Making Vinegar

Alternate Title: Why does my closet smell funny?

I've spent the last couple of years learning how to preserve foods in a variety of ways. It's been tremendously fun, endlessly creative, and has added some very tasty variety to our menu. My focus seems to go through phases. For a while, I was making marmalade from every variety of citrus I could lay my hands on. Then I picked up a book on pickles and started doing a lot of pickling. The thrift store book on making liqueurs led to extensive experimentation with steeping things in vodka.

After a trip to a u-pick orchard recently, I decided it was high time I learned how to make vinegar. I tried once before, just putting apple scraps in water and letting it sit. It got disgustingly moldy and smelled awful so I composted it. This time, I wisely consulted an expert. Friends at my CSA raved about this book, Wild Fermentation, so I picked it up quite a while ago and have enjoyed the few recipes I've tried from it so far.

With my bags of apples and peaches from the orchard, and some plums from the store, I set about peeling and chopping fruit for a fruity steak & burger sauce recipe to can. As I worked, I put apple peels and cores in one jar and the plum and peach peels in another. A couple of years ago, I scored some square half-gallon jars off craigslist for an awesome price. These are the perfect size for my vinegar-making experiments.

Before I started working on the fruit, I prepared the liquid for each jar. Instead of just using plain water (as in my first attempt), I heated a cup of water and dissolved 1/4 cup of sugar in it. I poured this plus another 3 cups of water into one jar so that I had a quart of sweetened liquid ready for the apple peelings. I repeated this in the other jar for the other fruit scraps.


Here are the jars with liquid and fruit scraps, ready to begin fermenting. They are covered with cheesecloth to prevent dog furs from settling in them as well as to keep any fruit flies away. I put these on the floor in my clothes closet as I didn't want them with my other stored food. (If you brew wine or beer, make sure to keep brewing vinegar in a different area to avoid cross-contamination.) Put your containers in a dark place where they will not be exposed to light.

I stirred the mixture or rocked the container every day. In the first couple of days, the jars took on a nice fruity smell as the scraps began to ferment. By the end of a week, they had a distinctly vinegary scent to them. Note: If black or green mold develops on the surface, discard it all and start over. You can give your vinegar-making a boost by adding some unfiltered apple cider vinegar to the container when you add the fruit scraps initially.


At this point, I strained out the fruit scraps and then returned the liquid to my closet to continue fermenting. The difference between brewing wine and making vinegar is exposure to the air. To increase the aeration, I stir the liquid in the jars every day or so. It takes about two weeks to finish the process before the vinegar is ready. My apple and peach-plum experiments smell pretty strong already and are developing nice flavor; they should be done next week.

Once I realized this was proceeding well, I, of course, had to expand the experiment. Remember, I don't really do moderation well... When I sliced the remaining peaches to freeze, I started a batch of peach vinegar. When I sliced a bunch of apples for a pie, I started another batch of apple vinegar. The closet was getting crowded.

As I mentioned yesterday, I took samples of my prickly pear liqueur to the CSA recently. One of the volunteers recommended I try making prickly pear vinegar as a friend of hers made some that was wonderful. "It's well worth the effort," she told me. So, with my new batch of harvested prickly pear fruit yesterday, I started two batches of vinegar with them.


One is with fresh chopped fruit (right). The other is with the pulp remaining after cooking the fruit long enough to extract the juice for prickly pear lemonade (left).

I hope all of these vinegars turn out tasty. Then I hope I can find enough recipes to use them up. I'm assuming that vinegar will store well. I'm also betting that my friends would not turn down a bit of homemade vinegar if I offered it.


In fact, I took some surplus Asian pears from the CSA this week so I could use them to make vinegar for the next cooking demo. It's scheduled for about 5 or 6 weeks from now, which gives it plenty of time to go through all of its fermentation.