Making Red Wine Vinegar

[djrockinsteve]

I started making my own red wine vinegar today. My neighbor gave me a bottle of his brothers vinegar (excellent) so I thought I would share this with everyone.

You may start with a mother of vinegar or vinegar made from the mother as the spores are in the vinegar even after it is finished.

A word of warning. NEVER KEEP VINEGAR NEAR YOUR WINE OR USE THE SAME EQUIPMENT! You will turn your wines into vinegar. If you cross use the same equipment then you need to wash it with bleach to kill the spores. Heat will not necessarily kill the spores. Best use separate utensils.

Mix 1 part vinegar, with 1 part water with 2 parts of red wine. You do not have to use your real good wines, even something that didn't turn out as best as you had hoped. I had some bottles of an experimental blend that was good but didn't knock our socks off so I used that.

Blend the above into a carboy and you must leave air space for the vinegar to breathe. Across the mouth of the carboy I wrapped a nylon stocking and held it in place with a plastic zip tie. You want to keep bugs out but allow air to get in there.

Place it in a dark and warm area away from your wines. I placed my gallon of future vinegar in my attic. It gets very warm but a ridge vent helps to keep it somewhat cooler than the outside air. This way we never go up there and it is 2 floors away from my wine.

Allow it to age several months and sample it. If you like it great you can use it, if not allow it to age longer.

My neighbor gave me a sample of 3 year old vinegar and wow, not like store bought vinegar.

Speaking of store bought vinegar I do not believe you can use that to make vinegar but may be mistaken. If starting from scratch buy a jar of mother of vinegar and use it. If you keep the mother alive by feeding it you can reuse it otherwise you will have to use your home made vinegar. Only difference is mother of vinegar will work faster.

I'll let everyone know as time goes on how it turns out.

 

[timothyg]

Sounds interesting. Before getting into wine making I purchased some Franzia chillable red (never had it before). I had good experiences with BlackBox box wines and didn't know what Franzia was...well Franzia is horrible...

I bottled two 750ml portions of Franzia hoping that this wine will turn into vinegar or something within the next decade or so.

Based off this post I must experiment. I have a 1 gal wine jug that I'll fill with the Franzia, 750ml of water, and 750ml of store bought vinegar. I'll stick it in my attic which is at least 100 degrees during the summer. Thanks for the post and motivation , hopefully something will come out of this sooner then a decade.

 

[deboard]

I've been wondering about this myself. I have some red wine that I made early on that I over sulfited (I used 3/4 tsp for 3 gallons during a racking instead of the recommended amount of 1/8 tsp or less). I didn't notice this until I bottled it and then went back and looked at my notes.

If I tried this with this wine, would I need to let the wine sit open to the air to allow the sulfites to dissipate some?

 

[Arne]

Deboard, looks like you can splash rack it some and mix the mother of vinegar in with it . Just my take on how to do it. You are leaving the top open so you get oxygen in anyway, some of the sulfides should leave there too. Arne.