Vinegar lasts forever.

Give it a taste and trust your senses. I am sure it's okay.

What's to spoil?? Will it turn to wine??
Vinegar is a preservative....as long as the acidity is high enough.
Linda C

It could well outlast the planet.

thanks all. i figured it was ok but wasn't 100% sure. i was cleaning out the fridge and was going to toss it. i'll keep it another 10 years and see how much i have used!

tom

The older the Balsamic vinegar, the more expensive it becomes.

Some are aged 25 years.

dcarch

I have a bottle of organic red wine vinegar which has developed a thick "mother" on the surface. I'm saving it for the next leftover bottle of wine. Time for a new project.

Carol

Go for it Carol! I started containers of red wine vinegar and white wine vinegar months ago, and I love having them. The flavor is so much richer than that of store bought.

What does a "mother" look like?

Sometimes I see some scum forming on the top of the liquid in a jar of olives. Is that a mother? I usually throw them out at that point for fear of something bad...

Good lord, no. I think with olives throwing them out if there's some scum is the thing to do.

A "mother" is a starter akin to what you'd use for sourdough. In other words it's just fermentation, but in this case it's vinegar, not bread.

It's a disk that floats on top of the vinegar. It has varying appearances. It can look leathery or it can look gelatinous. In this case I had an organic Italian red wine vinegar I didn't use quickly enough. Rather than waste it I'm going to use the mother to start my own. It should be great.

Carol

While vinegar will always be vinegar, it does change taste over time. Once there is mother in the vinegar, I don't like the taste anymore. I have never seen a change in distilled vinegar over time, and no mother. Cider vinegar and red wine vinegar though, will go "bad", at least in my taste bud's opinion. I use a lot of vinegar, and buy it by the gallon when I can find it. But when the weather warms up I keep them in a spare refrigerator in the garage.

Thanks, Carol. I bet I'd be afraid of the mother, as well, though lol, since I've never seen the process. It's an interesting topic. I'm going to read up on it. So many projects, so little time.

I agree on not using vinegar once the mother forms. And I've had raw (unpasteurized) apple cider vinegar that over time developed undesireable flavors.

Carol

trsinc: In this case the project takes no time what so ever! I have a "sun tea" jar in the garage that makes a really nice, complex flavored red wine vinegar. I just dump the remains of red and rose wines into the jar and add a bit of water now and then to make up for evaporation. When I need more vinegar, I just pour some of the jar's contents through a coffee filter and store it in the kitchen. The main jar smells pretty strongly of vinegar and I have a small kitchen so my "mother" has to live in the garage.

I have done zero studying on this so have a question. :)
I have some store bought, organic cider vinegar with a mother in it (Bragg's brand).
I also have about 1/2 gallon of raw apple cider that we pressed last fall, I froze, then just thawed out in the fridge last week.
Can I put the mother from my store bought stuff into the cider and make more cider vinegar?? Or should we just drink the cider before it becomes "hard cider"? LOL

TIA,
Deanna

Deanna: No, that wouldn't probably work. The "mother" is a colony of bacteria that turns alcohol into acetic acid. Since you are starting with sugar, you would first need yeast to turn the sugar into alcohol (hard cider) before it could be turned into acetic acid. Your plan would jumble the two steps together. It might work, then again, might not.

OK. Thanks jxbrown!
We'll just drink it. Rough job, but somebody's got to do it!! LOL

Deanna