From scratch: Cider vinegar

Making dried apples ends with a lot of scraps for the compost heap. One of Mr. TellBlast’s relatives suggested I make fruit scrap vinegar and sent this link. Why not make this? I thought. I briefly looked at making my own cider vinegar about 13 years ago, but didn’t because I didn’t get enough information from my Back to Basics book. (But plenty of discussion about hard cider occurred with my homeschool group 😉 In re-reading the blog and the book, the two sources agree about all but the time of fermentation — about one week longer is suggested in the book.

Here’s how my vinegar started:

I used honey and water, having found a pint jar of honey in my basement from 2010. Once I poured the honey water in the jar, I stirred everything and placed fabric and a band on top of the jar.

I looked at the jar about a week later. Since I set it on the top shelf of my dark pantry, I forgot about it and didn’t stir it at all. The volume of fruit decreased a lot. The smell was pleasantly apple-y.

The next day, I thought I ought to remove the apple scraps. Here are two views, before removing the fruit and after.

I just smelled the jar a couple days ago and it was certainly smelling like strong wine. A very interesting and oh so natural process! Today, it smells less like wine and more like vinegar. You can’t see the “mother,” but trust me, a thick layer of fluff is at the bottom of the jar.

I’ve got a couple more weeks of aging before it’ll be ready to use. I’ll keep you updated here, ’cause I know you want to try it yourself once you know how it went for me.

Have you ever made your own vinegar or cider? I’d love to hear about it.