Why not try? What do you have to lose? I might do it from a melon wine that I am not satisfied with.... I am not sure it would make a good vinegar.... kind of tasteless.

I've never tried it, but this is how you do it.

Wine Vinegar
1 bottle red or white wine or dry sherry
1 tablespoon pot barley

Combine wine and barley in a wide-mouthed jar or crock and leave in a warm place for several days. Test after 2-3 days, by which time it should be right, strain and bottle. Keep a small amount as the ÂmotherÂ, feeding occasionally with dregs of wine, making sure to use the same kind of wine each time.

Alright! My jars just came out of the dishwasher, so with 2 types of wine left over, I will do separate batches, and maybe I'll only do barley in one, just for comparison. One of the wines has a very sad story, in that the cork had gotten dry (stored upright but I hadn't had it very long!) and the corkscrew pulled straight up through it. My dinner companion opened a different bottle, so by the time I shoved the cork into the wine 3 days later to strain & drink, the corkscrew hole had let in enough air to ruin it. It was a Barboursville Pinot Noir and I was really looking forward to drinking it, so I'm hoping it will make a good vinegar and I can still enjoy it. Thanks for the tips and encouragement!

Does anybody know much about homemade vinegar? I was given a vinegar mother by a friend of mine about a year ago. I have been adding wine to the mother all year and it has changed flavour several times. This doesn't concern me as much as the mould that has just started growing on top of the vinegar. Does any body know what I can do to stop this from happening? The vinegar is being stored in a glazed ceramic croc.
Thanks in advance for your help.

Here is a link that might be useful: blue bowl brown sugar

Air is helping mold to grow. A water fermentation trap should be used. Also as an aid, a very small amount of a sulfur additive can prevent mold. If it exists already, you can skim it off. If your planning on canning it, boil first before filling jars. adding wine will always change its flavor as wines are all different, as are the many kinds of yeasts used in making wines.

I wish I could find the info I'd found when I use to make my own vinegar. Are you aware that when the vinegar is ready to use the "mother" will make a "cap" over the top to stop the fermentation. This Cap isn't mold, but rather a rubbery-sort-of-substance that will completely cover and seal the vinegar. After this point you can pour off the vinegar, remove the cap and start over with some of the mother left in the bottom of the jar. Did you ever notice that "official" vinegar jars have a spout several inches up from the bottom of the jar. This is so you can use the vinegar without disturbing the cap at the top OR the mother on the bottom.

It would be good to provide a way of adding wine without disturbing the cap also. This can be done by having a funnel with a long tube going the bottom of the jar built into your apparatus.

The process needs air. This can be provided by leaving the top of the jar open and covering it with a cloth. You will then need to keep an eye on it, occasionally replacing the liquid lost to evaporation.

It takes a bit of attention, but I intend to start vinegar making.

Jim

BTW, I found a 96 oz. food grade plastic container with a spigot near the bottom. It was for sale at my supermarket. The cost wasn't much and it came full of a product called Big Bucket Margarita Mixer! I haven't yet emptied the contents. I guess I need to have some friends over to help.

Jim

Sounds good Jim, tell us when! Gardengrl will bring the pickled-asparagus-brine dirty martinis.

Anyone spending more than a few bucks for a spigoted container, I suggest looking for one with an unscrewable spigot so you can clean it well. I had a cheap iced tea jar from CVS, and when the spigot got moldy I had to throw it out.

Melissa

I knew I could count on you, Melissa. Actually, I think you have already figured out that this mixer is not very good. That's why you suggested that Gardengrl bring the martini makings.

The unscrewable (reminds me of a bad joke about the difference between a light bulb and a pregnant woman) spigot you speak of was available at home brew stores last I knew. It can easily be installed in a plastic bucket by just drilling a hole for it.

I suppose making vinegar is one of the least profitable ways one could use their time. No doubt that's why it appeals to me.

Jim

When I was a kid my mom would send me to the grocery store with a glass jug to buy vinegar. Wooden barrels of vinegar that must have been around 50 gal & all the stores had them. For many years I used one of these barrels with spigot like this Wooden Spigot to make compost tea. (Mmmmm.. good!)

JohnT

Here is a link that might be useful: Plastic Spigot

Can one substitute cider for the wine?

Sure, cider can be used, which will make cider vinegar instead of wine vinegar. However, you need hard (fermented) cider, not sweet cider. Remember, wine is fermented grape juice. This initial fermentation produces alcohol from sugar in the fruit juice. Vineger is produced when the alcohol is fermented in different way to produce acetic acid.

It's easy to ferment sweet cider, provided it isn't loaded with preservatives. Just loosen the cap to allow gas to escape and let the jug sit at room temperature for a few days until it stops bubbling.

Jim

I am waiting for the mother vinegar to form in a separate bottle which I expose to the light and air...while the gallon jug is resting in the back of a warm dark cupboard.I would like to put an herb in the vinegar...I really would like to try bay leaf...should I put it in the jar that will develop the mother vinegar, or in the waiting jug....and can I put a leaf in now...or should I wait until the vinegar has developed the mother vinegar?
Lina

I know the original post was a long time ago, but perhaps someone can tell me what is the purpose of the barley in the post third from the top, the one by Daisyduckworth?

I believe the barley will help to impart a slight malt taste, as well as add a small amount of a natural sugar to help encourage the fermentation process to vinegar. Only issue is, if preservatives (like sulfur based products) are used in bottling of the wine, they may not achieve the proper conversion to vinegar.

