Fruit Vinegar - Mold or Mother forming?

[Aaron Wise]

About 2 weeks ago I started some Peach Vinegar - peach scraps and sugar water.  I let it sit for about a week, stirring it occasionally.  I then strained out the solids, added a bit of mother I have from a bottle of fruit vinegar I had from last year.  3 days later it look like the attached picture.  Is this mold growing, or a mother forming? 

[Stacie Boschma]

Hey Aaron, it doesn't look like mold to me - it actually looks like what happens to beer when it gets a lactobacillus infection.

Personally, I'd let it do its thing and see what happens over the next month or so.  

On Sep 13, 2014 8:56 PM, "Aaron Wise" <aaron...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> About 2 weeks ago I started some Peach Vinegar - peach scraps and sugar water.  I let it sit for about a week, stirring it occasionally.  I then strained out the solids, added a bit of mother I have from a bottle of fruit vinegar I had from last year.  3 days later it look like the attached picture.  Is this mold growing, or a mother forming? 
>
>

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[Aaron Wise]

thanks

[Elizabeth Evans McNabb]

I don't know if it is mold, but it isn't mother.  Mother does not float.  It looks like wispy clouds near the bottom. 

Elizabeth Evans McNabb

On Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 5:05 PM, Aaron Wise <aaron...@gmail.com> wrote:

About 2 weeks ago I started some Peach Vinegar - peach scraps and sugar water.  I let it sit for about a week, stirring it occasionally.  I then strained out the solids, added a bit of mother I have from a bottle of fruit vinegar I had from last year.  3 days later it look like the attached picture.  Is this mold growing, or a mother forming? 

[Stacie Boschma]

For those who are interested in pellicles - the cellulose matrix that some organisms form on the surface of their food source - this thread on soured beers is really fascinating: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/pellicle-photo-collection-174033/

Apparently the bugs and bug communities that form pellicles (kombucha is probably the best known) use them for a number of purposes, from limiting oxygen exposure to simply providing a barrier that competing organisms can't penetrate to colonize their food source. 

I've tried to make vinegar a few times over the years, and only recently got a pellicle to form on a mixture of the dregs from a very old bottle of Bragg's apple cider vinegar and a can of beer. The Mad Fermentationist blog has a good account of vinegar making from beer: http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2010/02/making-maltbeer-vinegar.html

Here's a shot of my vinegar jar. It was originally in the Bragg's bottle, which has a narrow neck, so once the pellicle formed I poured it off into a mason jar for ease of access and more oxygen capacity. The original pellicle dropped from the disturbance, and a new one has formed on the surface. This stuff smells really, really good.

​

--
Stacie Boschma
Decatur, GA

[Aaron Wise]

Is it harmful or helpful to the vinegar? 

[Stacie Boschma]

Helpful - it's the structure that holds the acetobacter community, one side in contact with air, one side in contact with fermentables to oxidize. Apparently an old rule of thumb is that when the mother (pellicle) drops to the bottom, the vinegar is done. If you google around for Vinegar Pots though, it looks to me like the average householder of the past probably tapped vinegar as needed, and the vinegar pot was a recycling unit for wine dregs, small beers, sweet liquids that could convert, and whatever else was around. They were probably not that interested in the condition of the pellicle/mother, as long as the culture was converting waste into vinegar.

Does yours have a vinegar smell? If it smells right, you might put a spoon in and taste it. If it doesn't smell right, pour it out and start over.