I have been making wine, mead, and beer for a while, and I want to try my hand at making some vinegar. I currently have two 5 gallon batch of mead fermenting; one of them from 15 lb of Orange Blossom honey, the other is made from fresh blueberries and 10 lb of Clover honey. It wouldn’t take much to draw off a gallon of each and make them into vinegar, although it wouldn’t be very much effort to make a new batch of fruit or honey wine just to be made into vinegar.
Has anyone had any good fruit wine based vinegar or any mead vinegar (honey vinegar)? What kind should I make?
Do you know if the passion fruit vinegar was real vinegar made from a passion fruit wine or if it is an extract vinegar using passion fruit and distilled vinegar?
As I understand it, As long as you have suitable levels of alcohol in the wine, the vinegar culture will make proper levels of acidity, assuming complete conversion.
Do not do not do not make vinegar in the same room or area you plan on making beer, wine or mead in ever again. Do not use the same equipment. Do not even think about recipes when alcohol is around.
That said…fruit vinegars are fairly easy to do. Just be sure to note LouiseE’s warning. You want your vinegar to be on the strong side, just to be sure.
Having active vinegar production in the same airspace as alcohol production greatly increases the chance that all of your alcoholic products will turn to vinegar.
You don’t have to purchase a mother. You could leave out small samples of wine and hope that the correct sort of bacteria colonize it but it is simpler to purchase some unpasteurized vinegar from a grocery store and use that culture.
So, what should I make? Honey vinegar? Blueberry vinegar? Or something else entirely.