Apple Cider Vinegar

You can make your own delicious apple cider vinegar, whether you start from your own pressed apple juice, store-bought apple juice, or already-fermented hard cider. If you’re starting with hard cider, skip to step 5. If you’re making ACV with fresh-pressed juice, you can skip the yeast altogether and do a wild ferment. If you’re starting out with pasteurized juice, you will need yeast. This recipe uses commercial winemaker's yeast, but you can choose to use a wild yeast starter.

Apple juice falls beautifully in the specific gravity range for the perfect alcohol to create a good acidic vinegar. I have never had to adjust with any extra sugar so there isn’t a need to measure specific gravity or Brix for successful vinegar, but if you keep a vinegar log and have the tools, you may want to keep track of this. Apples are also naturally acidic fruit. This lower pH means you won’t have to bring the pH down with lemon juice to help get a strong fermentation without surface yeast. This, and most of the recipes in this book don’t strictly need a vinegar starter; vinegar will happen on its own. In my years of making vinegar, though, I’ve found that the success rate is so much higher with the inoculation, there’s no reason not to use a starter unless you simply don’t have access to raw vinegar.