Skip to main content

Making red wine vinegar

Until recently, we used balsamic vinegar all the time in cooking and salad dressings, but when I wanted to buy more, I read the labels, and couldn't find a brand that didn't contain added colours and preservatives, so we've been using organic raw apple cider vinegar instead.

I missed the taste of balsamic vinegar, so I started to look into how to make vinegar.  Vinegar is just another fermented product.  The acidity of vinegar is acetic acid, which is produced from the fermentation of ethanol, which is the alcohol that we like to drink.  That means that any alcoholic drink can be fermented into vinegar (including beer).  Unfortunately balsamic vinegar is made from concentrated grape juice, which just seemed a bit beyond my capabilities at the moment, but I thought that red wine vinegar was at least close, and easier to make.  
the finished vinegar
I vaguely followed the instructions on this blog, except that we don't usually drink much wine, so I couldn't just use leftovers, and I bought some cheap wine instead.  I know I should buy expensive wine to get a nicer vinegar, but for this first experiment I didn't want to waste expensive wine!  I had nearly finished a bottle of organic raw apple cider vinegar, with a nice large 'mother' formed at the bottom of the bottle, so just topped up the bottle with half red wine and half rainwater.  The mother is the bacteria that ferments the alcohol, it grows into a visible mass, which is very useful if you are wanting to use it to inoculate another batch of vinegar.  You can buy vinegar mother, or you can just buy a nice raw vinegar, and use a little of that vinegar to make more.

I re-corked the bottle the left it in the cupboard to ferment.  Several weeks later, it was smelling like vinegar, and a taste test revealed a rich tasty vinegar, which we will use in cooking and salad dressings.

The red wine and the raw organic red wine vinegar

that's the mother floating in the bottom

Have you tried to make your own vinegar?

blog gatheringFrom The Farm Blog HopThe Self Sufficient HomeAcre  Small Footprint Fridays - A sustainable living link-up  Unprocessed Fridays Link-up GMN 

Party Wave Wednesday

Comments

  1. I tried to make pineapple vinegar once using Rhonda's instructions. Hubby was not very keen on the bubbly concoction on the kitchen counter and one day I arrived home to find it in the compost! Your recipe looks do-able. I imagine this would keep the mother alive too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If my husband ever threw something like that out he'd find himself and his stuff in the compost pile.

      Delete
  2. oooh! sounds great. I tried to make kiwi fruit vinegar from scratch, but it didnt work.......(as above!) but this sounds doable! and the colour looks superb. nice work!

    ReplyDelete
  3. We make our own red wine here, so I have plenty to try this out with. Thanks for the information!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I make apple cider vinegar (from juice and from scraps), pineapple vinegar and now it looks like I'll be making red wine vinegar too! I certainly have plenty of mothers floating about. I suppose white wine vinegar would be made the same way... If you'd like check out my blog posts Apple Cider Vinegar {make a mother} http://mossgrownstone.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/apple-cider-vinegar-making-a-mother/, Pineapple Vinegar http://mossgrownstone.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/pineapple-vinegar/, and if you're feeling adventurous and have too many mothers Nata http://mossgrownstone.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/nata/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. thanks for the links, wow you really have quite a vinegar collection! I think white whine vinegar is the same recipe, but I haven't tried it.

      Delete
  5. That's a great idea, I will try making this for sure. It's amazing how much you can make yourself when you actually think about it. I guess it's worth finding wine that doesn't have too many additives either.
    Jacqui

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yes good point! I just chose cheap wine to see if it worked, now I need to find some good quality additive-free wine for future vinegars :)

      Delete
  6. Thanks for the comments, glad I could offer some inspiration :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. This is cool! I never knew the yuck bit at the bottom of the vinegar was a 'mother' that I could put to good use. I've always chucked it out! I'll have to keep it next time.

    ReplyDelete
  8. How cool! We don't usually use much balsamic, but this is a great idea for Christmas presents!

    I'd love for you to share this over at Homemade Mondays: http://beingfrugalbychoice.blogspot.com/2013/07/homemade-mondays-week-36.html

    ReplyDelete
  9. This is brilliant Farmer Liz. I never knew about the 'mother' at the bottom and this is fantastic advice/news. I love your pictures, that bottle of red wine vinegar is exceptional. Well done! Merryn@merrynsmenu

    ReplyDelete
  10. Making a red wine is not a tough kind of stuff and the ingredients that are used in it can be easily available in the market.

    ReplyDelete
  11. You make it sound so easy. I'm gonna have to try it. Thanks for sharing on the HomeAcre Hop. I've chosen this post as one of my features. Please come back and join us tomorrow and grab your button: http://everythinghomewithcarol.com/the-self-sufficient-homeacre-hop-7/

    ReplyDelete
  12. We've made homemade vinegar from cheap beer.
    I want to try making some of my herbal vinegars with the homemade vinegar soon. We use a lot of vinegar around here!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks, I appreciate all your comments, suggestions and questions, but I don't always get time to reply right away. If you need me to reply personally to a question, please leave your email address in the comment or in your profile, or email me directly on eight.acres.liz at gmail.com

Popular posts from this blog

The new Eight Acres website is live!

Very soon this blogspot address will automatically redirect to the new Eight Acres site, but in the meantime, you can check it out here .  You will find all my soaps, ebooks and beeswax/honey products there, as well as the blog (needs a tidy up, but its all there!).  I will be gradually updating all my social media links and updating and sharing blog posts over the next few months.  I'm very excited to share this new website with you!

Chicken tractor guest post

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about chickens, soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post!  New soap website and shop opening soon.... Tanya from Lovely Greens invited me to write a guest post on chicken tractors for her blog.  I can't believe how many page views I get for chicken tractors, they seem to be a real area of interest and I hope that the information on my blog has helped people.  I find that when I use something everyday, I forget the details that other people may not be aware of, so in this post for Tanya, I tried to just write everything I could think of that I haven't covered in previous posts.  I tried to explain everything we do and why, so that people in other locations and situations can figure out how best to use chicken tractors with their own chickens. The dogs like to hang out behind the chicken tractors and eat chicken poo.  Dogs are gross! If you want to read more about chicken tractor

How to make soap with beer (and tallow)

I may  have mentioned this before.... soap making is addictive!  Once you start, you just want to keep making more soap.  And not the same soap, you want to try all sorts of different soaps.  I made the mistake of joining a facebook group called Saponification Nation  and now my facebook newsfeed is full of glorious soaps, in all colours and shapes, which makes it even harder to resist the urge to experiment.  One soap that kept popping up a few weeks ago was soap made with beer. I generally prefer not to use ingredients just for the sake of it, I like to know that they are adding something to the properties of the finished soap.   As you know, I don't like to use artificial ingredients either (colours or fragrances).   When I read about beer in soap I found out that beer adds sugar to the mixture, which increases lather.  I use tallow in my soap, which has limited lather, so anything that adds lather could improve the soap.  It also contributes a tan or brown colour to