Vinegar

[dmwcarol]

Has anyone had any success with making their own vinegar?

I love making chutneys and pickles so get through loads of the stuff and it's by far the most expensive part of the recipe.

According to an old book of my mum's you can make vinegar just by collecting apple cores and peelings in a jar, covering them with water and adding a couple of teaspoons of cider vinegar to kick things off.

Is it really that easy? Is there anything else I should be aware of before starting?

Carol

[the.fee.fairy]

i would presume that it depends on what kind of vinegar you were making.

I've been reading into making Red Wine Vinegar (due to an excess of red wine - see 101 uses for) and you need to have a mother to start the vinegar. If you want to make your own one, you have to get some bacteria to make it. Otherwise, you can get a chunk of someone else's.

Don't know about making cider vinegar though. I would presume that its the same thing, but with cider instead of wine. I wouldn
t try the apple cores in a jug thing...they'll just rot. All vinegar has an alcohol in it - red wine, white, wine, cider so i think you need that as a preservative, and for the yeast to do its work (don't know whether it gets eaten by the mother, or whether teh yeast and alcohol are separate parts or anything, it just seems that alcohol is an important part of vinegar-making).

Good luck!!

[Chickpea]

Vinegar is wine gone sour (or cider or whatever), so the apple core thing sound totally duff to me. You can make vinegar by getting some wine and leaving it open to the air.

[dmwcarol]

I've made vinegar from wine before, in some cases it's a better option than drinking the homebrew.

The apple cores/peel method just seemed simpler - I can't see why it wouldn't work - if you leave fruit out it starts to ferment naturally anyway and the cider vinegar presumably acts as the mother to start the oxidation process.

I think I'll give it a try next time I'm making apple pie and see what happens.

[Wombat]

Ive made some, sort of, by fermenting sugar with bread yeast and then just leaving it sit. It has taken a few months, but now has quite a vinegary odour!

Nev