I first thought about making vinegar back in the early 80s when reading Craig Claibornes column in the Sunday New York Times Magazine. It was an article about how he began using up old dribs and drabs of wine to make vinegar.
He’d kept one culture of vinegar mother going for years, which he swore made a superior vinegar. Unfortunately, one sad day a house sitter, while doing some well meaning tidying up, had tamped the ground-glass lid down on the vinegar vessel so tightly that “he smothered Mother”.
Then, last year in Cowichan I heard the story of a neighbour who had made delicious apple cider vinegar, and spoke with another who infused vinegar with blackberries, and boiling it into a thin syrup, created a superior vinaigrette.
In late summer our front yard apple tree began dropping more fruit than we could keep up on trimming for freezing and drying, and the piles of cores and peels started to look like something I could work with. Even though the bulk of the fruit was cut away, there was still a good amount of juice and flavour in what was left, which was expressed when water and a bit of sugar were added.
Topped with a bit of wine yeast, this fermented into a fairly nice tasting cider. Since cider wasn’t what I was after, this was followed by a few spoonfuls of cloudy vinegar mother from a purchased bottle of organic cider vinegar.
Fascinated by this process, I also began a batch of plum wine/vinegar but didn’t pay enough attention to this ferment. The yeast was old, and the ferment went sideways, making a sizeable addition to the compost. This was followed by more successful batches of blackberry and pear, and in the end, I made 2 – 3 gallons of apple cider vinegar, 1/2 gallon of blackberry (blue ribbon at the Cowichan Exhibition), and one gallon of pear.
The results were outstanding. Each has a unique character and I’ve enjoyed them so much that the year was nearly done before I realized that I haven’t even considered using anything else for months. Naturally, I’m making more this year and in larger quantities.
Most instructions for vinegar suggest that you are done in 5 weeks. It is true that there is at this point a definite vinegar formation, but it’s really not finished. You will be better off making double your needs in the first year, so that you can wait a full year before using it in the future, as there seems to be a significant maturation of the vinegar flavour between 6 and 12 months, at least in my observation.
You will want to aerate the vinegar as it develops, in order to prevent it from developing an acetone finish and other unpleasant aromas. Ideally have an empty vessel into which you can pour the vinegar, and then transfer it back to the original.
After aging last year’s batch for about 4 months, I decanted most of the clear elements of the vinegars from the original aging vessels into smaller jars, setting the filtered sediment aside in a new vessel to sit.
Over time, this sediment settled at the bottom, eventually developing into the mother, floating at the top until disturbed, whereupon it would drift to rest at the bottom; and a beautiful amber and powerfully pungent vinegar, floating above the remaining settled sediment and mother.
As this occurred, I decanted the pure vinegar, and set the remainder aside to see what would happen with the remaining sediment, then set the mother aside, collecting it into a separate jar with enough vinegar to keep it active, until time to use it in the next batch, where it now is, fermenting.
Currently fermenting into cider in 4 gallon containers are 16 gallons of apples (which will be about 8-10 gallons of cider), and one with about 2 gallons of tomatoes, and on the second stage fermentation to vinegar, are eight gallons of apple cider, three of plum, three of rice vinegar, two of blackberry and a gallon jar of mixed plum/Oregon grape (a berry which is not a grape, but grows in clusters, and tastes similar to currant, but with hideously bitter seeds).
Looking for a good supply of large food grade buckets? Stop by your local supermarket and ask at the deli/bread counter if they have any buckets with lids, and you’ll likely find them happy to help. This will also help keep some of our plastics from being discarded too soon.
The “recipe” for making vinegar is simple:
Fruit juice, sugar (optional depending on the sweetness of the fruit), yeast, time.
That’s essentially it.
Strictly speaking, the yeast and the vinegar culture can be obtained from the air, but that’s a trickier process, and at least with yeast, the flavours obtained from them can vary greatly from yeast to yeast. I use a good commercial wine yeast to begin.
Even though the recipe is simple, I’m providing it below with the “steps” showing how a rice vinegar I made this past summer aged over time.
