Monday, September 10, 2012

A Vinegar Making Adventure

 You may remember that last year I decided to try making apple cider vinegar. Well ever since then my pantry has had this rather interesting vinegar smell. I would look at it every so often to check on it but I wasn't sure how to really tell if it was doing well or not. I think it was only supposed to take around 4-6 months but since I was so unsure of how to really check if it was good or not I let it go for 11 months.
 
Lately though as all my cupboard space has been filling up with new canned goods I decided I had better figure out what to do with my vinegar. I got it all out and looked it over. Some looked and smelled horrible but others seemed much more likely candidates for having turned out okay.
 Above is a side photo and below is the photo from above.
 One had some nasty mold on top. (below) it also didn't fizz very well when I combined it with soda. I threw it and a couple of other jars out.

 I tested all of them with baking soda. I felt rather like a crazy scientist with all my fizzing and such.

I did decide to keep 3 jars of vinegar. They fizzed nicely, They smelled like vinegar (though maybe a bit strong) and the one I was brave enough to taste- tasted like vinegar too.
I did strain them all. There was sludge in all of them. I suppose that might be the mother (I am not sure) but I threw it out.

I put all that I saved in clean bottles and am now storing it in the fridge. So far I have only had the guts to take a tiny taste, put about a tablespoon of it in my pancakes and then try treating my canker sore with a little bit.  I will probably get braver. :-)

Have you made vinegar before? As you can probably tell I could use some advice with the whole vinegar adventuring.

I am linking this to Homestead Revival's Homestead Barn Hop

3 comments:

Maria said...

Hi Abbi,

We make vinegar from red wine. Yes, you probably did throw out the mother, but it looks like you did get a good batch. Congrats!! And I know the smell can be strong!!! I haven't made apple cider vinegar, but with all the apples we are picking now, it may be a good time to start.

Abbi said...

Thanks Maria for your comment. It is nice to hear from somebody that has made vinegar before. A lot of things I don't mind experimenting on my own but for this one I sure wouldn't mind having somebody around that knew what they were doing! I think I will try to make some more this year- A lot of apples that we have been working with so far had a lot of worms that we had to cut around so I didn't want to use the waste from them but I think I can get some better ones later.

Rachel E. said...

Abbi,

I just stumbled upon this post. I laughed about your comment on your pantry smelling interesting. Mine does too. To be honest, I haven't the foggiest idea of what I am doing. Mines still has apples in it. It's been a few months. I like the idea of testing it with baking soda. Mine isn't brown though. It's yellowish. I'll have to go back and look at your original post. The good thing about making this by scratch is it's free. I used the cores of organic apples and water from the well. So, if I have to dump it, I won't stress about money lost. I would love to hear about if you have used it.

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