Working at a catering establishment, I ended up with about 8 bottles of aerated red wine to play with. I got two large glass jars, and poured two bottles into each, covered them with cheesecloth and put them on a shelf in my garage. Nothing happened for a long time, this was in winter, and I think it was really too cold.Eventually, one got covered with mold, which I skimmed off, but the other didn't do anything.

The mold grew back, and this time the wine in the jar smelled of it, so I threw it out and hung my hopes on the second jar. Worried about evaporation, I poured a little more wine in every so often to keep the level about the same, I don't know if that was right or not.

It took about 3 months, but I finally could smell vinegar, and shortly after that I found a slimey looking layer floating on top, and when I took a judicious sniff at the mouth of the jar, I was rewarded with a wonderful, rich vinegar aroma.

The flavor has almost no relationship to the thin, sharp tasting stuff you get at the supermarket. Rich and complex, but definitely vinegar. It makes the most wonderful vinaigrettes and meat marinades.

I add a bit more red wine every so often when I think of it, but haven't come across any really detailed instructions on how to maintain the mother. Most recipes I have found just say to "feed" the mother more wine every so often. Hmmm. After all that time, I'd be horrified if I killed it and had to start all over, especially now that I've gotten hooked on the stuff!

Just adding more wine occasionally should do it. Also, you could make a backup in another jar. Using a piece of the the mother you now have it will get started more quickly this time.

Jim

Doh! Why didn't I think of that? :D That way if I did kill one, the other might still make it.

Reviving an old thread here, but I've just started making vinegar and have been doing a lot of reading, but apparently, when you pour new wine in the bucket the cap will die and fall to the bottom and a new cap will form. You eventually have to fish out the old mother or they start taking up too much space. You can give the softest portions of what you are going to throw out to a friend to make their own vinegar.

--Lisa

If you pour the wine in carefully, sort of slipping it down the side of the jar, it is possible to keep from sinking the "cap". I've only had to strain the vinegar once in 6 months to remove the sunken material. When I want vinegar to fill my counter top bottle, I get it out with a turkey baster rather than pour it...that way I can gently nudge the "cap" aside to draw it out.

I don't know if I said this anywhere higher on the thread, but natural food stores sell unfiltered vinegar with mother particles in it. You can use this instead of paying $10 for a mother. If you're using wine with a lot of preservatives (most commercial wine I guess?) maybe that won't work since that wine is trying hard not to become vinegar.

Melissa

Some commercial wines have a form of sulfur added, as well as ascorbic acid. These help to prevent the wine from 'turning' as well as prevention of oxidation. Nothing worse than a badly oxidized wine, ugh! The store bought are very popular now too, and as mentioned can be priced quite high.

Here is a link that might be useful: Vinegar mothers

The baster is a good idea. I bought a sun tea jar to use with the same idea in mind.

One of my batches started from a bottle of unfiltered, unpasteurized cider vinegar with a bit of mother floating it it (found at WF) and a bottle of cider vinegar. It make a cap in less than a week and alreadys smells very vinegary.

--Lisa

My vinegar began itself last summer on my counter. I had put some blueberries into commercial vinegar to flavor the vinegar. Life got in the way, I didn't get to the jar to fish the berries out and boil the richly colored, fragrant vinegar within a few days as the recipe directed, so I feared that I might be incubating a bacterial stew.

Scientist at heart, I decided to wait and watch, rather than either risk my family's health, or simply toss it. I did remove the berries. Over the next weeks, a slimy mass grew. A little internet research confirmed that a mother had grown, and capped her mixture.

That vinegar, delicious, complex, was siphoned off and is relished! Now I save a little red wine from each bottle to toss into that old jar with the original mother. This batch is converting more slowly, but vinegar is forming!

The original berries did have fresh yeasts on their skins, so I wonder if that is where the inoculation for the mother came from?

Give it a try.

Yes, most any berry or grape have many types of wild yeasts. Thats one way to make bread too, but just mixing a few picked grapes into water and flower and let it sit a couple of days. A few wild yeasts are bad, but most will give you many different characteristics. Thats what the whitish coating is on blueberries and grapes.

Having fallen in love with my home made red wine vinegar, I started a batch of white wine vinegar...I used a bit of the mother from my red wine batch. It took quite some time, but I now have white wine vinegar!

Now all I have to do is drink enough of both red and white wines to provide my vinegar with a "meal" once in a while! :D

Homemade vinegar is one of those things I've always thought of doing. I have a jar of commercial white wine vinegar with what I think is the beginnings of a mother in the bottom. Could I use this? Maybe toss in a few frozen berries for some more yeast? For some reason I don't think commercial bread yeast would be quite the thing to use.

Freezing will have killed any yeast on the berries.

Mother looks like an almost transparent, filmy thing floating in the bottom of whatever. If you have "Mother" your good to go.... go ahead and retrieve it and use it to create something wonderful.

No, bread yeast isn't the same.

I freeze my whole bags of yeast so they keep longer. I buy 2 pound bags and can't use it all up before it expires, so its put in an air tight container in the freezer. I spoon out what I need and put it back in there for next time.

can anyone tell me how to get a thick mother out of a bottle with a narrow neck? I want to reuse the bottle. Thanks

There may be other ways but what I would do is shake the bottle really hard to break the mother up into smaller bits and then pour it out into a bowl or other jar. You'll want to wash out the original bottle unless you want to make more vinegar in it (if the neck is really narrow I doubt you would be able to completely clean it out).

Mother is really a colony of bacteria, it doesn't have to stay in its globby shape to stay alive. You can keep some of it and throw the rest of it away or just put the whole mess into another bottle.

Add a bit of water?