Preparation for January meeting
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BETSY TRUE
Jul 20, 2018, 10:18:13 AM7/20/18
to Madbees
I have a commitment from Jane Hawley to give a workshop for our January 8th meeting. She will be guiding us to make shrubs, switchels and cordials using our own honey vinegars.
If you want to take part in the workshop you should bring a quart of homemade vinegar and some empty jars. Some time in the next month, members should start making vinegar for the January meeting. It can be very simple to do.
You can use the method mentioned on this site for honey vinegar (unfermented, wild yeast/bacteria) or you can use fermented mead and a vinegar mother. The process is simple, but takes time, several months, so start now.
Homemade Vinegar (C’est possible!) – Emma Frisch
This is my favorite vinegar site and I’ve ordered some honey vinegar mother from them.
Honey Vinegar
One of the oldest types of alcohol is mead, which is wine made from honey. As we know, the first step of making vinegar is making an alcohol, so it is possible to make vinegar using honey.
The following information was pulled from “The Production of Vinegar from Honey,” a book published in 1905 and reposted on Squidoo.
Many of these old-time recipes have become lost or out of print and are not yet widely available, so I am happy to see when someone shares the information from an old resource.
Honey vinegar can be made for the purposes of culinary and medicinal use. Use one part honey to seven or eight parts water, by weight.
What you need:
- Honey and boiling water for the proper ratio to fill your container with some extra headspace above
- Container suitable for fermenting
- Cloth, such as cheesecloth or a flour sack towel
- Bungee cord or twine
1. Mix the honey and water and pour into a clean container.
2. Cover container with cheesecloth or a clean flour sack towel and secure.
3. If you have it available, add a bit of yeast or vinegar. Adding the yeast and/or vinegar helps kick-start the process and get the proper bacteria going, but it is not absolutely necessary.
4. Allow the mixture to sit, undisturbed, in a room that is about 70-80°F until it turns to vinegar. The waiting time will vary greatly, as you are waiting for the proper bacteria to find your honey mixture.
5. Once your honey mixture turns to alcohol and then vinegar, you can strain it, bottle or jar it, and store it indefinitely. (Again, no metal lids touching the vinegar.)
From beesource forum:
01-19-2009, 08:42 AM
Vinegar has to be made from a sugar solution that has been 1) fermented 2) inoculated with acetobacter and 3) exposed to oxygen.
So first you're making mead! Honestly from a cost perspective for me it's hard to justify making vinegar out of honey except for an experiment or novelty; little to no honey character will remain in the vinegar though it probably would be distinctive (differentiable)
from other vinegars.
But if you want to do it, make a must (unfermented mead up of about 12 percent potential alcohol (specific gravity @ 1.090). For example, 2.5 pounds of honey plus water to make a gallon of solution would be about right. Then ferment in a sanitized two-gallon vessel with an airlock for a month or two at room temp until ALL bubbling from the airlock has truly ceased. Then you can either leave it on your patio on a warm day uncovered for a few hours (allowing fruit flies and other insects to dab their nasty bacteria-laden feet into it, inoculating it with acetobacter) or, preferably, use the "mother" from an unpasteurized bottle of quality vinegar you get at the store. You can also purchase mothers from a homebrew shop. They're basically a pellicle, the structure of a mature colony of vinegarmaking organism, that slowly eats alcohol in the presence of oxygen and makes acetic acid out of it (vinegar). Let the mother work the mead in a crock or other vessel covered with cheesecloth to allow oxygen exchange but keep out insects.
But if you want to do it, make a must (unfermented mead up of about 12 percent potential alcohol (specific gravity @ 1.090). For example, 2.5 pounds of honey plus water to make a gallon of solution would be about right. Then ferment in a sanitized two-gallon vessel with an airlock for a month or two at room temp until ALL bubbling from the airlock has truly ceased. Then you can either leave it on your patio on a warm day uncovered for a few hours (allowing fruit flies and other insects to dab their nasty bacteria-laden feet into it, inoculating it with acetobacter) or, preferably, use the "mother" from an unpasteurized bottle of quality vinegar you get at the store. You can also purchase mothers from a homebrew shop. They're basically a pellicle, the structure of a mature colony of vinegarmaking organism, that slowly eats alcohol in the presence of oxygen and makes acetic acid out of it (vinegar). Let the mother work the mead in a crock or other vessel covered with cheesecloth to allow oxygen exchange but keep out insects.
01-29-2009, 02:57 PM
I've been making vinegar from everything that we would otherwise waste (ie drippings from canning pumpkin). I got my yeist from a brewing store and my mother from a health food vinegar. After making a batch to the point of alcohol, I froze the solids and use
bits for the next batch. I do the same with the mother.
I haven't made any with honey, yet. It's not complicated. Since the alcohol stage is anerobic, I put it in a milk jug with a hose through the lid. the other end of the hose is submerged in a glass of water. It lets the gas escape without letting foreign yeists in. Since the vinegar stage is aerobic, I put it in a 2 gallon bucket with a cloth stretched over the mouth to keep fruitflies out. A batch started with yeists and Mother in late October was bottled this week.
I haven't made any with honey, yet. It's not complicated. Since the alcohol stage is anerobic, I put it in a milk jug with a hose through the lid. the other end of the hose is submerged in a glass of water. It lets the gas escape without letting foreign yeists in. Since the vinegar stage is aerobic, I put it in a 2 gallon bucket with a cloth stretched over the mouth to keep fruitflies out. A batch started with yeists and Mother in late October was bottled this week.
BETSY TRUE
Jul 21, 2018, 9:02:46 AM7/21/18
to Madbees
I have ordered a special honey vinegar mother from the
Supreme Vinegar site. My intention is to grow up a volume of vinegar from our own mead. It should take about until October, then I would share some mother and live vinegar with members planning to participate. It works best on mead according to Reginald
Smith, the vinegar mavin at Supreme Vinegar.
My suggestion to members is to grow up a half gallon or gallon of mead by mixing the 1:8 ratio of honey to water and letting it ferment with an airlock until October. Then you can use my honey vinegar starter to make your own vinegar for January.
Please email me if you are interested in this, so I can plan to have enough starter for everyone.
You can use the methods sent earlier, but Reginald Smith thinks converting to mead first is “faster and cleaner”.
I will search for a very wide container.
Hi again. You should give them mother in pieces submerged in some of the raw vinegar the mother was grown in. If you start the vinegar now, you can probably get good vinegar by October and then they can have good vinegar in turn by January. Does this help?
I would recommend converting the honey to mead before adding the raw vinegar. It goes faster and cleaner that way. If you keep the crock warm you can possibly get good vinegar by October if you start now. I don't recommend the porch since vinegar attracts fruit flies and if they get in and multiply it's finished. [My porch is inside so this doesn’t apply}
The starter you get should be pretty potent. Also, if you are going to share it to start new batches it doesn't have to be 100% done (though the more done the better).
Dividing it between jars is not a problem though the canning jar surface area in the opening is relatively small and smaller mothers take more time to ferment. The wider the container the faster it will go. Even a relatively shallow dish with a large surface area can speed things up and that is what I recommend.
--
Reginald Smith, President
Supreme Vinegar LLC
sa...@supremevinegar.com
267-400-1848
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