Wednesday, July 14, 2010

The mother lode

Some time back I went to my cupboard to pull out the red wine vinegar only to find this:

What?  You can't really tell what that is?  How about a closer look.

It looks like something from a horror film, doesn't it?  And that's just my prune-y fingertips!

Most people would be totally grossed out at this and curse the vinegar maker.  Not me.  I'm weird.  I got all excited: I think it's a vinegar mother!  A "mother" is the bacteria culture that's used to convert a fermented liquid into vinegar.

My old office had several bottles of wine that had been sitting around in a hot closet for too long to be any good.  I brought it home and scrawled "vinegar" on the label so I wouldn't drink it.  Thank God for that because about 2 months later I went scrounging for some wine and nearly opened this.  Believe me - it's NOT worthy.

About a week ago I divided the wine between 2 jars, put a piece of the mother in each, and put them in my pantry.


A few days after I did this, the mother in one of the jars is floating.  I'm taking that as a good sign.

By the way, I found this website to be very useful as I was thinking about making my own vinegar.

Apparently it can take up to 6 months to turn white wine into vinegar.  I'll keep you posted.  In the meantime I'll have to prevent my hubbie from throwing away what looks like urine samples with some nasty goo in it. 

Ew.

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