So with the success of my first vinegar a rose wine vinegar I decided I’d try making a fruit vinegar. Raspberries were on sale recently and raspberry vinaigrettes are delicious so that made my decision easy. Because I recently refreshed my 1.5 year old grape yeast water I decided I’d speed the first fermentation up by inoculating the raspberries with some about 2 tbsp of the grape yeast water. So into a jar went the two containers of raspberries. In a ratio of 500 g of fruit to 66 g of sugar, added sugar and enough water to cover the fruit. You want to use a jar that will allow the fruit to rise quite a bit as they ferment. I didn’t do this and lost a fair amount of the raspberry water initially until I transferred half of the raspberries and water into a new jar.
Next, swirl this daily until the fruit is no longer floating and bubbling, this indicates that the first fermentation is complete. Another indication that this first stage is complete is that the water is clear. Apparently for apple vinegar the water will never be clear so you cannot use that indicator as a sign of the completion of this stage.
The fruit solids are strained out and now the jar of raspberry wine is left to spontaneously start the second fermentation of ethanol to acetic acid. This is an aerobic fermentation so you must allow the water to be exposed to air for this to occur. I covered the jar with gauze kept in place by a rubber band. The Acetobacter needed to ferment is naturally in the fruit so it is already there in the raspberry wine so this should start on its own. If I had enough vinegar mother I could speed this up by placing the mother into this jar, however, I don’t have a mature vinegar mother yet so I’ll have to wait and see if this second fermentation will start on its own.
Knowing how high to make the ABV in order to get a vinegar strength you’re after is important. I think an ABV of 5% will end up as a 4% vinegar so knowing how much sugar in grams per 100ml is important as you can then work out the potential ABV. I also believe retaining a little alcohol of around 0.5% ABV in the final vinegar helps balance out the taste. That’s something for next time!
Without a hydrometer one can’t accurately work out the final ABV however 17g sugar/Litre will produce an ABV potential of 1%. So for 5% ABV you’re looking at 85g sugar per litre or 8.5% sugar.
The only way to know for sure is to make a must and measure it with a hydrometer. Everything else is an educated guess to put you in the ballpark. So while it’s impossible to know without measuring equipment we can do things for greater accuracy. One way around this is to buy pure fruit juice which will give you the sugar content. Many fruit juices will ferment to about 5% alcohol (give or take) if no water or sugar is added so suspending a little fruit in water (yeast water style) isn’t going to add so much sugar to completely take you out of the ballpark if you go down the water + sugar + fruit path. You can either ignore it and accept it might be 0.5 or 1% higher abv if you accurately measure the water and sugar added or reduce the sugar a little to compensate. Again, it won’t be accurate but won’t make a huge difference. However it is important for any accuracy at all to know how much water you are starting off with and how much sugar you’re adding. The fruit will up it a bit and add flavour. Without going down the hydrometer route I think the best way is to buy a pure fruit juice which will tell you exactly how much sugar you start off with.
This pure raspberry fruit juice has 6.3g of sugar per 100 ml. To get 5% abv you need 8.5g sugar per 100 ml so if you start off with the pure fruit juice all you need to do is add the difference in sugar.
So this is 500ml and has 6.3g of sugar per 100ml. You need 8.5g of sugar per 100 ml. A difference of almost 2g. So that’s 2g extra for every 100ml and this is 500ml. So starting with this pure fruit juice you wouldn’t add any water but add 10g of sugar.
That’s why Yeast Water, some fruit suspended in what is mainly water, has very little alcohol in it.
My pleasure Benny. If you get into this more then a hydrometer is the way to go. However if you dont want to invest in one you can still make an excellent homemade fruit juice vinegar with some educated guesswork which will get you close to an approximated ABV. You arent selling it so whats 1% here or there? You dont want a very acidic vinegar and i think 4-5% is a good range in which case pure fruit juice perhaps with a little sugar is the way to go.
Here’s my raspberry vinegar today. The vinegar mother was very slow to develop and because I ran out of my first batch I added a tsp or so of apple cider vinegar to inoculate it with some Acetobacter to get the second fermentation going on May 25/22. Today it is smelling nicely tart and has a healthy looking mother on the surface. You’ll recall that the vinegar mother is a celluloid byproduct of the conversion of ethanol into acetic acid by the Acetobacter bacteria. I have not been swirling the vinegar in the hopes of developing a nice mother that I can then place in the next batch of vinegar easily to kick start this second fermentation.
I saw this the other day and was wondering how your Raspberry Vinegar was coming along.
This is a recipe for Apple Cider Vinegar. Basically made like an Apple Yeast Water with added sugar to increase the alcohol and fermented exposed to oxygen.
Very nice, I’ll have to give that a go in the near future especially now that I have vinegar mothers on 4 different vinegars I have going at the moment. Another thing to add to my list to make, thanks for sharing that Abe.
July 29/22 I harvested the raspberry vinegar. I removed and filtered the vinegar. The final pH was 2.99. The scent is just wonderful raspberries and the flavor is very sour and you get the raspberries as well. I’m quite pleased with this project.
