to ensure that light does not hit the bottle, as this will slow fermentation. This takes about 2 months. Be sure to leave the bottle totally undisturbed, so don’t move or check on it during fermentation or the process won’t work.
Note: If for some reason it doesn’t work, or if you just don’t want to wait 2 months for maturity, you can buy MOV in a tub from a wine supply store. Slowly pour the contents of the bottle into bowl.
Mother, when she is ready, is not very pretty. It should have bacteria strands in it, and be a bit gloppy. There will also be some vinegar here that you can filter out with a fine sieve or coffee filter into another bowl to transfer to bottle. But don’t throw any sludge away, this is your starter, your Mother.
While not particularly appetizing, it is not harmful; just a bacteria chain hungry for your leftovers. Make More Vinegar Now that you have your MOV, you’ll want to feed it to make regular vinegar. Transfer your culture to a storable container with a wide mouth, like a crock. Another good vessel to use is a glass beverage container with a spigot, like for iced tea.
Stainless steel is OK to use, but tin and aluminum are not; plastics are not encouraged. In the container, combine with your MOV some fruits that might be on the way out — berries, apples, pears and pit fruits are all good choices, even tomatoes. Whatever you add will contribute to the overall flavor, so be mindful that while a banana will make the entire batch bannanariffic and somewhat overwhelming, an overripe mango might be more your speed. Now add enough liquid (an inexpensive bottle of wine, or the dregs of the half finished glasses of wine you’ve been saving in your refrigerator) to cover the fruit you’ve given Mother. You can also use fresh fruit juices in addition to the wine. Store bought bottle juice is not a good idea as it has preservatives that inhibit fermentation. Be sure the container is covered but can breathe (one idea is to securely replace the lid with cheesecloth), and put the mix in a warm dark place once again, checking on it every week.
Continue to add liquid as needed. A bit of scum will form on top as the process continues. Just scrape it off before you add more to the mix.
Again, this is not harmful, it’s just the bacteria creating it’s own perfect environment. Note: When you add liquid, your vinegar will be diluted until the bacteria can catch back up, so if you’re in the mood for the sharp stuff, you’ll have to give the mix some time. I recommend tasting at 6 weeks and going from there.
Your Vinegar Once the vinegar is to your liking, pour from the spigot and bottle it in small, sterilized, airtight vessels. Or if your container has spigot envy, just ladle and strain, then bottle. If you don’t want the sediment, filter again with a fine sieve or coffee filter. If you wish to pasteurize the vinegar (render the acetobacter inactive), you can heat it at 150˚F for a half hour in a clean pot — then you don’t have to worry about an airtight container.
You can also add fresh herbs to the bottles if you like. This will not only make your vinegar look pretty, but infuse it with the yummy herb flavor.
Your Mother will continue to work and grow as you add to it. At some point you’ll have more mother than room for vinegar. Here’s the rub: you can share! Scrape some into a container and give some to your friends. This provides you the room needed to begin another batch and helps your friends with their own mother of vinegar. Learn more about home-fermented starters in the pages of CRAFT: CRAFT 01:, page 143 CRAFT 02: Kombucha Madness, page 101 CRAFT 03: One-Week Wine, page 102 CRAFT 04:, page 118 CRAFT 06:, page 111 CRAFT 06:, page 114 CRAFT 09: Red Wine Vinegar, page 111 About the Author Jarod Hermann is a recovering Chef living in San Francisco. He is now open about his food preferences and liberally applies them to his friends and family.
He also plays musical instruments.