Homemade red wine vinegar

There are some very in depth posts about this a year or two ago. I make all different kinds of vinegars. I have around 20 varieties going right now. It is a long term process and you should expect to wait a few months for your first batch to be ready. Also, just like with cooking wines. The vinegar will only be as good as the ingredients you start with. If you use a corked wine it will be ruined since a corked wine is lousy tasting and also gets that way from a bacterial infection. You don't have to use your best wines, but don't use undrinkable garbage either.

First you need a vinegar "Mother" this is the bacterial culture that turns alcohol into vinegar. An easy cheap way to get one is to buy some "live" unfiltered cider vinegar from a health food store. I think one name is Bragg's cider vinegar. If you can get a "Mother" from someone who has a good one it will be better than starting with a raw vinegar. You can also buy a "Mother" from some wine and homebrew supply stores.

Pour this into a large, 1 gallon or larger, wide mouth jar. Then pour in up to the same amount of wine/alcoholic beverage, never add more wine than you have starter or the vinegar will take forever to process. If possible shake the wine to get a lot of air mixed in before adding. This will help give the bacteria an oxygen boost.

Cover the jar top with a piece of thin cloth such as a bandana, held on with a large rubber band. This will keep out fruit flies, also called vinegar flies, but allow air in. Then stick the jar in a dark place that is around 60-70 degrees and leave it alone for awhile. A month or so. After this you can gently add more wine every week or so.

You don't want to jostle the vinegar because if you do the "Mother" that is growing on top will sink and drown. This slows down the process and can over time cause off tastes from the drowned and dead "Mother". The mother can get very thick, 1, 2, even 3 inches. When my jar starts to get full and also full of mother I take out the mother and squeeze the vinegar out of it over a very large bowl. This is a nasty slimy weird job but the mother is 99% vinegar and the best part to use for starting more vinegar. Some people describe "Mother" from red wine as looking like placenta / afterbirth. A somewhat accurate description.

Every now and then you can pour out a quart or so of vinegar. Filter through first a bandana then if you want a coffee filter. At this point you can either:

Put in a sealed jar and let it sit for at least a month or six, to take off the raw edge. Then filter again and you can use it. This will be a lightly filtered live vinegar.

Or you can put in a mason / ball jar and process at 165 degrees for ten minutes. Then let it sit and age for a month or six to mellow it out. Then filter and use. This will give you a vinegar that is dead and will not age as fast but will be more like commercial vinegar.

You can use any low alcohol beverage such as wine- red, white, desert wines, saki, beer- any decent type but it will only be as good as what you start with, hard cider, fruit wine, champagne, sherry, port, etc.

Commercial vinegar is watered down to about 5% acid, the vinegar you make will have apx. the same acid content as the alcohol content was in your starting liquid. A wine of 11% alcohol will make a vinegar of 11% acidity. You can dilute the vinegar but I use it straight and take allowances in my recipe or use.