Homemade Apple Cider Vinegar

I have spent the last month or so trying to make hard apple cider. It is coming along fairly well. In an effort to use the whole apple I am attempting to make cider vinegar from the scraps. In reading online it says add one cup of sugar to one gallon of water pour over apple waste, let sit for a week. Strain and allow to turn to vinegar. Process should take about a month.

After talking to someone at a local brew shop there would not be enough alcohol with just a cup of sugar per gallon. It was suggested I need to add more sugar and potentially yeast. Has anyone made vinegar? Any ideas if this might be true?

No one?

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*Terence* said:

No one?

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I'm waiting too. I'd like to see more members idea's/experience's on the subject.

Apparently not, Terence. I would like to know others' input as well. How long does it take for the hard cider to be ready?

What does vinegar turn into when it goes bad?

From what I understand

You need to ferment it then add a " mother" of vinegar.By buying a mother or some raw vinegar with mother and adding after brewing up cider..Google sour beer or making vinegar for some good info, Mother Earth news has some good info..

I wonted to try making my own red wine / malt vinegar..By buying the cheapest wine / beer and adding a "mother" to it..

An mead vinegar sounds good..

I love the stuff but have never made it. Looking briefly online I'm seeing things like 4 or 5 apples cover with a cup of water and cup of sugar. I think that like wine or sourdough bread there is enough naturally occurring yeast in the air to do the job but . . . like sourdough you can buy some existing yeast (mother). I don't know if all the medicinal claims for apple cider vinegar are true but I've used it for years to clean my dog's ears. It is great for salads too.

The guy I spoke to at the brew shop said that doing it the way I did (same ways you guys mentioned) does not produce enough alcohol. If you start with 10% alcohol will end with 5% acidity vinegar. Therefore adding 1 cup per gallon will not produce enough alcohol to get vinegar to needed levels to be safe.

According to him adding a mother is fine but needs sufficient amount of alcohol.

Everything I have seen online is consistent with what you posted originally. I have not read anything about it lacking in the amount of alcohol produced.

Sugars turn in to alcohol with fermentation. It is the alcohol that gets converted to acetic acid. It will be fascinating to hear back from you to see what finally works.

Hi Terence,

I haven't made vinegar yet. I have made beer and wine. What you are describing sounds like what in wine making is called a second run. Where you take the pressed must (solids from fermented grapes that is pressed to get the wine out) and add water and sugar to make some bonus wine. There is still a lot of flavor to get from the skins, adding water and sugar to feed the yeast and make alcohol. In the end you get something light like a rose.

Getting back to your question, the ending alcohol content is based on the starting sugar content. That is measured with a hydrometer, either in Brix or gravity. You can determine the final alcohol by the starting brix/gravity and vice versa, if you know the desired alcohol content you can determine how much sugar you need to add/start with. Well, I guess you can determine how much. For example, I just started a batch of apple wine. Apple wine has a higher alcohol content than hard cider so you need to add sugar to kick it up. Wine ends up with 11-13% alcohol vs 4.5-7% for cider so you need to start with a Brix of 20-23*. The apple cider I used had a Brix of 12* so I had to add 6 pounds of white sugar to get it up to 22*. I started at 4# and added until my Brix was where I wanted it. I then check the pH because the yeast I added want the pH to be around 3.3 to be happy. I ended up with a pH of 3.5 (the pH increases as you add sugar) then I added 10 grams of tartaric acid to drop the pH to 3.44. Then I add (pitch) the yeast (Red Star Coates des Blancs) with some yeast nutrients and in a week or so will have some wine at the alcohol level I want. It will be 6-12 months for it to be wine but I expect after the week, bacterial fermentation could turn it into vinegar.

Sorry for for the long story, cider and wine making can be much simpler but we at B&B avoid the simple methods... There are yeasts on the apples and grapes and will ferment naturally given the opportunity. Other cider and wine production adds closer management of what's going on, minimizing naturally occurring yeasts and bacteria (and the potentially random results) and adding produced varieties that yield a more expected result in various environments.

Again, getting back to your original question; if you took your fermented cider and added a bit of "mother" bacterial culture, the bacteria will turn the alcohol into vinegar. So (as I understand things, on my list to do..) you want to get your second run up to the same original sugar level as the cider you started with, let it ferment into the hard cider you made, then add bacteria or let nature and oxygen run its course and you'll have some cider vinegar. I would use some of your hard cider and your second run and see how they differ and what you like.

Hope this helps. Have fun!

Tom

Hm, I wouldn't do it that way. Here is what I'd do:

take a gallon of your finished hard cider. Buy a jar of natural unfiltered apple cider vinegar (there may be a mother growing in it, maybe not), and dump that in to the cider. Put that away in a dark cabinet and forget about it for a long time. It will turn to vinegar. Alternately, you could just buy a pure culture of acetobacter and pitch that in the cider. I know you can buy pure strains of lacto, but I'm not too sure about the acetobacter.

Save the apple scraps for the compost pile, or find a farm that might want them to feed to their pigs or chickens.

I think I might be bad at asking questions 🤔, the responses I have been great yet did not really answer what I was trying to ask. That said I think I may have solved my dilemma. My question is will the remaining sugar left in the scraps produce enough alcohol to get sufficient vinegar? That is at least 5% acetic acid. I added 1 additional cup of sugar per gallon to a secondary batch. Also, the first batch which has been added to jars now has a mother. 😀 I will taste in a few weeks.

If I plug 1lb of sugar to a gallon of water into Beersmith, that puts you at 7.4%ABV assuming you get full attenuation. I honestly don't know what if anything you are getting from the apple pulp. My gut is to say you will get just about nothing. If you just mixed it up with water and filtered it, the leftover sugars may get you somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-2%ABV. Remember that apple juice itself usually yeilds only 5-6%ABV from most juices.

I know nothing about the Apple Cider Vinegar industry, but I'd be inclined to say they are not doing this. I've seen Red/white wine vinegar production before. They start with good wine, which is why I suggested using a bit of your finished cider.

I bottled it last week. It tastes great! The apple flavor is still there and much sweeter than I expected.



Any suggestions as to what the leftover sediment could used for?

What was the final recipe?

When I was a teen, I would add yeast to apple cider and make hard cider. I hid them in the basement of the parsonage (my grandpa was a Methodist minister). Preacher's kids are never innocent (hence the song Son of the Preacher Man).

Parjay said:

What was the final recipe?

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Apple scraps added to distilled water. Let soak for about a week. Strain off liquid, press out as much moisture as possible. Cover with a cloth and let sit in warm dark place until vinegar is at the strength you desire. The ph of mine is about a 3.

Awesome job.

To me, that's the essence of cooking- using scraps that would be discarded and turning them into something special.