Supposedly, vinegar flies carry the right type of bacteria needed to convert alcohol into vinegar - so you want to get the flies to your cider (or wine) while at the same time keeping all the other airborne wild bacterias out. Mother of vinegar is then produced by the right kind of bacteria. Once you have some mother, you can keep it going just like a sourdough starter. Maybe we don't have vinegar flies in high desert; maybe they die off in the cold; maybe local bad bacterias kill off the good stuff - I don't know. I've tried making vinegar a couple of times before, but I never ended up with anything even remotely edible. I needed some other way of finding my vinegar mother.
When my (actual) mom was visiting, her flight home was out of the San Francisco airport. So after spending time with me in Nevada, the plan was: we'd meet up with my California sister in one of the Sierra foothill towns, halfway between our houses, and then Mom would go home with Sis. We decided to spend the day at Apple Hill, near Placerville, for our meeting place.
So we met for lunch, and then spent the afternoon checking out my favorite Apple Hill vendors. One of them, Denver Dan's, sells lots of flavored cider vinegars. Light bulb moment! I asked to talk to the owner, asking if he would sell me a little bit of vinegar mother. He ended up up just giving me a little jar with about a tablespoon scraped out of the bottom of one of his barrels. That was enough.
Following the directions from the tutorial, I poured three bottles of my hard cider into a glass gallon jar, added half again as much water (since my cider was made with added sugar, I'm sure it has a pretty high alcohol content), stirred in the mother (a rubbery, white goo), topped it off with some cheesecloth (mother needs air), and set it inside a top cupboard, where it would be warm and dark. And it's working! I haven't tasted it yet, but it smells really good. The mother multiplied in the bottom of the jar, and a fresh layer is now starting to form on the top, just like it should, converting the alcohol into vinegar. I'm so excited! I still have lots of apples, so I'm thinking I'll press out some more juice and let it ferment without adding sugar, just so I can keep my vinegar jar going. Maybe I'll start a second jar with leftover red wine too.
Hey, how cool is that? :-)
ReplyDeleteHope it comes out good...
YEA, how exciting! I've also had luck making vinegar by just adding cider to a glass jar and covering with cheesecloth. After about 4 months it had turned into vinegar and had a wonderful mother in it. I saved the mother and am making a few different batches of vinegar to try them and see if there's a difference. Some with added mother, some with natural occurring mother and some with purchased mother.
ReplyDeleteI'm also making white wine vinegar and pear juice vinegar (I'm using the pear juice from my canned pears). I'm even considering buying some oak barrels to age my vinegar in, be careful it's an addictive hobby!
Whole Foods in Reno sells that Bragg ACV with the mother in it, too. What you got is probably better, though - already acclimated to our climate/altitude. Good luck to your little bacteria! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info, Funder. I don't know about acclimazation, since Apple Hill is lower and western slope. But I like the idea that my mother came from someone that produces lots of vinegar, by the barrel-full. It's got to be fresh and healthy. I'll share it too, if any locals want to try making their own vinegar.
ReplyDeleteI've always wanted to make my own since I saw an article in Mother Earth News years ago. Maybe next year I'll follow this tutorial.
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