Let's Make Some Vinegar

[Secale]

I've been wanting to try my hand at making vinegar for a while now. I have looked online for sources of white wine vinegar "mother" cultures.
The prices are reasonable, except for the shipping part of it. So this morning, I woke up with a desire to see if I could find some vinegar with
a "mother" in a local grocer. I like using vinegar for cleaning probably more than using it for pickling. It smells nice and it's the only cleaner that
is safe to consume in moderation of course.

Well the good news is that I did find some. It was located in the natural food aisle where the health food nuts like to get "organic" food items.

They didn't have a white wine vinegar mother. But they had two kinds of apple cider vinegars with mothers. The prices were close.

1. Bragg's, Organic, Apple Cider Vinegar, with The 'Mother', Raw - Unfiltered, 16 fl oz (473 ml).

2. Omega Nutrition, Apple Cider Vinegar with "Mother", 12 fl oz (355 ml).

I chose the Bragg's variety because I could see into the bottle and the mother was clearly visible at the bottom.
The Omega bottle is solid black plastic and you can't see into it. My Bragg's cider vinegar cost me only $5.49 CDN.

Here's a picture that I just took of the bottom of my Bragg's bottle and you can see the mother that has settle there.

Since, I'm not a fan of cider vinegar. My current goal is to see if I can convert some of this cider mother
into a white wine mother by transferring some of it into a white wine. I'll probably have to do a few culture
transfers to get rid of the cider taste and create a pure white wine vinegar. Time will tell how this goes.

I then went to a LCBO liquor store and searched for a small bottle of white wine. After some searching I settled
for a small 375 mL bottle of Jacob's Creek Chardonnay for $6.45 CDN. I'm sure any white wine would do just fine.

[bitter]

Many wines had stabilizers in them to kill the yeast. This will also kill the mother of vinegar in some cases. So good luck!

If you make a wine kit and then avoid adding the stabilizers, it can make pretty nice vinegar did it years ago with both red and white wines. I got the culture form a local wine making store.

B

[Secale]

Many wines had stabilizers in them to kill the yeast. This will also kill the mother of vinegar in some cases. B

Thanks for warning me about this preservative thing. I think I know what you mean by this.
I just checked my wine bottle it has sulfites.

I do know this wine has to be diluted with water before making vinegar and I just figured out how to
defeat this sulfite. Plain old hydrogen peroxide oxidizes sulfites, turning sulfite into hydrogen sulfate.

Here's a link with info on removing sulfites from wine.

http://www.wired.com/2015/06/wine-sulfi ... ve-anyway/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

My wine was made in Australia and in which the maximum legal addition limit in dry wines
is 250 parts per million (ppm) or 250mg per litre of wine. According to the following link:

http://onthegrapevine.blogspot.ca/2009/ ... -wine.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

So this means I have to go shopping again and do some chemistry math before I give this a try.

[Secale]

I just come back from shopping and have now added a full cap of 3% hydrogen peroxide into the bottle.

I'll wait 48 hours before inoculating my 2 jars that I'm preparing now.

I'm sure the sulfite is eventually dissipates once the wine is exposed to the open air anyways.

[raketemensch]

I've used Bragg's to good effect. I have a gallon of vinegar just about to hit 3 months, which is when I'll start using it.

I had made a batch of Kriek beer a little over a year ago, and found a gallon of it in good shape in a fermenter, so soon I'll have some good, tart cherry vinegar to use.

[Secale]

I've used Bragg's to good effect. I have a gallon of vinegar just about to hit 3 months, which is when I'll start using it.

Excellent.

[Tomb]

Funny,I have made many batches of wine and beer and have never had a failure. Decided to make vinegar and had two failures in a row. Tried first with some vinegar from the store that said it contained mother. The second was with a purchased mother. Third time I used the Omega vinegar and it took!

Supposedly, under the right conditions you should get the same percentage acid out as alcohol in. Thus a 12 percent wine could be diluted in half. However, I have a feeling that the process does not need an open jar but just a lid a little off to let it breath. My first trys had so much air that it was evaporating on me. I think that also loses a lot of your acid. (If every time you walk past you get a strong whiff of vinegar then you must be losing it to the air. Now I put a nylon mesh over the top, hold it in place with a rubber band and put something on top of that. Every week or so I slid it off and have sniff. There is never an air tight seal but neither is there a constant flow of air to cause evaporation. It will likely breath at least once a day with the temperature change.

I use the last bottle of wine when bottling a batch to feed the jar. It usually has some sediment and I pour it through an aerator a couple of times and let it set out in the open for a few hours before diluting it.

I hope that I have a jar I can just keep going for years. Funny that it does. It does not have a thick mother, just a film on the surface. Yummy vinegar though.

Tom

[IanD]

...So this means I have to go shopping again and do some chemistry math before I give this a try.

The math doesn't work for me. The couple of times I've done this I've had to add more H2O2 than theoretically indicated. Like 2 or 3 times as much. I think it must oxidise other things in the wine besides just the sulphite.

[Secale]

I poured 150 mL of my wine into two mason type jars and left it there for 48 hours with
couple of daily swirlings to speed up the wine going flat and oxidizing the sulfite present.

Both jar metal lids were punctured with a sharp knife and they were covered with a
little pieces of material coming from a pair of unused clean white coveralls. This is to
keep out the dust and critters that may be attracted to vinegar. (i.e fruit flies, etc.)
The holes are about 1/2 inch in diameter to provide oxygen for this acetobacter
to do it job in oxidizing the alcohol in the wine to acetic acid (aka. vinegar)

I added spring water to diluted the white wine to 50% strength from 12.5% to 6.25%.
Then I added 3 tablespoons of Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar to each jar.
I will be topping these jars with more diluted white wine over time as things progress.

Top of a jar lid with hole taped.

Bottom of a jar lid. Where you see the white coverall material.

Closeup of one jar.

They are incubating in a dark closet now. Hence the liquid seems darker than it really is.