It’s a bit different with rice vinegar, since you use a grain rather than fruit. Also in the making of rice vinegar, there are two methods for the first stage. In the simple method, the rice liquid is sweetened with the addition of sugar. The more complex method uses amylase, an enzyme, which converts the starches in the grain to sugar before the fermentation is begun.
I’ll do another batch in the next few months and will add that to this then, along with a comparison of results.
Here is a lovely video: Brewing Korea’s Hanega Vinegar for 35 Generations from great Big Story & Korean Air
It’s a very short, pretty story, about traditional rice vinegar making in Korea, where they leave the rice in throughout the fermentation…another thing I mean to try in the next batch.
Ingredients
Rice water
- 2 cups Rice
- 6 cups Water
- 9 cups Sugar
- 1 tbsp wine yeast
Instructions
June 26: Making rice vinegar today.
- Soak rice in water for 4 hours. 1:3 ratio.
- In this case, 2 cups rice – 6 cups water Soak for 4 hours.
- Strain the rice to get the liquid and measure the amount you have. Leave this liquid to set overnight before beginning the next step.
June 27
- Making sake to make the vinegar from. Most of the recipes I’ve read online for making rice vinegar at home involve using what I consider to be a grotesque and unnecessary quantity of sugar, so I asked my partner, a vintner for better advice. Turns out that along the way he’s made sake and that normally, one would use amylase enzyme to transform the starches into sugar before adding the yeast. Since I did this on the fly and there is no amylase available locally, I’m going to use sugar, but will follow Tilman’s advice of using only 20% sugar by weight. I ended up with 9 cups of liquid weighing 2kg almost on the nose. That made my task simple. Having weighed 500gr of sugar, I can tell you that it came to 2 cups (which is also 500gr dry measure), so you may easily make your own conversions for larger quantities.
- The liquid was heated to help dissolve the sugar, then the yeast was added once the temperature had cooled to 110º (above that will kill the yeast). Now, wait a week for that to mature into something sake like. It’s nice to have a crock for these things. Will report back to you when it’s time for step 4. Happy thought, I can also now make my own Mirin by splitting the batch after this stage and adding more sugar to the sake. If this works, I’ll have a steady supply of both at a fraction of the cost. I’ll order some amylase soon, or have a friend pick it up in Vancouver and bring it to me. Then will make a second batch. (Obtained)
June 30
- Rice vinegar update. Day 3 of fermentation, malty fragrance, possibly 1% alcohol. 7 more days or so til stage 4, adding the vinegar mother.
July 05
- Rice vinegar update: On Saturday, we decided that the beer yeast we had started with was not strong enough, and the liquid was stagnating. We should have proofed it first… So, we proofed some wine yeast that was in the house, and added that. At the same time, I decided that if I was going to make any, I was going to make a full crock, so I produced another 9 cups of liquid using the same method as in Step One, and added that to the crock. 3 days later it has a nice tang to it. This addition could add 4 days or so at the end of the fermenting process. I’ll check on Sunday however, to see if it’s ready to add the vinegar mother.
July 10
- Rice vinegar update: Finally, it’s time to add the vinegar mother! 5 more weeks till I can expect vinegar. Now, to cover it with plastic film wrap to keep fruit flies out, and then the crock jar lid. I’ll store it in the pantry for the next few weeks so I’m not tempted to poke at it quite so much. It’s going to be a while before this looks beautiful again… I’m very happy to have a nice, healthy vinegar mother to begin with, rather than just wait to let it form on its own. Hopefully that will ensure that the five-week time-line to vinegar is accurate. Just had a quick taste of the rice wine, and it’s very interesting, kind of clean tasting, a little apple-ish which is appropriate, since I’m using an apple cider vinegar mother. Will update again when it looks different, and/or when the taste is significantly changed.
- It’s been about a week since putting the mother into the rice vinegar medium. It tastes like it’s progressing but I just happened to find this rather nice healthy mother in a jar of apple cider vinegar that I was planning to decant. I’m going to add this plug to the ferment to help it along. Since I have it, might as well use it.
