I've made my own vinegar. What are your questions?

I am not an expert.

Basically, first you must obtain a *mother*. The rest just takes care of itself.

I used apple cider vinegar mother and it adapted to all four fluids - it just took twice as long in the scuppernong wine.

I haven't tasted any of them though I've been told that I should to determine the level of acidity. It looks so slimy it will be hard for me to taste it, though I do enjoy the flavor of vinegar.

I have purchased a test kit used to test acid levels in wine and plan on testing the vinegars.

I was wondering if there is magic point when the acidity peaks and I have to dilute it to an acceptable level for salad dressing. Does the process slow down or crash if I miss this magic moment? At this point everything smells vinegar-ey (more like stomach acid-ey!).

I want to produce something from this vinegar, either salad dressing quality or meat marinade quality vinegar. If I determine that scuppernong or muscadine wine makes a decent vinegar then I will have to reproduce my experiment and magnify the amounts so that I can produce a large amount (I have access to a commercial kitchen for this phase). So its time to start thinking like a scientist test every conceivable level - hoping to develop a recipe that can be duplicated.

At this stage I am just playing with less than a gallon. And at this stage I was just testing whether a "mother" would grow - it did. In fact the wine store guys were more excited with my "mother" success than with my project. They said they had customers constantly asking for mother.

I'm looking for recipes and formulas and literature - like: what do they include to achieve the flavor of balsamic vinegar? My friend who started me down this winding road travels to Europe and brings back the most wonderful vinegars from Germany but she's never been able to find literature explaining how it was made. The books I have found just mention the long drawn out process used to increase the complexity of the flavor, without detailing what that process involves.

Know of any vinegar making books?

OK. You are looking for info on commercial manufacture with consistant results. I don't know enough to help you with that.

You may need to invest in oak barrels, and have to distil and pasturize, and have to test everything along the way at each step.

There is a ton of info on making vinegar if you use Google. You don't have to waste money on books. If you have a printer you can print out pages for future reference.

Google is how I got my info. There is a ton of info out there. A lot of the .edu sites have vinegar making. You may try contacting your local university to see if they have info. The one in my area has a home economist help line, and they give accurate scientific answers to questions about things like home canning and such. They may even have a vinegar/wine making course offered of the school near you.

I don't get too scientific - some of the fun is discovering the different nuances of each batch.

I'm sorry I couldn't be more help. I just make vinegar for my own use as a hobby. I've had some good batches and I've had failures.

Good luck and let us know how things go.

You may find additional information from some of the folks on the Harvest Forum.

I have made a few vinegars - from a purchased "mother" and the best ones were made from Paisano and Burgundy wines - inexpensive brand - Carlo Rossi. The burgundy especially turned out very well.

Recently, I also made a white wine from Carlo Rossi Rhine wine. Oddly enough, the red wines took almost 3 months to become wine. The Rhine finished in only one month. I am at a loss to explain why.

The white wine was made to try some dilly beans preserved in a milder vinegar rather than the usual distilled type, as someone on the Harvest Forum mentioned it, and I thought it might be worth a try. I just planted beans, so can't comment on that aspect as yet.

My main concern for canning purposes, was to achieve a pH of about 5, which I did.

When the process was finished, I removed the "mother" and strained the vinegar, brought it to a boil, to kill further fermentation, and capped.

I was able to capture the "mother" to use on the next fermentation, although it colored the white wine a bit, after using it in the burgundy.

Sorry, I can't add more to this, although it is my understanding that balsamic vinegar needs to be aged in barrels - as mentioned above, in order to achieve it's robust flavor.

Good luck.

Bejay

Thanks everyone! I did find a great site by Googling "Making Wine Vinegar". It explained most of what I wanted to know. It said that once the mother is well established the vinegar is basically finished and ready for drinking. And that bottling it at that point and letting it cure for months or years afterwards will only improve the flavor. So mine is ready to taste.

I don't mind the whimsy approach for my own salad dressing - but the core of this experiment was to establish scuppernong/muscadine wine vinegar as a product. Which would need tighter controls and reliable flavor. I did find a few recipes for wine vinegar with measurements which will give me a good foundation.

Thanks again

I'll let you know if this whole things works. Right now I am leaning towards the herb Rosemary to flavor the apple cider vinegar. I have this thing about the herb and anything apple flavored.

