It's time to make some vinegar!

What's that slimy disk in that jar, you ask?

That's the mother. That's what converts alcohol sugars and turns the liquid into vinegar for you!  

Ain't she a beaut'?

I created my first one quite by accident. You see, I had an old bottle of rice wine for cooking. And well, as fate would have it, one night when I reached for it, something was different.  Yep, it had one of those big, fat, slimy looking disks in it! In fact.... it had several of them!  Well, I'm not quite sure that I really knew what to do with it at the time, but boy did I find it fascinating.

Years later, when I WANTED to make vinegar again, I didn't quite know how to get started. So, I bought some Bragg's brand unfiltered vinegar "with the mother" instead. That's when I learned the secret for a quick and easy start to making your own.  Just pour a little of Bragg's into a bit of wine, and it will grow a mother for you. (And it will convert the wine into vinegar, of course!)

Here we have some old white wine that had started to taste bad. Waste not, want not! Vinegar it is! Before long, this mother I dropped in will do the job.

To further the experiment, I have taken some old grapes, added water, and stirred.  (This is how you make white wine vinegar from scratch.) Okay, so I gave it a (hopefully) quick-start by dropping another mother in there. I'm not entirely sure that will help, or if I should have waited a while, but I will find out. 

At any rate, it is fun to be making my own vinegar, finally. When I get enough, I plan to try some tasty infusions with herbs from my garden including basil, thyme, tarragon, oregano, and marjoram. I wonder how cilantro would taste. I hope my dill comes up so I can try that, too.