Using Vinegar with the Mother
gardengal19
12 years ago
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girlgroupgirl
12 years agoTrishcuit
12 years agoRelated Discussions
Holy mother of vinegar!
Comments (5)If you have red wine available, you can use it to make your own red wine vinegar. It takes time, but it's not difficult. The method I used is like this one from: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/283306 "First you need a vinegar "Mother" this is the bacterial culture that turns alcohol into vinegar. An easy cheap way to get one is to buy some "live" unfiltered cider vinegar from a health food store. I think one name is Bragg's cider vinegar. If you can get a "Mother" from someone who has a good one it will be better than starting with a raw vinegar. You can also buy a "Mother" from some wine and homebrew supply stores. Pour this into a large, 1 gallon or larger, wide mouth jar. Then pour in up to the same amount of wine/alcoholic beverage, never add more wine than you have starter or the vinegar will take forever to process. If possible shake the wine to get a lot of air mixed in before adding. This will help give the bacteria an oxygen boost. Cover the jar top with a piece of thin cloth such as a bandana, held on with a large rubber band. This will keep out fruit flies, also called vinegar flies, but allow air in. Then stick the jar in a dark place that is around 60-70 degrees and leave it alone for awhile. A month or so. After this you can gently add more wine every week or so. You don't want to jostle the vinegar because if you do the "Mother" that is growing on top will sink and drown. This slows down the process and can over time cause off tastes from the drowned and dead "Mother". The mother can get very thick, 1, 2, even 3 inches. When my jar starts to get full and also full of mother I take out the mother and squeeze the vinegar out of it over a very large bowl. This is a nasty slimy weird job but the mother is 99% vinegar and the best part to use for starting more vinegar. Some people describe "Mother" from red wine as looking like placenta / afterbirth. A somewhat accurate description. Every now and then you can pour out a quart or so of vinegar. Filter through first a bandana then if you want a coffee filter. At this point you can either: Put in a sealed jar and let it sit for at least a month or six, to take off the raw edge. Then filter again and you can use it. This will be a lightly filtered live vinegar. Or you can put in a mason / ball jar and process at 165 degrees for ten minutes. Then let it sit and age for a month or six to mellow it out. Then filter and use. This will give you a vinegar that is dead and will not age as fast but will be more like commercial vinegar. You can use any low alcohol beverage such as wine- red, white, desert wines, saki, beer- any decent type but it will only be as good as what you start with, hard cider, fruit wine, champagne, sherry, port, etc. Commercial vinegar is watered down to about 5% acid, the vinegar you make will have apx. the same acid content as the alcohol content was in your starting liquid. A wine of 11% alcohol will make a vinegar of 11% acidity. You can dilute the vinegar but I use it straight and take allowances in my recipe or use." I bought mine from a winemaking supply store, but gave lots of my mother away once I got it going. I gave it up when I had my kids (like so many other hobbies, LOL), but now that they're bigger I might start some again. Leigh...See MoreMother of Vinegar
Comments (8)Could you clarify your question please? Using the vinegar or using the mother? I assume you saw this discussion about this question a bit further down the page? It addresses using the vinegar itself. As to uses for the mother itself, I'm not aware of any role for it in food preservation. It is normally filtered out of the vinegar prior to use. However there are several articles about its uses for health benefits. I linked one of them below. Dave Here is a link that might be useful: What are the health benefits of MOV?...See MoreACV apple cider vinegar--translucent disc is also mother?
Comments (13)I realize that I'm a newbie to making vinegar, but my process was quite different from that shown in the video, and was still successful. I started my ACV by cutting up (washed) organic apples, and stuffing them in a mason jar ~2/3 full, with a tsp of sugar and non-chlorinated water to cover. No fruit flies, fermentation as a separate step, etc. I put a double layer of paper towel over the top, secured with twine, and that was more or less all I did. It got stirred, often at first bc it was fermenting, less later on. The apples in this case turned to mush after ~2 weeks. I realize I was somewhat fortunate getting a good culture the first time. Would this culture still count as 'natural' since the microorganisms were either on the fruit or in the air? Another later attempt went bad. So, it seems in my 1st attempt, that the fermentation and conversion to vinegar were simultaneous. I definitely agree that starting with organic cider and cultured wine yeast would simplify the process quite a bit. I'm also making sauerkraut via a similar fermentation process, as well as sourdough, which was easily inoculated just by leaving the container open for a while--it was winter, so no flies to worry about. Thanks, Habj--it's all good experience. I really appreciate being able to compare notes here! Rick...See MoreUses for white vinegar
Comments (1)Thanks....See Moredigdirt2
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