Homemade wine vinegar - Update

[wdonovan]

Got the book and the mother. Since the mother was of cider vinegar and I want pretty pure Burgundy vinegar, I made a batch of my own mother. You need 25% mother to start the whole thing rolling and I didn't want that much cider in my finished vinegar so I made a batch, let it go well to completion (1 month) and used that batch as my mother. My homemade mother used 50% Burgundy ($20 Drouhin), 25% water, 25% mother. After a full month, I got a very strong vinegar without much character. Good enough for the first batch of mother. I then used 25% of this, 25% water and 50% Burgundy to make a finished batch. Using the theory that I would have to check progress and prevent it from going to completion to preserve the Burg flavor, I checked it in 8 days. It has a very nice Burgundy vinegar flavor, just a little weak. No alcohol left, it's definitely vinegar. Just a little dilute tasting. I'll let it go to 14 days and taste it again. I think I'm on the right track though. Will update next week.
Walt Donovan

[Kcwhippet]

Why add 25% water? I know a few folks that have made wine vinegar, but they only added wine. They add some water to tone down the acidity when they draw off some of the vinegar for use, or when they bottle some.

[winoweenie]

Have NEVER added anything to my mother other than wine. WW

[wdonovan]

Interesting..... The book that I got said the mix was 50% wine, 25% water, 25% mother and even suggested that if the wine was over ~12-13% alcohol, you should further dilute the mixture. I thought that the little "vinegar critters" (whatever they are) would possibly die from alcohol poisoning if the alc. content was too high. So... I followed the only lead I had. Understand that this book was written by some housewife out on the prairies somewhere. It had only about a postcard's worth of information 'crammed' into 50 or 60 pages.
BTW Where were you guys when I started this project? Now I've got all kinds of Tuesday morning quarterbacks <LOL>.

[Kcwhippet]

I don't know if you've seen this yet, Walt, but check it out.

www.gangofpour.com/diversions/vinegar/vinegar1.html

[wondersofwine]

Good of you to provide that link KC.

[wdonovan]

".....if you've seen this yet, Walt...."

I've seen it now. Thanks. The article had one idea on watering down the wine. Not sure if it's necessary but for the light style Burg vinegar I'm making, I think it'll work well. After I've made a couple batches, I'm dying to try an Amarone vinegar. Just not ready for that yet.

[winoweenie]

The ones I preferred I made from cabs and Zins. Made a Chard batch, but as with the grape itself, found it lacking. WW