Making vinegar from hard cider?

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cjbalough

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I made a batch of hard cider that has a middle of the toung/mouth sour taste..... Is it salvageable as a cider? If not, can I make it into vinegar? How?

Back story: 5 gallons of cider made from local pasteurized cider. Started late last winter (Feb/March)....racked to secondary after 4 -6 weeks, and hanging there ever since. Airlock has not gone dry, stored at basement room temp so low/ mid 60's for ferment, then gradually as warm as 80's. Carboy has always been covered in a heavy sweatshirt. Fermentis 04 yeast, healthy ferment. Cider never cleared, very pale color but cloudy like a wheat beer ( photo attached)....planned on bottling in May but never found the time...SG is right about 1.000

View attachment 1440809472012.jpg
 
My most successful batches of cider vinegar happened when I just let a wild open fermentation keep going. I had a failure last winter that I decided to turn into vinegar. It didn't want to ferment the first time and its not going to vinegar now either. I am going to dump it.

As far as your cider....it has aged for a while. It might mellow a little more with more age though.
 
Is that middle of the mouth sour a flavor that will fade? Or, is there somthing can add (tannin?) To help? Just adding sugar in the test glass didn't do much.
 
It might be malic acid, and only time will fix that... I had a batch of hard cider recently I didn't keep an eye on it, and it developed a mild "vinegar" mouth feel, so I added some of the mother I had. It now isn't really even sour, sort of full in the mouth in a good way. I will say this cider was above 15% ABV when I changed it's destiny, so it couldn't really get "thin" tasting.
 
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