Given my intense love affair with pickles you may correctly assume that I have a deep affection for all vinegars as well. Red wine, white wine, balsamic, apple cider, rice, malt, you name. Plus, vinegar most likely occurred by chance, kind of like love affairs do! Like, the mutual ones between humans – not so much humans and pickles.
Anyway, I’ve always had a palate geared more toward the sour, bitter, tangy, and savory. Even as a kid I would much prefer a pickle over ice cream or a lemon over a popsicle. I was inspired by Trace’s post about fruit scrap vinegar and decided to try it out.
I made a tiny little batch just to try it out and see if I have any success. I put a few slices of a dumpstered gala apple and maybe a tablespoon of sugar in a wine glass and filled it with water. That’s right, a wine glass. If this works I’m going to have some really classy vinegar. Maybe I’ll even store it in a Swarovski encrusted bottle. Maybe something a little like this:
Yeah, it’ll be like the Paris Hilton of Vinegars (who’s currently shilling ‘her’ cans of RICH Prosecco right now). Except, that giant praying mantis of an heiress is kind of the opposite of classy.
But, I digress. My concoction’s been chilling out in a dark cabinet for about a week now with a cloth on top to keep yucky things out. Chilling indeed. It’s been so cold the past few days and the heater here is such a joke that I’m afraid maybe it hasn’t been warm enough for my little acetobacters. Apparently between 70 and 90 degrees is ideal. It seems to be doing well though. The water is slightly tinted and there appear to be some gelatinous bits (the mother) forming on top. The smell is something like really fruity, sweet white wine.
I think tonight I’ll start a batch of red wine vinegar with some chianti I have. Oh, and there’s some Cristalino in the fridge! I’m totally going to make some champagne vinegar. MMM!
