(White) Wine Vinegar
Jul. 15th, 2010 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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omnomnomI love making pickles. It's a recently acquired love, since I avoided pickles for the first 24 1/2 years of my life, but something made me try them last year, and they were delicious and crunchy and something I could make at home. Delicious, crunchy, and labor-intensive kitchen work? Sign me up! The only problem is that white wine vinegar makes for the best pickles (in my experience, pickles made with distilled white vinegar are harsh), as in this recipe for pickled wax beans, and white wine vinegar, particularly in the quantities needed for pickling, is expensive.
Enter home-made wine vinegar. I'd read about how home-made wine vinegar was far more delicious than store-bought wine vinegar, and how it was a great, frugal way to make use of any leftover wine, and so I tried making wine vinegar in a few different ways:
(1) leaving a bottle of wine open with a bit of loosely woven cloth over the top to keep flies out. Eventually, vinegar-producing bacteria would grow, right? Sort of like making bread starter doughs from wild yeast.
Result: fail, fail, so much fail. Most wines have sulfites in them, which are meant to prevent the growth of vinegar bacteria. I left a half-full bottle of gewürztraminer open at Thanksgiving last year, and by March, it still hadn't turned into vinegar.
(2) putting sulfite-free wine into a wide-mouthed jar, with a piece of loosely woven cloth over the top to keep flies out. Whole Foods has an aisle of biodynamic wines, and I found the cheapest bottle of sulfite-free red wine (unfortunately, none of the biodynamic white wines were sulfite-free). The wide-mouthed jar allows more air to circulate, which is good for the bacteria (Kim Adams' article).
Result: gross fail. At first, a film formed over the surface of the wine, and I was so excited. "Look! Look!" I called to C. "I've got a mother! My wine is turning to vinegar! I'm Jesus! Except wine to vinegar, not water to wine!" I felt like I was tapping into a primal process of nature, the circle of life: from bad wine to excellent wine vinegar. Then, a month later, I looked at the jar and the film had turned into a small island of greyish-blue mold, which I scooped out and threw in the compost bin. It was just a small island of mold, and surely once its pernicious influence was removed, the mycoderma aceti would surge back and convert all the wine to vinegar. A month later, I looked at the jar again and the entire surface had become a continent of greyish-blue mold. I dumped the mold in the compost, the wine down the drain, and gave up on wine vinegar, Jesus no more.
(3) sterilizing the hell out of the jar and using Bragg's unpasteurized apple cider vinegar. Commentors in a chowhound thread said that unpasteurized cider vinegar had mother in it, the substance that ferments wine and turns it into vinegar. I concluded that the mold in attempt #2 was the result of improperly sterilizing the jar (i.e. I was lazy and washed it with hot water and soap, instead of boiling it) and put the jar in a stock pot with a bunch of water, heated it until boiling, and boiled it for ten minutes, then let it cool in the pot. I poured the still-not-vinegar wine from attempt #1 into the jar, along with a couple splashes of unpasteurized cider vinegar, covered the jar with a loosely-woven piece of cloth, and left the jar in the cabinet over the refrigerator for a month.
Result: VICTORY IS MINE! DELICIOUS WINE VINEGAR THAT HAS THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ORIGINAL WINE! GOOPY, FLOATY MOTHER HANGING OUT IN THE JAR, TRANSFORMING WINE INTO VINEGAR! VICTORY! BOW DOWN TO ME, TINY LITTLE MYCODERMA ACETI, FOR I HAVE HARNESSED YOUR POWERS!
So here's how to make large quantities of cheap wine vinegar -- 5L for $20!
Supplies
Cheapest wine you can find -- if you regularly have wine left over, great, but I never do. The quality of the wine is not an issue here; while some of the flavor of the original wine shows up in the vinegar, most of the nuances are lost, and it would be a shame to waste good, or even okay, wine on this. For the batch I started yesterday, I got 5L of boxed white wine at $10.99 + tax.
Small bottle of Bragg's unpasteurized cider vinegar -- $2.99
Some glass jars -- $5? I had them lying around. If you have a large ceramic or glass jar, you can use that, instead.
Some cheesecloth, or a loosely woven/knit cloth
Some rubber bands
Tongs or canning tongs (optional)
Wire rack (optional)
Put the glass jars in a large pot and cover them with water. Bring the whole thing to a boil and boil it for a while, then pull the jars out with the tongs, being careful not to burn yourself. Set the jars on a rack to let them cool. They can also cool in the pot, but that'll take a lot longer.
Pour wine into jars. Add a splash of cider vinegar. Cover the jar mouths with cloth and secure the cloth with rubber bands. Put the jars somewhere dark and room-temperature; cabinets and closets are great for this.
