Making cider vinegar

[piper]

Hi,

In a moment of madness last year I bought a cider kit. I followed the instructions and made 40 pints of a chemical which had a vague cider taste. Rather than chucking it away I thought I'd have a go at making cider vinegar.

The process for turning cider into cider vinegar sounds straightforward enough. The alcohol, in the presence of oxygen, converts to acetic acid - so if you start with 6% alcohol you'd finish up with 6% acetic acid, which I think is quite normal for cider vinegar. I read somewhere it should take about a week per percentage point, so 6 weeks should be enough.

So I used a spare 20lt polypin, left the lid off but covered it with a piece of kitchen roll to keep the flies out, a left it for a couple of months. Unfortunately the result is nothing like the supermarket-bought cider vinegar. Mine is cloudy and doesn't taste very nice, and had a layer of scum on top.

First question: how do I know if it's finished? The SG says 1.000 but the shop bought one says 1.010 - maybe they added a bit of sugar to theirs? I have a vinometer and it said my version still contained 3%, but I also tried it with the shop-bought cider vinegar and that said 3% as well, so I think the vinometer isn't appropriate.

I'm not fully sure of the conversion process and wonder if I can stop it, like using campden tablets? I also wonder how clear it - would finings work?

What do you think?

 

[graysalchemy]

You don't need to kill it off in actual fact from what I have read you want to keep the 'mother of vineger' the cr*p at the bottom so that you can seed another batch again. I have also read that if you use cr*p cider then you will get cr*p vinegar.

You would be best filtering it I think.

Sorry if my post yesterday got your other thread removed.

 

[piper]

Done a bit more research and I think the problem was adding the stabiliser at the end of the fermentation. This interferes with the conversion to acetic acid. Also, vinegar ideally needs very warm conditions - like 29 C. The other thing I'll try is checking the acidity - picked up a home-brew kit for that the other day.

 

[user 1290]

Done a bit more research and I think the problem was adding the stabiliser at the end of the fermentation. This interferes with the conversion to acetic acid. Also, vinegar ideally needs very warm conditions - like 29 C. The other thing I'll try is checking the acidity - picked up a home-brew kit for that the other day.

Use an acid testing kit to compare the acidity of your 'vinegar' to some shop bought stuff of the acidity you're looking for.

The malic acid content of the apples used will add a bit to the % ABV to acidity conversion.

And adding "stabiser" (sulphite?) is a no no.

Use an aquarium pump to get oxygen through it speed up the process.