Making vinegar from beer

Williams 728
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Yeah there's a good bit of other stuff in it, as well. This was from a mixed culture that had turned to vinegar. I guess the acetobacter will get to work, now that I broke the pellicle and aerated the beer.
 
Couldn't find unpasteurized vinegar at the store. There was a promising bottle of something from England, but a quick glance at their website proved it to be pasteurized.
 
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Expanding upon my vinegar learning experience...I have set up two "nano-soleras" using glass containers and small amount of white oak chips. Each container is about a gallon. One solera for Apple Cider Vinegar and one for Malt Vinegar. Each solera consists of three containers: primary (where new fermentables are added), secondary, and tertiary (my terms, derived from brewing, don't know how they reference the various vessels in a real solera...anybody else?)

My plan is to decant thru the system once every three months, leaving a small amount in each container as a "starter", and add fermentables (apple cider or malt vinegar) to primary...so new fermentables with take 6 months to go from primary to secondary. Sample and blend while decanting from each vessel.

Any suggestions?
 
I sacrificed a couple bottles of IPA that were too "estery" (something went wrong: stressed yeast or something even though I kept it cool during fermentation) into a quart mason jar and added a couple ounces of cloudy unfiltered/unpasteurized Heinz apple cider vinegar and covered with a coffee filter and rubber band. I read here that IPA's are not ideal for vinegar, but what the heck. :rockin:
 
railwalker said:
I have a gallon starter. How much Bragg's do I need to pitch to begin the process?
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Don't know technical details of "pitching rates" for acetabacteria, but I used a bottle (12 oz?) to get about a gallon started. I expect a lot less would work. Aceta fermentation is slow so I assume "under pitching" is less of an issue.
 
This is my question as well. How much of the unfiltered cider vinegar to use versus acetobacter's growth rate? If it works slowly, even at whatever amount is " proper", then how much would be the right amount to pitch?
 
Yes, would be useful to know the "pitching rate" for acetabacteria.

Given that beer or wine can be spoiled by just environmental exposure to acetabacteria, obviously only a very small amount is needed to start the process. But those small exposures don't seem to achieve complete fermentation in a reasonable time (a few months) for vinegar production...just enough to create off flavors but not enough to really convert to vinegar.

The 16 fl oz (I verified) bottle I used to a gallon fermemted quickly and completely (very acidic). I suspect that pitch rate is probably significant over pitching.

And then you get into cells per volume like with a yeast slurry (oh boy, another excuse to buy a decent microscope!)

So, the answer likely lies somewhere in between. I think you are safe going with a few oz per gallon...till we discover the difinitive ansawer. Maybe half of what I pitched to be safe since the cell count for a given vinegar is unknown.
 
So, it sounds like maybe 6-8 ounces should be about right? Gotta get the Burton & Cooper's English bitter going when I get paid the 1st. The Cooper's being a 6 gallon brew, I'm going to drain off a gallon for malt vinegar in a 1 1/2 to 2 gallon pail. Just want to try & get a pitch rate for the cider vinegar.
 
jikvbn said:
I thought it might be cool to brew a small batch to turn into malt vinegar. I love the stuff on fish-n-chips! Or just to drizzle on my fries
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I love malt vinegar for fish n chips too. Brewed a Guiness based malt vinegar that is quite nice.
 
Wow, here is a good find. Not only does it cover vinegar production in some detail, but also many other economically significant fermented foods (beer, wine, etc....).

www.fao.org/docrep/x0560e/x0560e00.htm#con

The "Orleans Process" described for vinegar is interesting because unlike the usual process of innoculating a larger volume of fermentables with much smaller quantity of bug, a smaller qauntity of fermentable is added to the end product (live vinegar) repeatedly...essentially feeding and growing the volume of vinegar.

Note that all the info for vinegar (or other fermented food) is not in one section, but included in separate sections by subject. So you have go jump around a lot to read just about vinegar.
 
The link in post #137 confirms what my son's mil told me she uses. But in grams? Why can't some people use more common weights & measures. For their maple vinegar example, they use;
950g maple syrup (33.25ozs)
800g live vinegar (28ozs)
300g dark rum (10.5ozs)
200g water (7ozs)
Minus live vinegar = 1,450g or 50.75ozs
Plus live vinegar = 78.75ozs
A gallon being 128 ounces, they'd be making it mostly cider vinegar if using that. So why would you make a solution of some 90-95% vinegar to make vinegar?
 
Just wanted to let you all know I have a couple mason jars going of ed worts apple wine vinegar, a red and white wine vinegar and a dry stout I made. All have mothers and have a strong vinegar smell.
Ill keep up with this thread.
 
