# Vinegar



## sfisher

Do we have any vinegar makers out there? I am thinking about trying to make some vinegar out of mead. Have any of you tried it?


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## danno

yes we make a lot of vinegars. Any beer or wine that we are not completely satisfied with goes into cheese cloth covered gallon jars with a slug of mother. we have also made it out of commercial wines that get opened and forgotten long enough to oxidize. My brew club bought a bourbon barrel and we all made 5 gallon batches of stout. We left in in the barrel for 6 - 8 months and the results was wonderful. so good that we wanted to try again. Problem was it took a couple of weeks to get beer in it again. in that time the barrel got infected and the second batch was terrible. Most of the members just dumped theres but my wife and I took it home, boiled it first to kill anything living in it and added mother. The following brew club Xmas party she gave everyone a bottle of stout vinegar. We started by just buying a bottle of vinegar from the health food store that had mother sitting on the bottom. For those that don't know what mother is it looks like snot. Every batch you make the mother grows. Now we actually give small bottles of mother to friends to get them started. I rack 5 gallons of hard cider into a secondary yesterday and sampled it. Its abit to hard for my taste so unless things change in the secondary I see apple cider vinegar in gift baskets next year. We have also made Champagne vinegar that really turned out great. We bought cheap champagne, popped the corks and left it sit and go flat. Poured it into gallon jars, added mother and walked away for afew months


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## beemandan

I'm pretty serious about my vinegar. I make and sell Honey Vinegar, Blueberry Honey Vinegar, Strawberry Honey Vinegar and have a sizable batch of Apple Cider Honey Vinegar brewing...to be ready sometime late spring 2014...as I speak.


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## beemandan

A couple of interesting writeups on honey vinegar…you might find interesting.

This is the one that first got me interested.
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1536515

And this one tells everything (at least almost everything) one might want to know about making it.
http://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/Ag. Ext. 2007-Chelsie/PDF/e149.pdf


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## DPBsbees

Dan, What mother do you use for honey vinegar? I've found malt, white, red, and cider mothers out there. Thanks, Dan


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## beemandan

DPBsbees said:


> Dan, What mother do you use for honey vinegar?


The first batch I ever started, I added a jar of Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar. Since that time, I harvest two thirds and leave one third to inoculate the next batch. I will say I’m less interested in using the actual mother and believe that using vinegar with an active population of acetobacter to initiate the next round is effective. My new batches will have a significant mother forming within a few weeks. .


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## beemandan

Three weeks after inoculating. Nice distinct mothers forming.


At about eight months….ready to test acidity…probably this afternoon.


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## greg zechman

and i can attest to dans vinegar...its really good......greg


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## danno

Great pics!!!!! All 3 gallon carboys? Maybe 5's My wife has refused to use narrow necked jugs both gallon, 3 gallon and fives that I have. I will show her these pics. Very Nice!!!


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## Homemaid

Ok all you vinegar brewers I started some apple cider vinegar. I used apple peeling,and cores left from apple pie making. I put into a crock, covered them with water, and added a glob of mother. I stir it everyday. It first started to smell like beer, then wine now more like vinegar. If and when should I remove the peelings and cores? When I do remove them should I keep the mother blob in there or remove it and let it make it's own? When do I put it into bottles? Thank you for any help I can get.


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## beemandan

danno said:


> Great pics!!!!! All 3 gallon carboys?


Fives and sixes. After harvesting the vinegar....getting the mothers out can be a bit challenging but I've got it pretty well figured out.


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## beemandan

greg zechman said:


> and i can attest to dans vinegar...its really good......greg


Thanks Greg!


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## danno

Homemaid said:


> Ok all you vinegar brewers I started some apple cider vinegar. I used apple peeling,and cores left from apple pie making. I put into a crock, covered them with water, and added a glob of mother. I stir it everyday. It first started to smell like beer, then wine now more like vinegar. If and when should I remove the peelings and cores? When I do remove them should I keep the mother blob in there or remove it and let it make it's own? When do I put it into bottles? Thank you for any help I can get.


