I always seem to have trouble getting my wine vinegar to kick off. I usually make cider vinegar every year with no problems and this year have a nice batch of pear wine vinegar going. But for some reason, the red wine just sits there.
I know that the higher alcohol content is an issue, but I've diluted it down, and still nothing.
Any tips?
Thanks,
Pam
Did you inoculate it with a mother? Any sorbate in the wine? What's the sulfite level?
Yes, I inoculated it with a mother, twice. It's a merlot wine that I made myself for the purpose of making vinegar, added 30ppm sulfite after the crush, before adding yeast the next day. Fermented it dry, diluted it and added the mother culture. :(
Huh.. it should work. If you have the mother and a moderately low alcohol level, and oxygen, it should kick off. Maybe dilute more or try a different mother?
Thanks, LB. I'll keep trying.
Gee Pav you make vinegar too? I've been trying to fit this in just haven't been able to find the time.
Hang in there Pam sounds great!
We grew up making everything because we were poor, and, well, you have to use up the harvest somehow. For wine must, we'd often go and collect whatever we could scavenge. Usually, that meant mulberries and black rowanberries. My brothers or dad or other relative would shake the tree and we'd spread large old linen cloths underneath, and then smash everything and keep in demijohns. The good stuff we'd keep for wine, and anything not so good, we'd let turn into vinegar.
I was amazed when we came to the US. There were all these trees growing with usable fruit and nobody seemed interested in picking them. And everyone lived in houses and not apartment flats. That was many years ago now, but I still have a compulsion to go pick fruit trees when I see them in the city.
Vinegar's pretty easy. You just make a thin wine and then let it ferment some more with the mother starter and it'll make a vinegar. Great in salads and for dipping bread.
How are you keeping it?
Whats the temprature?
Are you giving it enough oxygen?
You should dilute it to 6-7 percent alcohol,
Once you get it going you could dilute it less and eventually not at all and by doing so not diluting the wine flavour and have a full bodied vinegar.
I never even dilute my wine. Full bodied Shiraz and or Cabernet with a little mother from previous batch ( 1st batch mother from Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar ). Give it oxygen and 60- 75 deg F. The full bodied wines make a STRONG vinegar.
Temp, Oxygen, and patience
It depends on the mother I guess,
If its already acclimated to high alcohol its fine, If its not you may kill it.
Thanks. I went ahead and diluted it a bit more and it kicked off nicely.
I'm a vinegar maker myself. I ferment fruit juice just to make vinegar out of it. I even steal a half gallon of wort before adding hops when I'm making beer so I can have malt vinegar in the house. I end up giving a lot of it away since I make way more than I can consume myself.
Come to think of it, the first couple of batches were from wine made from welch's. I later added homemade Shiraz. I guess the mother slowly mutated so that it now stands up to fool bodied wines