Yeah, & they do kitchen measurements in grams " over there". But if they're going to post it over here, I'd like it if they at least posted in ounces as well. Not like I can't do the math, but it would be courteous.
 
beergolf said:
You do realize that the most common weights and measures in the world is metric?
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Only in uncivilized and barbaric parts of the word where they don't understand that the word football refers to American Football (NFL - National Football League), and that that hideously boring sport the barbarians play with their feet is properly called soccer. :mug:

The problem with the metric system is it's wrong.
Millipedes don't have 1000 legs.
Centipedes don''t have 100 legs.
And water doesn't boil at 100 degrees (it boils at 212 at sea level). !00 degrees is just luke warm, and leads to DMS and infections
That's why good beer is only made in America. :ban:

It's also less acuurate -
You ask your local drug dealer:
" I want an ounce of Mexican red"
vs.
" I want 28.3495 grams of Mexican red". Now he's got to whip out his jewelrs scale and in the time it takes to try to accurately weigh you both get collared.
 
I just think that since many sites are global now, that posters of videos on Youtube, etc should take that into account. The gang on the Cooper's forums always get after me to list conversions in my posts. So turnabout is indeed fair play...
 
Pulled a large mason jar of my Munich Helles (added some local apple cider vinegar) and added it to the vinegar closet. Travelling for the month of July and have a bunch of weddings in August so I should be able to forget about the stuff.
 
Curtis2010 said:
Wow, here is a good find. Not only does it cover vinegar production in some detail, but also many other economically significant fermented foods (beer, wine, etc....).

www.fao.org/docrep/x0560e/x0560e00.htm#con

...
Click to expand...

Cutting up some fresh pineapple recently and remembered the pineapple vinegar from this document. Thought I'd give it a try. I assume that like many sugary fruits that wild yeast live on the exterior of pineapples. So, I pulverized the husk with water in a blender...and in about 24 hours had fermentation activity!

The white foamy layer is CO2 perking up thru the pulp cap.
 
I had to go back to page 11 to find everything after that spammer hit again. Still going to get a batch of Cooper's English bitter going to siphon off a gallon to try some unfiltered cider vinegar in.
 
Went to our local store yesterday and discovered that they actually have that Bragg cider right in my own town! I didn't even bother looking because they usually don't have much unusual stuff. I figured they would have the Heinz stuff and maybe a more local cheap brand.

I have some Belgian Golden Strong Ale that is getting old and starting to lose it's appeal. Maybe I'll take a bunch of that and make a batch of vinegar from it.
 
My son's fiance's mom buys it in grocery stores up around 130th someplace in Cleveland. Gotta get a bottle & see if I can get the mother to settle out? She said it should work fine to make malt vinegar with. It seems to me I saw something about a site or store to actually buy just the mother?
 
unionrdr said:
My son's fiance's mom buys it in grocery stores up around 130th someplace in Cleveland. Gotta get a bottle & see if I can get the mother to settle out? She said it should work fine to make malt vinegar with. It seems to me I saw something about a site or store to actually buy just the mother?
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My understanding is that the mother is actually just cellulose. It will of course likely have acetobacteria on it, but the mother per se is not what's important. Unfiltered/Unpasturized vinegar, mother physically present or not, should be effective in innoculating a new batch.

Case in point I used unfiltered commercial apple cider vinegar as a starter. It had some particulates in the bottom, but no big chunck of mother. Worked great.

You can buy cultures online, IIRC you can even find them on Amazon. They are often referred to as "mothers", but I think technically that's really a common misconception.
 
unionrdr said:
So how much of the unfiltered cider vinegar would you use in a one-gallon batch?
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Almost any amount will suffice if it contains viable bacteria. How much is up to you. I'd probably use half a bottle since I don't use vinegar very often. That would leave me enough to cook with.

You surely wouldn't "need" that much to do the job.
 
unionrdr said:
So how much of the unfiltered cider vinegar would you use in a one-gallon batch?
Click to expand...
We use the vinegar frequently, so I just waited until I had an empty bottle and poured the cloudy dregs into my 1 gallon batch. Couple of weeks in, it already has a nice film covering it.
 
Homercidal said:
Almost any amount will suffice if it contains viable bacteria. How much is up to you. I'd probably use half a bottle since I don't use vinegar very often. That would leave me enough to cook with.

You surely wouldn't "need" that much to do the job.
Click to expand...

Yes, not much is actually necessary. There was a discussion of that a few posts back, but have not found any difinitive info on "pitching rate" for vinegar bugs.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?p=6955304
 

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