To Make Vinegar
Ingredients
Directions
Make the vinegar
Combine molasses, yeast, and warm rain water in a jug or keg.
Cover the jug with a cloth to keep out flies while allowing air in.
In warm weather, place the jug in the sun; in cold weather, keep it near a store or in a chimney corner.
Finish and refill
After three weeks, you will have good vinegar.
When the vinegar level gets low, pour out some for use and refill the jug with the same proportions.
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
What each ingredient does
- Molasses
- Provides sugar that yeast and bacteria convert into alcohol and then acetic acid.
- Yeast
- Starts fermentation, turning the sugars into alcohol that the vinegar bacteria later oxidize.
- Warm rain water
- Dilutes the molasses and carries the sugars and yeast into a liquid the fermentation can work in.
The step that matters
Covering the jug with a cloth. The cloth must keep flies out while still letting air in, because the acetic acid bacteria need oxygen to turn the alcohol into vinegar. A sealed container would stall the process.
“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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