Don't throw out that old wine...make vinegar!!

In the past year we here at Make Your Own went on a mission to figure out what to do with leftover wine. Aside from dumping it down the drain and reusing the bottle for our next batch of wine there really wasn't too much we could find that would be suitable for 'old' wine.

Then we discovered the art of making your own vinegar! It's literally the simplest thing I've done to date that produces the most flavorful product with little to no effort!

First, you start with some vinegar culture, which is often referred to as the Mother Culture. You can find cultures for just about any vinegar you'd like to make. Here we focus on red and white wine vinegar, but I have seen cultures out there for cider vinegar, malt vinegar, etc.

Once you have your cultures you need to find a wide mouth glass jar. You can use a gallon jar or a smaller pickle type jar, but it has to be wide mouth so the oxygen can convert the wine to vinegar. Once you have your jar you add the culture and your wine. Cover it with cheese cloth and let it sit in a warm area. In as little as four weeks you have converted your wine to vinegar!

When we first started making our own vinegar here in the store we tried many different methods. The instructions that came with the culture we ordered stated that the vinegar had to be placed in an area that remained between 80 and 90 degrees consistently. That made me frown and scratch my head. Where in the heck can you find a place in your home that's consistently 80 to 90 degrees? I ignored that part of the instructions and still yielded great results.

We first tested making the vinegar in gallon jars. Once the conversion was complete I took some home and ate it on salad and used it in many dishes. After we successfully kept that batch going we switched to smaller jars, which yields a much more concentrated vinegar. It's still delicious, but you have to add some water to dilute it. All in all we tried several ways to 'screw the vinegar up', but after everything we did the vinegar kept on brewing with delicious results.

 

In the kit we sell at Make Your Own at Home we provide you with the equipment to make up to 1 gallon each of white and red wine vinegar. Click here to view the kit We include smaller jars for conversion as well as cultures and cheese cloth. A detailed instruction leaflet comes with it as well as some recipes for your 'made-at-home' vinegar! We even include a little booklet with vinegar tips and tricks!

Making your own vinegar is not only easy it's tasty! Add some fancy inexpensive bottles and fresh herbs and you've got some great homemade gifts as well!

Don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date on everything happening at Make Your Own!

Next up: Making soap...easy as 1...2...3