- Rice vinegar update: Day 14 post mother. It looks pretty much the same in the crock, but this is what it looks like now in a glass. It has a decidedly sour taste, more lemony almost than vinegary at this point, at least to me. Three more weeks until it’s supposed to be at full strength. In my experience however, vinegars benefit from a much longer aging. My apple cider vinegar is now a year old, and it is much better than it was at 4 months.
August 2
- Rice vinegar update: One more week of the “official” 5 week aging period to make the vinegar. It’s clearing nicely, and is definitely vinegar, but it will probably need an extra couple months of aging to reach full strength.
20 grams of sugar = 2 cups?????????????????????
Thanks for catching that. It should have said 500gr by weight is the same as 2cups/500gr dry measure.
If you use the traditional Chinese Rice Wine Yeast Balls (aka Shanghai Yeast Balls) you do not need to use added sugar to make rice wine, Mirin or Rice Vinegar. Check Amazon or your local Asian market, they are compressed greyish balls of rice starter made with a Koji Aspergillus mold culture. You use soaked steamed rice and break the ball up with the cooled but not cold steamed rice and let sit for a week in a covered plastic or glass container at room temperature. Things go faster if kept warmer in wintertime. The rice is slowly eaten by the Aspergillus Koji mold culture and it turns the rice starch into sugar. The sugars are turned into alcohol by the included yeasts and you get a mildly alcoholic health drink that can be eaten or sipped as is or warmed first in wintertime. This is a traditional drink in Korea, China and even Japan. The longer it sits, the stronger the alcohol. At the beginning, the liquid is very mild and even kids will drink it without effect. For vinegar, the stronger rice wine is used and you will still need to add a vinegar mother to help things along.
BTW Japanese Mirin is made this way using sweet glutinous rice and traditional Japanese Rice Vinegar is made from fermented Mirin like rice wines. Sake lees can also be a source of Koji if they are not sterilized before sale. This is a fun and easy fermentation project that is much easier than winemaking or brewing beer. If you decide you do not want to drink the rice wine, you can still make the vinegar or bottle the rice wine for cooking or making Tare sauces and homemade Teriyaki sauce from scratch. It’s just steamed rice and a rice yeast ball.
Thanks for this! Sorry that I didn’t notice it sooner. I have not yet used them, but will as soon as there is time.
Hi David you seem to be the only one to know his stuff. I ve been looking for the correct rice vinegar recipe and it is not easy to find the one that seems right. Actually this.post is the best I found so far. I m in Finland and I can find most thing bit i like to make things from scratch. Thanks for your post. Irmine
Thank you for your comment. I plan to expand on rice vinegar making technique in the next year. There are multiple methods and each generates a different type. It seemed unlikely that the water from merely soaking the rice would make something worthy, but it really works.
I find this recipe is very satisfying to use relative to others I have tried partly because of its simplicity and quality of product. The work/flavour ratio is always important for me. I don’t mind work, but labour added to a recipe has to really pay off in flavour.
For me, the key to a good vinegar, is aeration, and the length of fermentation (I find that 6 months to a year mellows the flavours). I have seen people recommend using a mechanical aerator, the kind that are used in fish tanks, which I have yet to experiment with, but I like to aerate by simply transferring from the fermentation vessel to another and back again.
Stumbled onto this and am glad I did.
Just started looking into this process so where might one find a my vinegar mother?
Thanks so much!
Any organic apple cider vinegar (ACV) will have some floating in the bottle. It’s the slightly opaque film that you see floating.
Depending on the volume of juice you are working with, you can try to capture a small amount to add to your ferment, or you can simply pour an amount of ACV into it. The more you use, the more it will flavour your ferment. I use ACV the first time making vinegar from any other juice, but the next time, I normally use the same vinegar to make the transformation. ie, Rice vinegar mother for rice vinegar and so on. Exceptions are with pear juice and beer, neither of which have sufficient acid and need to have some added…at least this is the way it was explained to me by another vinegar maker, when I asked about difficulties with these two.
…and you’re welcome! Thank you for the comment.