Owly055
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- Joined
- Feb 28, 2014
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6 Months or so ago, I learned that my local microbrewer was throwing away some honey rye that had been in the cooler too long........ It wasn't a popular beer, and had just kept being pushed back and forgotten.
I walked away with two kegs and did the unmentionable (on this forum) with them, and the results were quite nice. I also made some beer vinegar. I bought a bottle of unpasteurized vinegar, and poured it into a jug with a gallon of beer, covered it with a cloth, and "forgot about it"............Well, not really, as it sits right next to my kombucha fermenter, and the sour vinegar smell hits me every time I walk into the room......not unpleasant, just sharp and distinct.
Today I filtered and bottled the vinegar. It's actually quite a decent product. A beautiful pale ale color, an extremely sharp flavor (as it should have), with rich malty overtones, and a hint of the hops........ very understated against the sourness. I ended up with a growler full of filtered crystal clear vinegar, and a quart jar with several nice pellicles (scobys as the kombucha folks call them) sitting in filtered vinegar. In the process of souring, it produced about 5 different pellicles, each of which sank and another formed, and a considerable amount of loose floating pellicle material. I only saved a couple to use for starter on my next vinegar project, and for show and tell. The pellicle.......or scoby, (an acronym for symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast which does NOT apply to this) is composed of microbial cellulose. A byproduct of acetobacter fermentation. The pellicle cellulose is of a quality that there are efforts under weigh to develop medical uses for it.
This is a nice use for beer or wine that has failed to make the grade.. It's a process that takes at least 3 months........more in my case due to low temps.
H.W.
I walked away with two kegs and did the unmentionable (on this forum) with them, and the results were quite nice. I also made some beer vinegar. I bought a bottle of unpasteurized vinegar, and poured it into a jug with a gallon of beer, covered it with a cloth, and "forgot about it"............Well, not really, as it sits right next to my kombucha fermenter, and the sour vinegar smell hits me every time I walk into the room......not unpleasant, just sharp and distinct.
Today I filtered and bottled the vinegar. It's actually quite a decent product. A beautiful pale ale color, an extremely sharp flavor (as it should have), with rich malty overtones, and a hint of the hops........ very understated against the sourness. I ended up with a growler full of filtered crystal clear vinegar, and a quart jar with several nice pellicles (scobys as the kombucha folks call them) sitting in filtered vinegar. In the process of souring, it produced about 5 different pellicles, each of which sank and another formed, and a considerable amount of loose floating pellicle material. I only saved a couple to use for starter on my next vinegar project, and for show and tell. The pellicle.......or scoby, (an acronym for symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast which does NOT apply to this) is composed of microbial cellulose. A byproduct of acetobacter fermentation. The pellicle cellulose is of a quality that there are efforts under weigh to develop medical uses for it.
This is a nice use for beer or wine that has failed to make the grade.. It's a process that takes at least 3 months........more in my case due to low temps.
H.W.
