Malt Vinegar Process and Recipes

[burninator]

A few months ago I brewed a dark belgian-style beer with the intention of pulling off a gallon-pre hops for a malt vinegar experiment.

The recipe:
60% pilsner malt
16% Vienna
7% Munich
5.5% Special B
3.6% each Caramunich, Belgian aromatic, and pale wheat

I boiled until I had a gallon of unhopped wort at about SG 1.060. Fermented clean in a jug with US-05. Then I chilled the fermented malt beverage and decanted, roughly, into an Anchor Hocking 1 gallon glass jar. To this I added a quarter cup of unpasteurized apple cider vinegar and an ounce of dark rum (for oak character and a little extra acidity).

 

[burninator]

The first few weeks were uneventful. I'd occasionally pull the lid off and remove the sackcloth to introduce oxygen.

Then, about a month in, and over the course of just a few days, the liquid got cloudy, and then there was growth on the surface.

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[burninator]

Unfortunately, I clumsily bumped the jar, and my baby vinegar mother sank.

Soon, though, a new thicker mother quickly formed.


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Now, two months after adding my culture, I have a big beautiful mother of vinegar. The liquid below has lost the off-putting solvent-like smell it exhibited for several weeks, and is now pungent vinegar and sweet malt.

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[Yooper]

I love making vinegar! I start with a low ABV beer (unhopped or very low hopped), about 4-5% or so, and add the mother that I have. It turns out so great, and I've been happy with it.

I haven't been as successful with red wine vinegar, even after diluting the wine to lower the ABV. It just doesn't have a great vinegar taste, more like smelly socks.

 

[burninator]

I love making vinegar! I start with a low ABV beer (unhopped or very low hopped), about 4-5% or so, and add the mother that I have. It turns out so great, and I've been happy with it.

I haven't been as successful with red wine vinegar, even after diluting the wine to lower the ABV. It just doesn't have a great vinegar taste, more like smelly socks.

Are you using mostly amber to brown beers? I'd be appreciative of any recipes you've found that work especially well. There are precious few available online.

 

[Owly055]

I've made a lot of beer vinegar, but was never too particular about the hops. My beer source was the local microbrewery. When he had beer that was not selling well and getting old, he'd give me a keg, and I'd make vinegar. He'd then use the vinegar as a condiment with the foods he sold.

As with kombucha, the "mother" does NOT make the vinegar, the bacteria do. The "mother" is a byproduct of fermentation, consisting mostly of cellulose..... a pellicle. With vinegar, unlike kombucha, the mother will frequently sink..... not to worry. It makes no difference. I've often had as many as 3 or 4 mothers. I was souring in a cool location and the process took months.

There is a rapid process that involves a column of wood chips with air circulating up through them, and a pump recirculating the beer or whatever back to the top where it continually "irrigates" the chips and runs down. It can produce vinegar in a matter of days, but I have not tried it yet. It might be fun to try this with toasted oak chips.


H.W.

 

[Homercidal]

I tried vinegar once with some Belgian Strong Ale I was dumping. Didn't turn out. I think I needed to feed it more oxygen. I might try again with a different beer and actually read up on the process a bit more. I used nearly a whole bottle of vinegar which was supposed to contain the mother, but nothing really happened, other than it tasted like terrible beer. I don't use vinegar too often, though so it's really not a very useful exercise.

 

[burninator]

I tried vinegar once with some Belgian Strong Ale I was dumping. Didn't turn out. I think I needed to feed it more oxygen. I might try again with a different beer and actually read up on the process a bit more. I used nearly a whole bottle of vinegar which was supposed to contain the mother, but nothing really happened, other than it tasted like terrible beer. I don't use vinegar too often, though so it's really not a very useful exercise.

My first experiment with using beer was a total failure, as well.

I think one critical and difficult part of the process must be degassing and oxygenation. As brewers we condition ourselves and optimize our equipment for restricting oxygen ingress (from glass vessels to siphons). For the first couple of days after chilling and decanting the malt beverage, I'd periodically whisk the liquid to help work CO2 out of solution and oxygenate it. Then, like I said, I continued opening it up and fanning air over the surface for a couple of weeks further.

Wish I could find a spent 1 gallon whiskey barrel on the cheap for future production to aid this process.

 

[Yooper]

I added the mother, and just covered the mason jar with cheesecloth and left it be. It worked great. But I used a very-low-hopped beer.

A good experiment would be just to use the starter wort of your next beer. Decant the spent wort, and add the mother and see how that goes.

 

[Homercidal]

I added the mother, and just covered the mason jar with cheesecloth and left it be. It worked great. But I used a very-low-hopped beer.

A good experiment would be just to use the starter wort of your next beer. Decant the spent wort, and add the mother and see how that goes.