Sorry but this is the wrong way to make vinegar. You first need a alcohol fermentation. Peels and cores mixed with water will not provide enough sugar to make enough alcohol. I would expect it just to mold. Pressed apple cider will ferment out to about 5%. This is without adding any water. You can let wild yeasts ferment the cider but I preferr to kill the wild and add a wine or beer yeast in a starter. Bread yeast is not recomended. After a couple of weeks of alcohol fermentation you can add the mother and start the acetic acid fermentation. This needs darkness, near 70deg and oxygen.


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## Homemaid

Oh I added a quart of honey to this also. Will this not work at all? It smells like vinegar at this point. Should I jst toss it and start over?


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## beemandan

Homemaid said:


> Should I jst toss it and start over?


Your whole process seems random....I can't even guess what you presently have. I would be reluctant to consume it....but I know folks who do worse.
I wouldn't 'start over' without doing a bit of research on the process....otherwise you'll end up pretty much where you currently are.
Good luck.


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## Homemaid

Ok thank you I guess I'll just dump it and buy my vinegar...


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## danno

Homemaid 
Its not difficult! If you want to give it another try buy the alcohol in the form of maybe redwine or beer. Buy a six pack of a dark beer like a stout. Open them and let sit around a few days to get flat. Pour them into a glass or stainless container and add the mother. Then cover with cheese cloth. stir them now and then. Don't try buying cider without reading the label. Unless you are getting it from the guy that made it, it will haves sorbate in it and will not ferment to give you the alcohol needed


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## Homemaid

We make our own cider from our apples. No chemical treatment we are an organic farm.


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## sfisher

Beemandan, can you give more advice on how you make your vinegars. 
Do you make your own mead? 
Isn't the Orleans method were you put a funnel in the top, with a tube going below the mother? Have you tried this method?
How do you know when to start testing for acidity, and how do you test?
I just started my first mother in a quart jar, with red wine and a commercial bought mother. I have a 10 liter oak vinegar barrel that I want to make the vinegar in. I want to try red wine before I jump on mead.
I'm reading vinegar by Diggs (The Vinegar Man) right know, but I still find it easier to ask specific questions.
I have 100 more.


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## beemandan

sfisher said:


> Beemandan, can you give more advice on how you make your vinegars.


 The idea of adding some mechanism allowing me to remove vinegar and add back the makings of a new batch….all without disturbing the mother as is done in the Orleans method…..seems to me to be a bit too much. In fact, sunken mothers aren’t uncommon even in untouched containers. So I just don’t worry about saving them.

Trying to make vinegar from traditional meads or wines with alcohol contents over ten percent have proven difficult to me. In an earlier post I cited two links. The second has pretty much everything one would need to know to start a good quality honey vinegar. The biggest issue with that document is that the author is talking about making larger batches than I typically make. So…if you read the article, you should be able to adjust the information to suit whatever size you plan to make. Maybe the most important piece of information in it is the suggestion that you start with a honey/water mix that has about an 8% potential alcohol content. If fermented to completion, then inoculated with a colony of acetobacters, mine typically result in vinegar with an acid content of 6.5 to 7.5%.

I usually test my vinegars at around 11 months. This is the part overlooked in most books on the subject. While child’s’ play for those with a chemistry background, for me it required dredging up forty year old college chemistry and a bit of present day research. I draw a sample, sinking the mother in the process, and titrate it with NaOH and an indicator solution. With the right tools (including a precision scale) and a bit of old fashioned algebra you can compute the percent acid. I will move the vinegar into another breathable container and after about four weeks, if it begins forming a mother, I’ll let it run a bit longer. If it doesn’t, I’ll retest the acidity and if I get the same basic result as I did earlier, I trust that it has completed its acidification. At that point I dilute with distilled water and retest to achieve a 5% acid vinegar.

Or, if you don’t plan to sell it and start with an 8% potential alcohol must and allow it to ferment to completion and convert the alcohol totally…you should have a high enough acid to be safe….although above 6.5% they have a real bite.
.


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## minz

So how do you keep it when it is vinegar? We make a lot of cider and we make it because most of the apples are small (too many bees) or have a russet. I was thinking of making vinegar this last year when we were running out of storage for the cider (put a couple of gallons in the refer and have room for about 4 or 5 gallon jugs in the freezer). I would think canning would be acidic enough to eat the lid and we are out of freezer space.


