283306 Sat Feb 18 01:18:19 -0800 2006 9 31 Home Cooking 0 1512068 I read an article in The Art of Eating on making red wine vinegar at home and am thinking about trying it. Does anyone have any recipes, tips or advice for me? Is it worth doing as opposed to just buying a top quality vinegar? What wine works best, and should I blend or use a single varietal? How long does it take? Thanks in advance! Sat Feb 18 01:18:19 -0800 2006 0 farmersdaughter 1 1512078 There are some very in depth posts about this a year or two ago. I make all different kinds of vinegars. I have around 20 varieties going right now. It is a long term process and you should expect to wait a few months for your first batch to be ready. Also, just like with cooking wines. The vinegar will only be as good as the ingredients you start with. If you use a corked wine it will be ruined since a corked wine is lousy tasting and also gets that way from a bacterial infection. You don't have to use your best wines, but don't use undrinkable garbage either. First you need a vinegar "Mother" this is the bacterial culture that turns alcohol into vinegar. An easy cheap way to get one is to buy some "live" unfiltered cider vinegar from a health food store. I think one name is Bragg's cider vinegar. If you can get a "Mother" from someone who has a good one it will be better than starting with a raw vinegar. You can also buy a "Mother" from some wine and homebrew supply stores. Pour this into a large, 1 gallon or larger, wide mouth jar. Then pour in up to the same amount of wine/alcoholic beverage, never add more wine than you have starter or the vinegar will take forever to process. If possible shake the wine to get a lot of air mixed in before adding. This will help give the bacteria an oxygen boost. Cover the jar top with a piece of thin cloth such as a bandana, held on with a large rubber band. This will keep out fruit flies, also called vinegar flies, but allow air in. Then stick the jar in a dark place that is around 60-70 degrees and leave it alone for awhile. A month or so. After this you can gently add more wine every week or so. You don't want to jostle the vinegar because if you do the "Mother" that is growing on top will sink and drown. This slows down the process and can over time cause off tastes from the drowned and dead "Mother". The mother can get very thick, 1, 2, even 3 inches. When my jar starts to get full and also full of mother I take out the mother and squeeze the vinegar out of it over a very large bowl. This is a nasty slimy weird job but the mother is 99% vinegar and the best part to use for starting more vinegar. Some people describe "Mother" from red wine as looking like placenta / afterbirth. A somewhat accurate description. Every now and then you can pour out a quart or so of vinegar. Filter through first a bandana then if you want a coffee filter. At this point you can either: Put in a sealed jar and let it sit for at least a month or six, to take off the raw edge. Then filter again and you can use it. This will be a lightly filtered live vinegar. Or you can put in a mason / ball jar and process at 165 degrees for ten minutes. Then let it sit and age for a month or six to mellow it out. Then filter and use. This will give you a vinegar that is dead and will not age as fast but will be more like commercial vinegar. You can use any low alcohol beverage such as wine- red, white, desert wines, saki, beer- any decent type but it will only be as good as what you start with, hard cider, fruit wine, champagne, sherry, port, etc. Commercial vinegar is watered down to about 5% acid, the vinegar you make will have apx. the same acid content as the alcohol content was in your starting liquid. A wine of 11% alcohol will make a vinegar of 11% acidity. You can dilute the vinegar but I use it straight and take allowances in my recipe or use. Sat Feb 18 11:01:48 -0800 2006 1512068 0 JMF 2 1512079 Oh, I just wanted to add... homemade vinegar is so much better than commercial. Over time you will be able to make vinegar that blows away even the most expensive store bought vinegar. Sat Feb 18 11:04:16 -0800 2006 1512078 0 JMF 2 1512091 We've been making ours for about a year, and find it's much better than store-bought. Started with a purchased mother, but it's been perpetuating ever since. I have one problem/question: For serving or gift-giving, I filter the vinegar into an inexpensive, but attractive bottle with a cork. After a month or two, more mother starts to form in the bottle, and after a while, it's completely clogged. Will boiling before bottling prevent that? Thanks for any advice you can offer. Sat Feb 18 12:42:25 -0800 2006 1512078 0 judybird 3 1512093 Yes, heating the vinegar will kill off the mother and prevent the problem of mother forming. Don't boil it since this will destroy a lot of that flavor. Instead bring the vinegar slowly to 165 degrees, no more or less, in a sealed jar in a water bath for ten minutes as if you were canning it. This