You can even find some vinegar with mother on ebay! But you should be able to get some at any natural food store in the area. It will be a lot cheaper than buying online and paying for shipping.
I haven’t bought anything from any of those links, btw.
I’ve made yogurt before, and top of the fridge covered with a towel is usually warm enough. Made it from nonfat dry milk, which on it’s own makes more of a slimy product- but it’s yogurt!
My dad used top make it from fresh water-buffalo milk.
Crème fraiche is real easy to make and should be in any kitchen. Very versatile. I make it with whole cream and buttermilk.
Yeah, a mason jar and some milk with fresh yogurt in it. I don’t mind beverage like, that’s why I like kefir so much. But powdered milk to make it thicker would be good too, sometimes. I’ll have to figure out a good spot for it. I don’t understand these yogurt makes with their little jars - it’s essentially a slow cooker with temperature control. Make me one of those where I can dial it to 110F and put whatever size jars I want in a little bit of a water bath, and I’m good to go. Maybe I’ll just do it in a cooler, or with a heating pad. After I try the top of the fridge
I’m going to have to give this a try too! Sounds like a good thing to serve at Thanksgiving, last year I baked bread and made nutter, in addition to the turkey, stuffing, etc.
I turned a batch of very mediocre pale ale into a very good malt vinegar a few years ago. I also made a batch of cider just for vinegar. It was truly amazing with crab or shrimp, it made the best West Indies I’ve ever tasted. Right now I have a batch of malt vinegar almost ready to pasteurize and bottle, and I’m about to start batches of red and white wine vinegars.
I fermented the cider vinegar in one of my cornies, I left it in there over a year. Back then I was very ignorant of the dangers of letting acetobacter loose in the brewery, but there’s no way to know how many dozen batches of beer have gone through that particular keg over the past 10 years and yet I’ve never had an infected keg of beer.
I found creme fresh to be very hard. Not so much to do but the “real thing” has to be made with cream that has not been pasteurized. Real hard to find for me. I have gotten it a couple of times from people I know.
The idea is to get whole un-pasturized milk then let the real thick cream settle to the top. Then skim it off and let it sit out at about 100 degrees for twenty four hours. It will get thick.
euge if you used cream and then cultured it with butter milk. That is just sour cream.
Now, butter milk is another story, most butter milk in this country is actually kefir. Real butter milk is the whey left over from churning butter.
Im a real nit picker aint I?
Funny you mention the fridge, I used to make it on the back of an old frige where the heat exchanger grill was. Made a shelf for the to yogurt to sit on the condenser. Worked great.
I’m an old guy, I went to the library and looked at a couple of books on vinegar making and they both said to increase shelf life the vinegar should be heated to 170F for 20 minutes, then cooled quickly before bottling.
I always heard that leaving the mother in there will increase shelf life. As long as it has done all of its work converting alcohol to acid and you remove oxygen by closing the lid, they say.
I like seeing the mother in there.
Oh yeah, No, I have never had the beer vinegar.But we were talking about this before. Not sure if it ws this forum though.
Another thing to remember though, if you make beer vinegar with hops in there you must protect it from the light, just like with beer the vinegar could get skunked.
Anyone watch Swamp People? One scene in a family kitchen there were maybe three one gallon growlers with fermentation locks sitting on the counter. I was like “beer?” but then naw… maybe mead, but now I think it could be vinegar.
Never heard of it - but why put a fermentation lock on vinegar? The acetobacter need the O2 to convert the ethanol to acetic acid, so it seems unlikely.
Probably homebrew of some sort. I have a hard time picturing mead in a show called “swamp people” (what is this show?) but I’d guess it’s some fermented sugar of some sort that will later be “concentrated” through some heating and . . . “selection” of the fumes. Just a guess though.
Traditional balsamic vinegar is produced from the juice of white grapes, boiled down to approximately 30% which is then fermented with a slow aging process which concentrates the flavours. The flavour intensifies over the years, with the vinegar being stored in wooden casks, becoming sweet, viscous and very concentrated.
None of the product may be withdrawn until the end of the minimum aging period of 12 years. At the end of the aging period (12, 18, or 25 years) a small portion is drawn from the smallest cask and each cask is then topped up with the contents of the preceding (next smallest) cask. Freshly reduced cooked must is added to the largest cask and in every subsequent year the drawing and topping up process is repeated. This process where the product is distributed from the oldest cask and then refilled from the next oldest vintage cask is called solera or in perpetuum.
Consortium-sealed Tradizionale balsamic vinegar 100 ml bottles can cost between US$150 and $400 each. :o
So to transfer the mother from the jar of vinegar do I just scoop it out and introduce it to what ever Im making vinegar with. Beer first. Then Im gonna start some peach vinegar.
That episode has been on several times since. They’re fermenting something. If I can do a gallon or two a year then that’d be great. Just about what may consumption would be plus some “gifts” to friends…
Yes, you should be able to scoop it out and move it, or you can siphon the vinegar out and add fresh stuff to be turned. No worries if it breaks or anything, it’ll be fine.
That’s all I did. Mine has been going for several months and I still don’t see any sign of a gelatinous mother on the surface, so maybe it will never show. No matter, the vinegar aroma is very strong.
I’m probably going to turn a batch of beer I have sitting around and see how it goes, Irish stout vinegar