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## sfisher

Dan, since you sink the mother when you test, if another doesn't form does that mean that it cant turn the vinegar to water?


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## beemandan

minz said:


> So how do you keep it when it is vinegar?


One way I use is to cover the container with handiwrap to seal it. You can do the same thing with any size glass jar. Also…HDPE food grade buckets are rated for medium acid storage.



Most of mine are moved to their final containers pretty quickly.






sfisher said:


> Dan, since you sink the mother when you test, if another doesn't form does that mean that it cant turn the vinegar to water?


I’m not sure I understand. Mothers sink even in mid acidification for any number of reasons…..and over time a new one will form. I suppose that if a finished container of vinegar were left breathing for an indefinite period of time it would ‘go bad’ in some form or another, as the effects of evaporation would alter its makeup. When I sink my mothers to test my vinegar, I move the vinegar to a new container. It is left to breathe through a filtered opening for about four weeks…surely not long enough to make a significant difference in the underlying mixture.


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## sfisher

I have just read that if you leave the mother in your vinegar with oxygen after all of the alcohol is consumed it will start turning your vinegar to water. So I was wondering if after you go the month without the mother reforming are you safe from that happening. I would guess that even if it does all that you would have to do is cut the oxygen off. I am going to make vinegar in 5 liter oak barrels I am guessing that they would be a poor joice for aging unless they were filled completely to the top. Do you know approximately how long after the alcohol is gone does it start making carbon dioxide and water?


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## danno

beemandan 
you are over the top cool in the subject I love this stuff so keep us updated on this subject


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## sfisher

Beemandan, do you make your own mead? If you do I would like to ask you this question. I have read that a new mead, one that has just fermented and racked, can be hot or gasoline tasting. And that these meads need to age for up to a year to mellow out. Are they safe to make vinegars with when they are that young, or should they be aged first before you make the vinegar. 
Could you make a vinegar with the hot mead, and then age the vinegar for up to a year. Would that mellow it out?

Thanks Steve


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## beemandan

danno said:


> beemandan
> you are over the top cool in the subject I love this stuff so keep us updated on this subject


Very kind of you. Like many other things…when I find something I like doing I tend to talk a lot about it….vinegar being no exception.



sfisher said:


> I have just read that if you leave the mother in your vinegar with oxygen after all of the alcohol is consumed it will start turning your vinegar to water.


I don’t know the process but I’ve read that if a vinegar is allowed to go too long it will ‘spoil’. But…my sense of it is that we are talking about an extended period of time…much longer that four weeks.

I do make meads….just never like them. I keep making them all the same…convinced that one day I’ll discover one I really enjoy. I have a blueberry mead that was bottled earlier this year. A strawberry mead bottled a few weeks ago. An apple cider mead that is still fermenting. And a gallon plus of new season sourwood honey to brew as soon as a fermenter is freed up. When I taste my new meads…as I’m first bottling them…..it is all I can do not to pour them down a drain. After four or five years they seem palatable…not good but palatable. On the other hand I’ve had mead lovers insist that my meads are grand. I think its just the way my taste is tuned (don’t tell anyone but I’m not a big honey fan either). 

As quickly as my vinegar meads have fermented completely I inoculate them and send them on their way to acidification. I probably should try to acidify a five year old mead and see how it turns out but simply have never done so. Funniest thing….I like my vinegars. Go figure.


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## danno

I tried for years to make dry meads. I love dry reds and whites so why not meads. I didn't like any of them. I tried them still and carbonated but they all sucked. We did make vinegar out of many. One day I decided to make a desert mead by sorbating and back sweetening. This was drinkable although I'm still not into a sweet wine of any kind. I made 5 gallons of chocolate mead. Now that was and is interesting. It took a year for the cocoa to settle out in a secondary. A few years ago I made a braggot that hit about 18%. I made it still and its very drinkable but lived in a secondary for about 18 months. I made a blueberry in 2012 on the sweet side and bring out a bottle when we have zinfandel tipe freinds over. Another one to try is joe's ancient orange mead. The recipe is easily found on the web. I tried it years ago but I'm not big a citrus in any alcohol drink and it comes out crazy sweet so I just gave it all away but many love the stuff. I built my home in 2005 and added a 1000 bottle underground wine cellar. Steady 55 deg without heat or cooling