will preserve much of the great homemade quality and character. Let the vinegar sit for a month after heat treating to mellow and age then filter and bottle. But if that much mother is forming after bottling then you may be removing the vinegar too soon after adding the last wine or else possibly your temp of your crock may be too cold, for the mother to fully make the wine into vinegar. I have found that my winter made vinegar takes much longer, but tastes better than my summer made vinegar, because my cellar is about 10 degrees cooler in the winter. Again, after removing from the crock I always let the vinegar sit for a few months in a sealed jar before final filtering and putting in a bottle so that the mother has fully used up all the alcohol and so that the vinegar mellows and smooths out. This is whether I heat treated it or it is raw. Sat Feb 18 13:02:19 -0800 2006 1512091 0 JMF 4 1512137 That's a big help. Thanks for sharing your expertise. Sat Feb 18 18:21:42 -0800 2006 1512093 0 judybird 2 3649497 I'm so disappointed - I started some vinegar in January, and we thought it would be ready by March, which it wasn't - it was still "winey." So we reattached the the cheesecloth and put it back up on its shelf. I checked it yesterday, and both the red and white were very very low (evaporation?) had the top layer of mother covered in mold! I reached in and pulled off the top layer and left the rest alone. Is it salvageable? Should I transfer it to a new container, scrub the container out, put it back and add more wine? Should I just pour more wine and and see what happens? Or should I toss it - save the mother and throw out what's in the bottle otherwise? Any advice appreciated. --Lisa Fri May 02 06:49:29 -0700 2008 1512078 166380 ldkelley 1 1512082 I'm make my own and love doing it. The vinegar is excellent. I make mine by collecting the small amounts of leftover wine that I sometimes have, plus the occasional whole bottle that is well past its prime. But I don't buy whole bottles of wine specifically to put in the vinegar. Some people like to constantly add wine to their vinegar barrel; every time they have an unfinished bottle or glass they dump it right in. I don't like doing it that way because then there will always be some unconverted alcohol in there. I work on a batch system where I collect wine in a large glass jug that I keep in the fridge. When that is full, I bleed off an equal volume of vinegar and bottle it, then add the collected wine all at once. That way I can use the bottles whenever I want and leave the barrel alone until the next batch is ready. Conventional wisdom is not to mix different colors, but I throw all dry wines in mine, red, white, rose, and even sparkling. The vinegar is a dark pink instead of a full-blown red vinegar, but the complexity of flavor is great. I bought one of those fancy french oak barrels off the web. They run about $150 including the mother (starter culture of vinegar). Local homebrew shops also carry these. The first batch of vinegar I ever made was in this barrel, so I can't really say how it compares to cheaper options (like just using a big glass jar). But I do really love the oak flavor in the vinegar. It takes about 3 months for the alcohol to be completely converted to acetic acid. However, the vinegar will be a little harsh and angular at that point. Six months is usually recommended before you use it. With the first use in the brand new oak barrel, at six months the oak flavor was too intense, but after one year it mellowed and is now great. I can cycle batches through the barrel much quicker now that the first powerful punch of oak is gone. Oh, and I did season the barrel by coating the inside with a slurry of baking soda, then thoroughly rinsing it with water and citric acid. One of the main decisions you have to face is whether or not to boil the vinegar before you eat it. The vinegar making bacteria are harmless, but I guess there is some risk of other bacteria getting in there that can cause problems. Although the boiled vinegar is still very good, it's not quite as delicious as raw. The bottle that I keep for myself at home, which is consumed only by healthy adults, I keep raw. No problems so far. But when I give bottles of vinegar to friends and family, I boil it first. There are a lot of other tutorials on the web for doing this. And the barrel I bought came with a booklet that, quite frankly, is poorly written and spends more time talking about infusing herbs and such after the vinegar is made, rather than talking about the actual vinegar making process itself. -Nick Sat Feb 18 11:16:58 -0800 2006 1512068 0 nja 1 1512140 Thanks you guys. These tips are invaluable. I think I'm going to give it a try and eventually post my results. Sat Feb 18 19:20:08 -0800 2006 1512068 0 farmersdaughter 1 3648760 I am trying to figure out why my red wine vinegar is still smelling and tasting like acetone Any ideas Thu May 01 19:15:44 -0700 2008 1512068 188824 auntyb