Fruit Vinegar Recipe

[Atalanta]

We have a preponderance of pawpaws and after watching Bobby's Triple Threat last night, we're going to make pawpaw vinegar. The only problem is we've never made vinegar before. Yeah, I can look online and find "this is the best way to make vinegar" but I figured I'd come to ye olde brewing forum and ask here. Do you have a recipe that works? What environment is best - does it like to be kept warm (like kombucha) or not so fussy. I've made kombucha so I'm a little familiar with fermenting, though it's been a couple years. I have gallon glass jars (from my kombucha days) but depending on how many pounds of extra fruit we have, we may hit the local home-brew place and get larger ones.

 

[Yooper]

Remember that in order to have vinegar, you have to do the alcoholic fermentation first, and you generally want a lower ABV wine to start with. So I'd use your fruit, and consider a fairly low OG. Somewhere to give you a 7%ish wine. You can get that with ale yeast or wine yeast, and wine yeast tends to be really cheap so I'd use that. Once it's dry, and finished fermenting, you can add your mother of vinegar. With pawpaws, you may not even need sugar to get you to 6-7% ABV, so you don't really need a recipe.

When I make cider vinegar (same idea) I will use just straight apples and a wine yeast before adding the mother of vinegar, and while I have no idea how a pawpaw is, it's probably similar. For things like malt vinegar, I use unhopped but boiled and cooled wort and then add the yeast.

You do have to keep it fairly warm, not too warm, but not in the root cellar either. Normally, 65-75 works well.