Vinegar is one of the few things a household can produce indefinitely from waste. Windfall apples, bruised fruit, the ends of bottles, potato peelings, honey water. Left to itself with a bit of encouragement, all of it becomes vinegar, and the culture that does it renews itself forever.
There is one thing it cannot be used for, and it happens to be the use most people making it are imagining.
The limitation, first
That still leaves home-made vinegar genuinely worth making, for the uses in the last section. It just is not a preservation ingredient.
What is actually happening
Two fermentations in sequence, by two different organisms.
First, yeast turns sugar into alcohol. This happens on its own with wild yeast, which is present on fruit skins and in the air.
Then Acetobacter bacteria turn alcohol into acetic acid. These need oxygen, which is the key practical difference: alcohol fermentation wants air kept out, vinegar fermentation wants air let in.
So making vinegar from fruit is a two-stage process, and making it from wine or cider is a one-stage process because the first stage has already been done for you.
No alcohol, no vinegar. A sugar solution that never fermented to alcohol will not become vinegar; it will just go mouldy. That is why every method below either starts with something alcoholic or makes alcohol first.
The mother
The mother of vinegar is a gelatinous, rubbery, greyish disc that forms on the surface: a cellulose mat produced by the Acetobacter as they work. It looks unappealing and it is entirely benign.
It is not required to make vinegar, but it speeds things enormously and makes the result more reliable, so getting hold of one is worth doing.
Where to get one:
- A bottle of unpasteurised, unfiltered cider vinegar with visible sediment. Pour some in and it will start.
- A friend who makes vinegar. They multiply and people give them away.
- Grow your own: leave unpasteurised cider or wine, diluted, open to the air under a cloth, and one will form in a few weeks.
Looking after it: keep it in some vinegar, in a jar, covered with cloth rather than a lid, at room temperature. It needs air and a little alcohol occasionally. It will last indefinitely and grow new layers, which can be separated and given away.
Making it
From wine, cider or beer, which is the easy route:
- Dilute if strong. Acetobacter struggle above roughly 10 to 12% alcohol. Wine wants diluting with about a third water; beer and cider usually do not.
- Pour into a wide vessel. Surface area matters, because the bacteria need air. A wide crock or a large jar is far better than a bottle.
- Add the mother, or a good splash of live unpasteurised vinegar.
- Cover with cloth and secure with a band. Air in, fruit flies out. Never a sealed lid.
- Leave somewhere warm and dark, ideally 20 to 29°C.
- Wait three weeks to three months. Taste occasionally with a clean spoon.
- When it tastes right, bottle it and seal properly. Sealed and away from air, it stops developing.
From fruit or scraps, the two-stage route:
- Fill a jar with fruit, cores, peelings or windfalls.
- Cover with water, and add sugar at roughly one tablespoon per cup of water. The sugar is the yeast's food and is necessary.
- Cover with cloth, stir daily, and keep everything under the water.
- After one to two weeks it will smell alcoholic. That is stage one done.
- Strain out the solids, return the liquid to the jar, add a mother if you have one.
- Cover and leave a further one to three months, until it smells and tastes of vinegar.
- Strain and bottle.
What to make it from
| Source | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Windfall apples, cores and peel | Cider vinegar | The classic British answer. Free every autumn |
| Leftover wine | Wine vinegar | Easiest of all. Dilute first |
| Cider or beer dregs | Cider or malt vinegar | Very reliable |
| Honey and water | Honey vinegar | Excellent, needs the two-stage route |
| Overripe or bruised fruit | Fruit vinegar | Any soft fruit |
| Potato peelings and sugar | Sharp, plain vinegar | Traditional and thrifty |
Apple is the one that matters in Britain: every year there are more windfalls than anyone can eat, and this converts them into something that keeps indefinitely with no fuel at all.
What it is genuinely good for
Given the pickling prohibition, be clear about the real uses. They are not trivial.
Food, where the acidity is flavour rather than safety:
- Dressings, sauces, marinades, chutneys eaten fresh.
- Deglazing, braising, finishing.
- Quick refrigerator pickles eaten within a week or two and kept cold, which do not rely on the vinegar for shelf stability.
- Switchel and shrubs, which are genuinely good drinks and were what field workers drank.
Cleaning, which becomes surprisingly important when shops are shut:
- Descaling kettles, taps and shower heads.
- General surface cleaning, glass, and cutting grease.
- Rinse aid, fabric softener, and lifting stains.
- Deodorising drains and bins.
Other household uses:
- Weed killer on paths, at strength.
- Rinsing hair.
- Preserving eggs, in the pickled sense.
- Feeding to livestock in water, a traditional practice for poultry.