While winter does slow down our gardening efforts, that doesn’t mean that we’re not still preserving foods and crafting ingredients! One of the things we’ve taken to in the last several years has been making our own vinegars.
The fall months often bring us freshly harvested fruits like apples and pears. One of the things we’ve learned is that we can take scraps from these fruits, including the skins and uneaten bits, and use them to make vinegar. This year, we’ve elected to make our own apple cider vinegar and it’s nearing the expected completion time!
Making vinegar is a lot like traditional fermentation of food. The main difference is that we’re promoting the growth of acetic acid, whereas in traditional fermentation we are seeking lactobacillus. The other difference is that vinegar is a slower process, typically taking a month or more of fermentation time. However, there is a ton of skill overlap and most of the same food fermentation tools can be used for vinegar production.
One of the things that stands in the way for many people diving into fermentation is the food safety aspect. Vinegar perhaps helps with this understanding in that you know it’s a highly acidic ingredient and that acids are generally safe from “bad stuff.” In fact, a number of commercial sterilization and sanitizing agents are based on acids. Fermentation simply works like this, it induces a high acid environment that is naturally resistant to the growth of undesirables.
But, even if you don’t trust your work for human consumption, you can still use your DIY vinegar as a home made cleaning and sanitizing agent. This is a way to achieve “practically free” cleaning materials, complete with a natural fruity scent. Many people are concerned about the “unspecified chemicals” in commercial cleaning agents and this is a great home made alternative.
Since we’re comfortable with the vinegar crafting process, we often try to make several bottles each year. We aim for diversity of vinegars, ensuring we have things like apple and pear vinegars. But, similar techniques can also lead you to DIY crafted red wine, white wine, rice wine and even aged balsamic vinegars.
The winter months do fundamentally change our activities, but we’re also still up to the “same old, same old!” We like to illustrate that we have many summer preservation focuses, but also show that we have winter preservations as well.
