How much Mother to add to cider to make vinegar

[Ben]

Hi,

We have 600L of cider fermented without so2, tastes quite nice but slightly over oxidized. We are thinking it would make a good cider vinegar test.

We have an 800L IBC that should be perfect leaving enough headspace and a nice warm area to place it.

My understanding is I need to add mother, on the internet you get get 5L of unpasteurized cider with mother, is this the kind of thing I should add, if so how much? Do I need to do a "starter" 

Thanks,
Ben

[Handmade Cider]

Ben,

You can buy a 75cl bottle of Aspalls unpasteurised cider vinegar in supermarkets, I have successfully started 200L batches with one of these and 4 years down the line it is still going, with a yearly removal of 2/3 and a top up of fresh cider.

I leave batches to convert over summer when it is nice and warm.

As with most of these things, the larger the starter the sooner the colony will get established and therefore the job done.

Denis

Denis France   www.handmadecider.co.uk   07590 264804  Company. No. 07241330

White Label – Champion Farmhouse Cider, Bath & West Show 2015.

Spring Surprise - Cider of the Festival Chippenham Camra Beer Festival 2014 - 2016

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[Tim]

Put it somewhere warm, crack the lid open and leave it to nature, no need for a Mother, it will create its own.

 

Tim in Dorset

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[Ben]

Thanks both 

One concern is there will just be loads of film yeast (seems to happen with air), Will there be both film yeast and vinegar mother forming to begin with?

Thanks,
Ben

[Tim]

Film yeast will form first, just stir it back in and then leave well alone.

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[Tim]

This was racked out from the wood about 12 weeks ago, lovely Mother developing without any help.

 

Tim in Dorset

 

From: cider-w...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cider-w...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Ben

Sent: 12 June 2017 13:20
To: Cider Workshop

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[Andrew Lea]

See http://www.cider.org.uk/part6.htm

The amount of mother you start with doesn't really matter. It will need to grow and form its own biofilm anyway.

Here is a picture of a wild mother of mine in a glass jar. It floats on the top of the cider but bits often detach and fall to the bottom as you can see. 

Andrew

Wittenham Hill Cider Portal
www.cider.org.uk

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[Martin campling]

I had a go at making vinegar for the first time and didn’t add any mother. I started one batch of 5 gallons in December and another in February. Both were kept on heat tray. Last week I measured the acidity of the two batches blended together and it only came to 2.7%. I made the measurement twice and cross-checked my methodology on a commercial bottle of vinegar and I seem to have done things correctly.

 

So, it doesn’t seem to have worked. The only thing I can think of is that the cider (6.5% ABV) had a low level of sulphite added some months previously. Maybe this inhibited the growth of the bacteria but I’m surprised that anything happened at all. I certainly didn’t see the mats shown in the photographs.

 

Strange and disappointing.

Martin

[Vince Wakefield]

I used a bottle of unpasteurised cider vinegar to start mine off, now just reuse some of my own for the next batch.

 

Some serious mother develops in my barrels http://www.ruttslanecider.co.uk/cidervinegar.html

 

Vince

 

From: cider-w...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cider-w...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Martin campling

Sent: 17 June 2017 09:53
To: Cider Workshop

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[Andrew Lea]

On 17/06/2017 09:52, Martin campling wrote:
> I had a go at making vinegar for the first time and didn’t add any

> mother. Both were kept on heat tray. Last week I measured the acidity

> of the two batches blended together and it only came to 2.7%. I

> certainly didn’t see the mats shown in the photographs.

I have a hypothesis. The mother is very fragile and will readily sink if
disturbed. Then it needs to re-form, which lengthens the process. If you
use a heat pad under a vessel in an otherwise cold place you will have a
temperature differential from bottom to top and hence constant
convection currents. Hence the mother may never form because of the
continued disturbance.

A vinegar barrel needs to be kept at 20C minimum throughout to work.
Now the warmer weather is here (UK), forget the mat, leave the vessels
undisturbed but with open access to air and see if a mother forms.

Andrew

--
near Oxford, UK

[Martin campling]

On Saturday, June 17, 2017 at 10:36:04 AM UTC+1, Andrew Lea wrote:

I have a hypothesis. The mother is very fragile and will readily sink if
disturbed. Then it needs to re-form, which lengthens the process. If you
use a heat pad under a vessel in an otherwise cold place you will have a
temperature differential from bottom to top and hence constant
convection currents. Hence the mother may never form because of the
continued disturbance.

A vinegar barrel needs to be kept at 20C minimum throughout to work.
Now the warmer weather is here (UK), forget the mat, leave the vessels
undisturbed but with open access to air and see if a mother forms.

I bubbled air though one of the "fermenters" but not the other. This will, of course, not have allowed any gel to form from Acetobacter xylinum in the former but it should have in the latter. My theory was that commercial vinegar-makers do something similar and, presumably, they rely on Acetobacter aceti to do the work so it should work for me. Apparently not so.

So, now that we have some nice weather in the UK (nearly 30C in the south!) I shall open up both batches again to see what happens (and no air bubbles this time). 

Cheers,

    Martin

[Andrew Lea]

There is a big difference between A. xylinum (the strain that forms a "mother") and A. aceti (the strain that's used in large vinegar generators). I have worked with both. 

A xylinum needs peace and quiet and minimal disturbance to form its floating mother which is what keeps the bacteria aloft and with access to air at the surface. 

A aceti grows in agitated suspension in the body of the liquid and needs a constant supply of finely sparged air. By constant I mean that if the air supply fails for even 20 minutes the bacteria may die from lack of oxygen. They become totally dependent on their artificial environment. 

You can't really mix the two approaches. You need to choose one or the other and stick to it. Although xylinum can mutate to aceti and vice versa, in real life you can't easily combine the systems. 

Your safest bet is probably to add a pre existing mother which in current summer temperatures will probably get going quite nicely. 

Hope that helps. 

Andrew 

[Martin campling]

On Saturday, June 17, 2017 at 5:02:14 PM UTC+1, Andrew Lea wrote:

A aceti grows in agitated suspension in the body of the liquid and needs a constant supply of finely sparged air. By constant I mean that if the air supply fails for even 20 minutes the bacteria may die from lack of oxygen. They become totally dependent on their artificial environment. 

You can't really mix the two approaches. ...

Thanks for that Andrew. I only bubbled air through sporadically. No wonder neither bacterium took hold.

I've just bought some cider vinegar with a "mother" in it (£5.49/500ml from Holland & Barrett!). I'll give that a go.

Cheers,

   Martin