Elaboration of Vinegar

If you start right at the beginning, sugar is turned into alcohol, which in turn is transformed into vinegar – not a complicated process, but it does take time. An example of this is to leave unpasteurized apple juice to ferment into cider, allowing the natural yeast to turn fruit sugars into alcohol, and then leave it even longer for the alcohol to ferment into acetic acid – vinegar. This can take anything up to a year.

The quicker approach is to start with an already-alcoholic base and add live vinegar cultures. Also known a ‘mother’, these are the solid particles visible in live (unpasteurized) vinegar. This method allows vinegar producers to turn cider or wine into vinegar in around a month. And by choosing a specific base to start the process, they have a more control over the finished flavour.