Here is a web site that should prove useful:

Safety First in Making Flavored Oils and Vinegars.

Just copy and paste in your Search Program.

Bejay

Yes trianglejohn, please do keep us posted with your results. Vinegar making is an "art". I am rather excited to know how things turn out.

I was at the Wisconsin Restaurant Trade Show this last week and there are usually a few booths there every year with fancy oils and vinegars. This year nada. I was hoping to chat with the makers and bring back some "trade secrets" to post. No such luck.

If we can keep this thread at the top, more people will see it, and maybe have some tips to offer, keeping this thread active.

Ooops, I meant to say vinegar making is and "art" AND a science.

This year I will be selling herbs and such at a nearby towns farmers market. There is a guy selling gourmet homemade sauces and marinades and I intend to pump him of all information. Since I sell a lot of salad fixin's it would be nice to offer locally made vinegar dressings. I did notice the other day in Whole Foods that they have a vast array of fancy schmansy vinegars. Tiny little bottles for $15! None of them were local and none were made from native southern grapes (scuppernongs and muscadines). For those of you that don't live in the south, these grapes have like a 22% sugar content and taste more like plums than traditional grapes. Not everybody loves them. They are very sweet and messy to eat. But there is small group of agriculture people trying to push them and products made with them out into the world outside the south. My friend is one of those people.

I had never heard of scuppernongs and muscadines. I just got done doing a lot of reading on them. Very interesting.

I had always read before that indigenous American grapes do not make good wine. These grapes have quite a following down south for wines and jams.

Now I am even more excited to learn how these vinegars turn out.

Well, this morning was the big taste test and of the four vinegars the white wine had the most interesting flavor (it is also the oldest). The scuppernong tasted kinda ordinary but still had some fruitiness to its aroma. The red wine had no flavor and the apple cider vinegar was nothing special (I had high hopes for it, since it was made from organic apple cider and since I use a lot of apple cider vinegar and like the flavor).

Now I have to strain them and bottle them and allow them to finish curing(ageing) and hope for better flavors to develop.

bud wi - when I moved here the grapes were just ripening and I could barely control myself. The place I worked had an entire row of about 15 cultivars - each with its own distinct flavor and ripening time. You can actually get a headache from the sugar content if you eat too many of them. I started trying different recipes with them which disgusted the locals. They claimed that the only reason people grow them in their back yards is for home made wine.

The local wineries that use them produce wine that is very sweet - kinda like Japanese plum wine.

John have you had any more progress to report? I have made some flavored vinegars but would be interested in how your project is going.

I have recently tried to make both a red wine vinegar and a white wine vinegar. I purchased a mother online for each. The red wine developed a film on the top, never seemed to become vineagr and then developed a smell like nail polish remover. The white seemed to be okay, but then it started to develop the same qualities as the red. Does anyone know what went wrong? Also can I somehow reuse the mothers or are they ruined?

I realize I am replying to a very old post. But I just started making vinegar and the site I've been looking to for information says a Nail Polish smell is okay, just leave it alone for a few more months.

If folks are interested I'd love to restart this conversation. IE, do any of you use oak chips? What about ramping up production so by next year I'd have gifts?

--Lisa

Tips. %alcohol= %acetic. Over 8% acetic will make you sick, some people cut it with water, I use store bought 5% wine vinegar to ensure that I don't cut it too much.
I make herb vinegar so I pasteurise right in the bottle (170°) then cork it.
Don't use caps, they'll rust.
I suspend oak chips in cheese cloth, using a plastic 30 gall. can. Aeriate with a swimming pool bubbler.
Replace with wine when I siphon some out, the existing mother and air make vingar in a week.
P.S. You're correct, 12% acetic smells like nail polish. Taste it :)
Doug. middlebasso@webtv.net

I have three batches going... all were started two weeks ago.

The cider vinegar (from a bottle of Braggs + bottle of cider) has already formed a 1/4" thick cap. I had to move it to another container so the cap dropped, but another is already forming, two days later.

The white wine vinegar (purchased MoV + sulfite free Chardonnay) is getting that haze that says a mother is on it's way.

The red wine vinegar (purchased MoV + sulfite free Cabernet) is barely doing anything.

I know I have months to go, but all my reading said the white would take forever and the red would take off.

Funny how working with food is always a surprise!

--Lisa