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Vinegar Made From Molasses

A vinegar produced by fermenting a molasses and water mash with malt and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and malt work together. They rank in the top 31% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20 recipes. The science ↓

Vinegar Made From Molasses

Ingredients

Directions

Mash

  1. Combine 100 gallons of molasses and 400 gallons of water in a mash tub.

  2. Heat to 150°F (65°C) for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the remaining 200 gallons of water and cool to 100°F (38°C) in winter or 85-90°F (29-32°C) in summer.

  4. Boil 15 gallons of water and cool to 170°F (77°C).

  5. Stir in the ground malt and raise the temperature to 150°F (65°C).

Prepare the yeast

  1. Cover the yeast can and let it stand for one hour.

  2. Cool down to 75-80°F (24-27°C) and add 5 gallons of No. 4 yeast.

  3. Let the yeast ferment for 24 hours before adding it to the mash.

Ferment

  1. Stir the yeast into the mash and transfer to the fermenting tank.

  2. Allow the mixture to ferment for about six days.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Molasses + malttop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together20 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides the sugars that the yeast ferments into alcohol, which vinegar bacteria later turn into acetic acid.
Ground malt
Supplies enzymes that convert starches into fermentable sugars during the warm mash.
No. 4 yeast
Ferments the sugars in the mash into alcohol, the base for the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cooling the mash before adding yeast. If the mixture is too hot, the yeast can be killed or stressed, and if it is too cold, fermentation starts slowly or unevenly. Holding the temperature in the stated range keeps the yeast active.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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