Oh, that's a good suggestion. I don't know when I'm brewing again, but I hope to brew an Oberon Clone in the next week or so. I will be starting a Bell's yeast starter today or tomorrow and I will need a fair amount.

Also curious to see what a wheat beer might turn out like. I can save some wort from before and some after hopping and ferment it out as comparison. I have a few mason jars that might work great for this.

I'll have to hide them in the closet so the wife doesn't complain about my experiments again. She doesn't eat sauerkraut, so she isn't happy when I make a batch and it sits on the counter for a few weeks.

 

[burninator]

I'll have to hide them in the closet so the wife doesn't complain about my experiments again. She doesn't eat sauerkraut, so she isn't happy when I make a batch and it sits on the counter for a few weeks.

Find some place waaay out of the way for this. It's...how should I say...pungent.

I've been mulling future recipes, and there are a few grain bills around HBT that I think would work great using this process.

Sierra Nevada Celebration: I brewed this last year. It definitely has a strong malt backbone, and coming in at about 7%, it should hit the "sweet" spot for acidity, once it's done.

Broken Leg Amber: This one is a staple at my house. It's a bit lighter than the above beer, but the Crystals 40l and 80l could grant it a sweet complexity to balance the acetic acid.

Ode to Arthur Irish Stout: I wonder how the roasted malt would play in a vinegar.

And of course, Orfy's Goblin seems custom made for malt vinegar. The color, the gravity, and the combination of crystal, chocolate, and cara-pils would really play wonderfully in vinegar, I bet.

On a side note, I work down the street from an Irish pub, and they've graciously agreed to hold on to empty Heinz vinegar bottles for me. :rockin:

 

[Homercidal]

Good stuff. Maybe I should make a half batch of Barleywine and dilute it a bit? I've been meaning to fit one of those in soon. I read 8% is a good amount of alcohol.

I've got a few others I want to get to before that, though. Maybe I could simply add vodka to get a higher alcohol content before introducing the mother? Or feed it as it goes along?

 

[burninator]

Went by and got a few vinegar bottles today.

Now the question is whether to dilute my vinegar, and if so, how? I've lost a good bit of volume over the last few weeks as the temperature has risen. Guess there's not much to do but taste and blend in water until it's right.

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[theDREWery]

I don't think I'd dilute at all. With balsamic vinegar, they leave it in barrels for years so that water will evaporate out, concentrating the flavors. I would always prefer a more flavorful vinegar, but if it's too intense for your pallet dillution might be the thing to do.

 

[mattech]

I've got two gallons that have been sitting for about a month. One is a Guinness clone at about 4% ABV, the other is a pale ale malt bill at about 6%. There is no mother forming yet, but the cupboard where they are definitely smells like vinegar. I sniff test them every couple of weeks, but I have no idea when to call them done. I'll start sampling them next month sometime.

 

[burninator]

It's ready. A gallon of wort yielded about 2.5 quarts of vinegar. I added half a cup of water to the mix, which significantly softened the bite and, I think, brought out some more malty and sweet flavors. I'm really happy with these bottles, too.

I refilled the jar with 5 bottles of a brown porter I brewed a really long time ago and forgot about. It had a really nice taste, but it was always a bit thin. I think it'll make a good vinegar.

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[ultravista]

I have a 'dregs' vinegar jar under the sink that gets the last bits of bottles and cans (when I remember). It is a mix of just about everything a beer drinker drinks. It tastes great to me and is evolving as new beer is introduced.

The idea came from a local bar that served 'ass juice', the dregs of every bottle the serve mixed in a large jar. Ass Juice is cheap and popular

 

[burninator]

Good stuff. Maybe I should make a half batch of Barleywine and dilute it a bit? I've been meaning to fit one of those in soon. I read 8% is a good amount of alcohol.

I've got a few others I want to get to before that, though. Maybe I could simply add vodka to get a higher alcohol content before introducing the mother? Or feed it as it goes along?

Sounds about right. I think the big producers shoot for somewhere in the 6% to 8% range. I added a very small amount of dark rum to mine, which boosted the gravity and, maybe, lent it a little oak character.

 

[BigBlue]

I took about a 1/2 gallon of Vienna lager that I was tired of and added about 1/2 cup of Bragg apple cider (with the mother) vinegar to it. I covered the jar with a coffee filter and put it in a closet. At first it smelled like vinegar and now after a month and a half, it doesn't smell so much like vinegar. There also a light colored line forming on the jar around the top of the liquid. Am I just being too impatient or is it ruined. It's my first time to do this.

 

[NeilMac]

It gets smooth and looses its harshness with aging like a fine wine, give it a taste.

 

[BigBlue]

I did taste it and it tasted more like vinegar early on. Rather than dumping it, I'm going to let it go longer and see what happens.