How To Make Your Own Homemade Vinegar
At its simplest, making vinegar is as easy as taking any beverage that contains ethanol, a.k.a. alcohol (beer, wine, and hard cider) or sugar (fruit juice or just plain-old sugar water) in a clean, wide-mouthed glass or stainless steel container in a dark place. The magic behind this transformation is acetic acid bacteria, which is ubiquitous in nature and in unpasteurized, fermented foods. Give acetic acid bacteria a solution of 5.5 to 7 percent ethanol in water, plenty of oxygen, comfortable temperatures, and darkness, and they will soon give you vinegar.
Doing this, however, will leave you with a vinegar that most of the time will have, shall we say, an undesirable taste and aroma. Your best bet is to add a “starter” with bacteria that have been proven to make a tasty end product, and that will out-compete the wild ones. An ordinary bottle of unfiltered, unpasteurized vinegar such as Bragg apple cider vinegar will do, or you can get fancy and order vinegar starters or “cultures” from winemaking supply houses. These will come in different flavors, such as red wine, white wine, cider, malt, and mead, and any of them will make a tasty vinegar from your liquid of choice, though the final flavors will vary a little. Once you’ve made your first batch of homemade vinegar, you can just use some of that to start future batches.
Simple Wine or Malt Vinegar
Use up the last of your party wine, or that last can of beer nobody wants, to make wine or malt vinegar.
Ingredients:
1 part unfiltered vinegar, and
EITHER
2 parts good wine (wine vinegar is only as good as the wine it started from), preferably without added sulfites, and 1 part water
OR
3 parts good beer, ale, lager, you name it, without preservatives
Directions:
Combine the vinegar with your wine and water, or with the…
