It was Supposed to be Apple Cider but....Now Making Vinegar

[Scooter68]

Okay 4 gallons of apple juice from our apple trees. Plans to make it into Hard Cider went south and clearly it's turning into vinegar. Starting SG was 1.052 (6.9% ABV) the off smell began about 2 days in so clearly this is an example of why good sanitation measures even with the fruit itself is so important. I'd been picking apples for several weeks and of course there were fruit flies around the buckets of apples. (About 6 x 5 gallon buckets) While I kept this juice covered from the start, the bacteria was already there but if I had treated the batch K-meta I likely would not be making this post.

SO Next steps ?? The SG is down to 1.012 and there is a head of foam on it and it is covered with a tightly woven Muslin cloth.

Questions now are:
1) How long does it take for the vinegar eels to complete their job?
2) Is the SG still relevant and will the ABV level affect the result.

3) Anyone have experience going through this with a successful completion of Vinegar? We use a LOT of apple cider vinegar so while I am really dissappointed, it's still useful if I can get it completed and stabilized. Next step until I get words of wisdom is to google "Making Apple Cider Vinegar" however since I used yeast I may have created a bit of a problem.. That's the reason for this post - to see if anyone else has gone down this road. If I find any good info I will update with a comment containing what I find. Until then, hope everyone else is successfully making wine and not vinegar.

 

[BigDaveK]

Sorry about your Plan A but Plan B isn't bad.
I just started making vinegar from my wine about a month ago. The starting SG is just about perfect - the acetobacter don't like ABV north of 7%. You might have usable vinegar in a month but 6 months develops a better flavor. Don't use an airlock - oxygen is important in the vinegar making process. Check the pH. Eventually should be less than 3.0.

My oldest batch (5 weeks) has a pH of 2.5 and tastes really good. I'm curious and excited about where it will go. My intention is to use some for cooking and some for drinking vinegar.

Adding yeast is not a problem. It's actually necessary. The acetobacter feed on alcohol which the yeast provide. One of my batches started as a "second" wine with pear wine pulp. I adjusted the the SG to 1.050. When it got close to 1.010 I put in a tablespoon of raw apple cider vinegar to help the process get started. It's developing a "mother" which will make future batches easier.

 

[BernardSmith]

Sorry about your Plan A but Plan B isn't bad.
I just started making vinegar from my wine about a month ago. The starting SG is just about perfect - the acetobacter don't like ABV north of 7%. You might have usable vinegar in a month but 6 months develops a better flavor. Don't use an airlock - oxygen is important in the vinegar making process. Check the pH. Eventually should be less than 3.0.

My oldest batch (5 weeks) has a pH of 2.5 and tastes really good. I'm curious and excited about where it will go. My intention is to use some for cooking and some for drinking vinegar.

Adding yeast is not a problem. It's actually necessary. The acetobacter feed on alcohol which the yeast provide. One of my batches started as a "second" wine with pear wine pulp. I adjusted the the SG to 1.050. When it got close to 1.010 I put in a tablespoon of raw apple cider vinegar to help the process get started. It's developing a "mother" which will make future batches easier.

That mother is what I look for to consider the process "complete". And it can take a few months for the mother to establish itself. If you can smell the vinegar, then I don't know if you need to add any more culture to the batch. Me? I would put it away, forget about it and check on it in another 3 months.