How to Make Homemade Vinegar

Published on Thursday, February 7, 2008, by CHOW Video Team / Edit Post

How to Make Homemade Vinegar

Could there be anything more simple? You have leftover wine. You pour it into a jar. You leave it alone. You dress your salad and call it “artisanal.”

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  • Sorry, add Garlic

  • take cheap wine like Carlo Rossi ar $12 a gallon. Put into four separate bottles. All Garlic and oregano and let nature do the rest. Much cheaper than store bought specialty vinegars.

  • You can find the glass jar at Cost Plus World Market.

  • Where can I find a SMALL spigot jar like the one used in this video? Have searched vigorously only to find really BIG ones. Thanks!

  • On a recent holiday to Australia I had the pleasure of dining with the Sicilian family I stayed with. Everything they prepare is fresh. I had the opportunity to listen in on recipe for homemade red wine vinegar.

    I must say that the broken pasta in organic wine is the very way it was described to me.

    So I second Pietro and anyone else who may have mentioned this.

  • Is there any reason you couldn't add a bit of white wine to an already "in progress" vinegar you've started with red wine?

    Appreciate the comment about covering with gauze and rubber bands; I plan to use cheesecloth to keep the flying critters out.

  • I remember my uncle giving away pieces of the "madre" (mother, in Italian) of vinegar to all relatives. The "madre" is that thick thing which creates inside a wine vinegar...kinda scary thing but the vinegar was oh so good!

  • My mother used to make pineapple vinegar. All I really recall is her carefully slicing off the outside of the pineapple and putting it into a jar with water and a cotton hankie over the top. Eventually it looked like a tan jellyfish took over the jar and she would drain off what she needed for a salad. I have tried it but have never managed to develop the "mother" Any ideas?

  • Basically, what's going on is bacterial fermentation turning the alcohol into acetic acid. Don't worry if a gooey blob of jelly forms inside the vinegar; that's the "mother" (short for "mother of vinegar"), a biofilm holding together a colony of the bacteria that cultured the vinegar. Don't serve that in the food, but you can put a chunk of that into any other wine and turn it into vinegar...+READ

    Basically, what's going on is bacterial fermentation turning the alcohol into acetic acid. Don't worry if a gooey blob of jelly forms inside the vinegar; that's the "mother" (short for "mother of vinegar"), a biofilm holding together a colony of the bacteria that cultured the vinegar. Don't serve that in the food, but you can put a chunk of that into any other wine and turn it into vinegar without the long wait.-COLLAPSE

  • I gave this a shot and have a delish jar ready after 2 months. I didn't use organic wine. I'm really impressed with the flavor.

  • Well, you can do better by adding a few bits of broken pasta ( spaghetti, etc) or maybe bread, in the container. It will provide food for the aerobic bacteria ( bacterium aceti )that will produce the volatile acidity which carachterizes vinegar and its pungency.
    You can cover the top of the container with a piece of gauze and firm it around the neck with a rubber band.
    Keep at room temperature...+READ

    Well, you can do better by adding a few bits of broken pasta ( spaghetti, etc) or maybe bread, in the container. It will provide food for the aerobic bacteria ( bacterium aceti )that will produce the volatile acidity which carachterizes vinegar and its pungency.
    You can cover the top of the container with a piece of gauze and firm it around the neck with a rubber band.
    Keep at room temperature and shake it once in awhile.
    But remember: only good wine makes for good vinegar and it should possibly be without sulfites... I know, it's almost impossible but some wines have less than others because of the way they're made. Organic wines should have no added sulfites, only the ones that are somehow produced during fermentation and these are in a "fixed" form so that they are not available to work as anti-oxydants.
    Sulfites, in fact, are oxygen-reducing while bacterium aceti is aerobic ( needs oxygen to live and re-produce).
    And you can use white wine to obtain a white vinegar, which I actually prefer.-COLLAPSE

  • I think I'd love to see a printed version of this.