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## beemandan

I’ve sampled blue ribbon contest meads…no go. The only thing I discovered was that the judges seem to like sweet meads. I made meads following the recipes of nationally known meaders. I’ve tried commercial meads. I’ve yet to find one I enjoyed. I’ve fermented the fruit with the honey. I’ve fermented the honey, sulfited, then added the fruit. Still nada. I do hold out some hope for the sourwood honey. As I said, I don’t especially like honey but sourwood is pretty good. I’m hoping that whatever it is in ordinary honey that puts me off is the same thing that makes the meads unenjoyable…and so, it might be that a sourwood mead is the answer. I’ll let you know in a few years.

. I was teaching a meadmaking workshop at the GA Beekeeping Institute last May. I passed around samples of a couple of my meads. One lady in the class was doing the honey judging program. She said that my meads were every bit as good as any of the contest entries. So…I don’t think it’s the meads I make but my taster just isn’t tuned to mead.



danno said:


> I built my home in 2005 and added a 1000 bottle underground wine cellar. Steady 55 deg without heat or cooling


Now that is a worthwhile addition! I may have to expand my honey/vinegar house in the next year or so and have considered adding a cellar for a variety of uses


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## Colino

Hello:
I have an abundance of apples because my bees did such a good job pollinating this year so I thought I would like to try this too. Below is a link to a recipe I found. 
http://www.food.com/recipe/homemade-apple-cider-vinegar-500431


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## danno

Colino said:


> Hello:
> I have an abundance of apples because my bees did such a good job pollinating this year so I thought I would like to try this too. Below is a link to a recipe I found.
> http://www.food.com/recipe/homemade-apple-cider-vinegar-500431[/QUOTE
> I would have to say don't try this at home kids. I would do way more reading. This recipe is wrong


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## beemandan

danno said:


> This recipe is wrong


I'll second this.


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## Colino

Exactly what is wrong with it there are many others online almost identical?:scratch:


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## beemandan

Colino, what your link describes may be something like kombucha. I’ve had a number of folks tell me about it but I must admit I don’t really understand or trust the process.
A properly made vinegar is the product of two different natural process. In the first all of the sugars in the original material are fermented into alcohol. In the second the alcohol is converted to acid by a specific family of bacteria. When you produce a vinegar for consumption you want to choose a mix of ingredients that will result in a high enough acid content to be safe and you want to be sure that both processes run to completion. The recipe you linked doesn’t, as I see it, really seem to provide any specified method for either conversion. It also doesn’t make any effort to assure you that the end product has a high enough acid content to keep it from growing colonies of potentially dangerous bacteria. I may have missed something but it simply doesn’t look safe to me.
Good luck.


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## Rader Sidetrack

This detailed publication from Ohio State University Extension on making cider vinegar follows the "_two step"_ basics that Dan outlined above:

http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/5000/pdf/5346.pdf

It is quite different from the food.com recipe linked earlier. 

.


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## sfisher

Dan I read somewhere that when making vinegar out of mead, you should choice a dry mead. I forgot exactly what it said about it, but it was just better to use dry. What do you think about that, do you use dry and sweet?


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## beemandan

sfisher said:


> do you use dry and sweet?


Yes. Residual sugars seem to complicate the whole process to my thinking. The way I do it....I start with a potential alcohol of 16% and ferment with an 18% champagne yeast to completion. Then I dilute the 'mead' to 8% and start the acidification.


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## Colino

Thanks beemandan I'll do more research. I'll have to check out this Kombucha because there are a lot of recipes I found out there that look like the one I posted.:thumbsup:


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## Supersedeme

*Sweetening Vinegar*

Do you sweeten your vinegars with honey? If so, what ratio do you use?


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## Fishman43

beemandan said:


> Most of mine are moved to their final containers pretty quickly.


Do you pasteurize before bottling? If so to what temp and for how long?


