r/vinegar

So, after having some success with making kimchi, fermented pickles, and fermented green dilly beans I decided to try my hand at a ginger bug and some homemade soda. I grew my bug for 6 days, adding sugar and ginger every day. It was active, bubbles on top, smelled good, etc.

Then, I made the base for my soda, approx 4c of spring water, 1.25c sugar, and around 3c or so of frozen black cherries. I gently mashed the cherries, covered, and simmered for while. Strained out the solids and poured into a closed vessel which I let cool down to room temperature. Next added in 1/2c of thoroughly mixed and strained ginger bug and the juice from 2 small limes. Mixed everything really well and let it sit on the counter.

Now, it's been 2 days and there isn't any activity at all. No bubbles, nothing. I'm keeping the vessel closed to avoid any airborne contamination and opening it up to burp every 12 hours or so. There is no pressure buildup when I burp it. I've tasted it a couple times and it the flavors are good, but it's sweet, flat, and just not doing anything.

I used to homebrew so I'm being mindful about keeping all the equipment clean and sanitary (minus the iodine baths).

Today I'm planning on adding some more bug to it (once the bug gets back to room temp and active again) and maybe some more sugar? Any suggestions/ideas/tips would be very helpful!

tldr: made soda for the first time and it's still not fermenting two days after adding the bug, help!

Spent most of last summer dumping failed batches down the drain and blaming everything except the actual problem. Batch one went moldy. Batch two smelled like nail polish remover and never got past that stage. Batch three just sort of sat there doing nothing for six weeks before I gave up on it. By batch four I actually slowed down and tried to understand what was going wrong instead of just repeating the same steps and hoping.

The biggest thing I changed was temperature. My kitchen runs cool in the evenings, and I had the jar sitting on a counter near a drafty window. Moved it to the top of the fridge where it gets a little warmth from the motor running, and the mother actually started forming within about ten days. Before that I had been wondering if I just had bad luck or bad apples.

Second thing was the sugar ratio. Most of the tutorials I had watched were pretty vague, something like "a spoonful per cup" with no real explanation. I started weighing things and aiming for about 2% sugar by weight in the initial ferment. That seemed to give the yeast enough to work with without pushing it too sweet and slow.

The cloth cover matters more than I expected too. I had been using a double layer of paper towel held on with a rubber band, which sounds fine but wasn't letting enough air flow through. Switched to a loose-weave cotton square and the difference in activity was noticeable pretty quickly.

Current batch is about eight weeks old, smells genuinely like vinegar, and the mother is this nice opaque disc sitting right at the top. Acidity is still building but it tastes like it's heading somewhere real. If anyone else is stuck in the mold-or-nothing phase, the temperature thing really is worth fixing before anything else.

Being that it is almost the end of summer, like many people, I have a TON of tomatoes coming in, and it’s the time of year for them! (At least in the U.S.)

I was thinking of making some Tomato Vinegar, but I wasn’t sure where to use it other than a dressing. Anybody got ideas?

I have an old bottle of white wine (Corton-Charlemagne, 1970s) that I'd like to turn into vinegar. I'm looking for a compatible white wine vinegar mother to get started. I'm in the Kansas City area and can pick it up. Thanks for any leads!

Started this whole thing with a big bag of apple scraps saved from a fall canning session. Peels, cores, a few bruised chunks. Stuffed them into a wide-mouth jar, covered with water, added a spoonful of sugar, and draped some cheesecloth over the top. Pretty standard beginner setup based on what I'd read around here and elsewhere.

The first batch was a disaster, though I didn't realize it at the time. It smelled off in a way I couldn't quite place, sort of like nail polish remover underneath the apple smell. I bottled it anyway, used it a little, and figured that was just how homemade vinegar tasted. Turns out I had ethyl acetate from a fermentation that ran too warm in my kitchen. Late summer, no AC, the ambient temp was probably pushing 80F or higher some afternoons.

Second attempt I moved the jar to the basement where it stays around 65-68F year round. The difference was immediate and obvious. The alcoholic stage smelled clean and cidery, not solvent-y. When the mother formed it was this nice smooth white disc rather than the stringy, patchy mess from batch one. Converted over the next two months into something genuinely sharp and apple-forward.

A few things I'd tell someone just starting out:

• Temperature really matters more than most guides emphasize. Cool and steady beats warm and fluctuating every time.
• Don't rush the alcohol stage. Give it a full two weeks minimum before you even start hoping for acetification.
• Taste it regularly once the mother appears. The transition from harsh to mellow happens gradually and you can catch it at whatever acidity you prefer.
• Fruit-to-water ratio affects how robust the final product is. I do roughly 50/50 by volume now and get a more pronounced flavor than when I used to go heavier on water.

Currently have a batch going with a mix of apple and a small amount of quince, just to experiment. The quince adds something floral that is genuinely interesting in the early stages. No idea yet if it will carry through to the finished vinegar but I'm keeping notes on it. If anyone else has done mixed fruit batches I'd be curious what combinations worked for you.

Hi po! I'm someone who is trying to lose weight and I see a lot of people who drink apple cider vinegar and since it's pretty expensive, I thought that maybe Tamarind Vinegar would be a great substitute as it's has *almost* the same properties people look for in Apple Cider vinegar.

Should I experiment and drink a shot or is this a bad idea?