Wait a couple months, checking in every week or so to make sure your jars are forming mothers, not mold islands, and taste it. When it tastes vinegary enough for you, pour or ladle some off into a glass bottle and pasteurize it by leaving it in a 155*F water bath for 30 minutes. Pasteurization kills the bacteria so that they don't continue to form a mother in the bottle.
Enter home-made wine vinegar. I'd read about how home-made wine vinegar was far more delicious than store-bought wine vinegar, and how it was a great, frugal way to make use of any leftover wine, and so I tried making wine vinegar in a few different ways:
(1) leaving a bottle of wine open with a bit of loosely woven cloth over the top to keep flies out. Eventually, vinegar-producing bacteria would grow, right? Sort of like making bread starter doughs from wild yeast.
Result: fail, fail, so much fail. Most wines have sulfites in them, which are meant to prevent the growth of vinegar bacteria. I left a half-full bottle of gewürztraminer open at Thanksgiving last year, and by March, it still hadn't turned into vinegar.
(2) putting sulfite-free wine into a wide-mouthed jar, with a piece of loosely woven cloth over the top to keep flies out. Whole Foods has an aisle of biodynamic wines, and I found the cheapest bottle of sulfite-free red wine (unfortunately, none of the biodynamic white wines were sulfite-free). The wide-mouthed jar allows more air to circulate, which is good for the bacteria (Kim Adams' article).
Result: gross fail. At first, a film formed over the surface of the wine, and I was so excited. "Look! Look!" I called to C. "I've got a mother! My wine is turning to vinegar! I'm Jesus! Except wine to vinegar, not water to wine!" I felt like I was tapping into a primal process of nature, the circle of life: from bad wine to excellent wine vinegar. Then, a month later, I looked at the jar and the film had turned into a small island of greyish-blue mold, which I scooped out and threw in the compost bin. It was just a small island of mold, and surely once its pernicious influence was removed, the mycoderma aceti would surge back and convert all the wine to vinegar. A month later, I looked at the jar again and the entire surface had become a continent of greyish-blue mold. I dumped the mold in the compost, the wine down the drain, and gave up on wine vinegar, Jesus no more.
(3) sterilizing the hell out of the jar and using Bragg's unpasteurized apple cider vinegar. Commentors in a chowhound thread said that unpasteurized cider vinegar had mother in it, the substance that ferments wine and turns it into vinegar. I concluded that the mold in attempt #2 was the result of improperly sterilizing the jar (i.e. I was lazy and washed it with hot water and soap, instead of boiling it) and put the jar in a stock pot with a bunch of water, heated it until boiling, and boiled it for ten minutes, then let it cool in the pot. I poured the still-not-vinegar wine from attempt #1 into the jar, along with a couple splashes of unpasteurized cider vinegar, covered the jar with a loosely-woven piece of cloth, and left the jar in the cabinet over the refrigerator for a month.
Result: VICTORY IS MINE! DELICIOUS WINE VINEGAR THAT HAS THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ORIGINAL WINE! GOOPY, FLOATY MOTHER HANGING OUT IN THE JAR, TRANSFORMING WINE INTO VINEGAR! VICTORY! BOW DOWN TO ME, TINY LITTLE MYCODERMA ACETI, FOR I HAVE HARNESSED YOUR POWERS!
So here's how to make large quantities of cheap wine vinegar -- 5L for $20!
Supplies
Cheapest wine you can find -- if you regularly have wine left over, great, but I never do. The quality of the wine is not an issue here; while some of the flavor of the original wine shows up in the vinegar, most of the nuances are lost, and it would be a shame to waste good, or even okay, wine on this. For the batch I started yesterday, I got 5L of boxed white wine at $10.99 + tax.
Small bottle of Bragg's unpasteurized cider vinegar -- $2.99
Some glass jars -- $5? I had them lying around. If you have a large ceramic or glass jar, you can use that, instead.
Some cheesecloth, or a loosely woven/knit cloth
Some rubber bands
Tongs or canning tongs (optional)
Wire rack (optional)
Put the glass jars in a large pot and cover them with water. Bring the whole thing to a boil and boil it for a while, then pull the jars out with the tongs, being careful not to burn yourself. Set the jars on a rack to let them cool. They can also cool in the pot, but that'll take a lot longer.
Pour wine into jars. Add a splash of cider vinegar. Cover the jar mouths with cloth and secure the cloth with rubber bands. Put the jars somewhere dark and room-temperature; cabinets and closets are great for this.
Wait a couple months, checking in every week or so to make sure your jars are forming mothers, not mold islands, and taste it. When it tastes vinegary enough for you, pour or ladle some off into a glass bottle and pasteurize it by leaving it in a 155*F water bath for 30 minutes. Pasteurization kills the bacteria so that they don't continue to form a mother in the bottle.