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## sfisher

Thanks again Dan


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## sfisher

Beeman, after reading your post #37 could you recommend a yeast. I'm getting ready to buy my equipment for my first batch. I was going with Lalvin D-47, but now I'm looking at Lalvin EC-1118. What would you recommend?

Thanks Steve


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## beemandan

*Re: Sweetening Vinegar*



Supersedeme said:


> Do you sweeten your vinegars with honey? If so, what ratio do you use?


I have not done this yet but it is on my list of things to try.


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## beemandan

Fishman43 said:


> Do you pasteurize before bottling? If so to what temp and for how long?


I don't pasteurize my vinegar....it seems unnecessary and many folks want a living colony of acetobacters as they are claimed to have some health/digestive benefit.


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## beemandan

sfisher said:


> I was going with Lalvin D-47, but now I'm looking at Lalvin EC-1118. What would you recommend?


When I make vinegars I want all of the sugars fermented.....I mean totally. So I try to be sure that the potential alcohol of my must is less than the alcohol tolerance of the yeast I'm using. I think if you mix up a batch with an 8% potential, either of those yeasts should be fine. Ordinarily I use a champagne yeast...typically with an 18% tolerance. I don't have any brand loyalty when it comes to yeast. I believe I used a Red Star champagne yeast on my last batches.


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## FlowerPlanter

No racking right?

4 weeks for yeast to ferment?

Then how long for the mother?

Braggs ACV has a sediment in the bottom, is it yeast?


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## beemandan

FlowerPlanter said:


> No racking right?
> 
> 4 weeks for yeast to ferment?
> 
> Then how long for the mother?
> 
> Braggs ACV has a sediment in the bottom, is it yeast?


I'd give the initial fermentation 6 weeks. Then test with a hydrometer to be sure that the sugars are totally fermented out.
Then I'd rack it off of the fermenting lees Add the Braggs. You should see a mother beginning to form within 6 weeks. It should remain undisturbed for 10 - 12 months.
The sediment in the bottom of the Braggs is remnants of the mother, I believe.
Good luck.


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## buz

beemandan said:


> I'd give the initial fermentation 6 weeks. Then test with a hydrometer to be sure that the sugars are totally fermented out.
> Then I'd rack it off of the fermenting lees Add the Braggs. You should see a mother beginning to form within 6 weeks. It should remain undisturbed for 10 - 12 months.
> The sediment in the bottom of the Braggs is remnants of the mother, I believe.
> Good luck.


A few Q's for anyone........does your vinegar have the blond color like Braggs or do you have a redish coloration?
I squeeze apples and ferment with honey for good drinking. Found a bottle marked '94 crabby. It was in a champaign bottle and bubbled all the way down. Even the wife liked it. I keep my vinegar operation in another location from the mead/beer projects to avoid contamination. One more Q--how can I test for % acid. We pickle lots of veggies from the garden--they're quite good. Local farmer's marketers indicate regulators specify 5%--I don't know why


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## sfisher

My mead vinegar so far has stayed the blond color.


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## sfisher

Beemandan can you answer this question? I have a mead that I made using 3lbs of honey for a gallon of mead. I did not take a reading of the must, because at the time I didn't know how to use a hydrometer. Anyway I want to make vinegar with this mead and I am afraid that there will still be honey left in it because the yeast I used only goes to about 12 percent. The question is, can I go-ahead and pitch another yeast in there that finish's higher to see if it will use up all the honey, so I end up with a dry mead?


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## buz

Got the results back from the lab--my vinegar is 3.5 % acid. I plan to sell at local farmers market. May sell pickles too. I have redish colored and very blond. Apples/honey/well water ferment and turn over a year's time. The only difference was the original yeast. Go figure.


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## sfisher

Buz I thought it had to be 4% to pickle?


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## buz

Guess I could add water...........lower score is more acid.
Happy,


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## Rader Sidetrack

> lower score is more acid

Perhaps you are thinking of pH instead of percentage? With pH, distilled water is a 7, with increasing acidity as the numbers get closer to 1. Numbers higher than 7 are increasingly alkaline.


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## Fishman43

Beemandan - When you do your initial mead fermentation with the Champaign yeast do you add any acid, yeast nutrient, tannins, or use campden tablets in the brewing process? Or is it just the must and yeast? Thank you


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