everyone welcome back today we are making apple cider vinegar and I know
there are tons of videos out there online about how to make apple cider
vinegar and like I said in the pine apple vinegar video a lot of them are
wrong and it's not wrong misleading or perhaps they don't really understand the
science behind how cider vinegar is made so I thought I'd do apple cider vinegar
pretty much the same as we did with the pineapple vinegar video I'm going to
start out by juicing these apples
okay so what I have here is just over a liter of apple juice it doesn't matter
what kind of apples you use use whatever is available to you whatever is local
whatever is close whatever is at the bottom of your fridge and you need to
use up and you want to juice them and if you don't have a juicer that's fine if
you look at the pineapple video I just use the blender you could use a blender
you could use a food processor ultimately it's probably best to start
with just juice with as little pulp as possible in it if you use a blender or
food processor the pulp is going to be in it that's not
a problem it will settle out during the first part of the process which is using
yeast to turn the sugars into alcohol here's why I don't like most videos that
talk about how to make apple cider vinegar making vinegar is a two-step
process you need an anaerobic step an anaerobic step which is the first step
which is happens in the absence of oxygen you're using yeast to convert
sugar to alcohol that step has to be done first then the second step is
aerobic and we'll get to that in a minute realistically at this point I
could put this bung on the top with an airlock and the yeast that is naturally
occurring on the apples will start to ferment you don't need to add anything
to this the yeast will start to ferment they'll drive all of the oxygen out of
here through the airlock this will fill up with carbon dioxide as soon as it
fills up with carbon dioxide the yeast will start working faster and within a
day or two most of the sugar will be gone and it will be replaced with carbon
dioxide alcohol and some flavors that the yeast throw off here's something
that I'm going to tell you to do instead
instead of allowing the yeast that occurs naturally on the apples to start
to work I would use a beer yeast a wine Easter champagne yeast get them in a
little packet like this it doesn't take very much to get the process started and
here's why first of all it could take five or six days before the natural
yeast sort of builds up enough steam to get fermenting so timewise this will
happen almost you know within hours within five or six hours you'll start to
see some action in the airlock second thing is the natural yeast you don't
know how flavorful it's going to be beer yeast wine yeast or champagne yeast you
know that it's going to give off the right flavors that you want never use
bread yeast bread yeast is definitely not the right flavor profile it throws
off certain chemicals certain esters certain alcohols that give a really sort
of strange taste of the whole whole thing and the third thing is that the
natural yeast doesn't have the ability to convert enough of the sugar into a
high enough alcohol amount as soon as the alcohol amount gets up to like one
and a half percent by volume the natural yeast gives out it can't do anymore
whereas beer wine or champagne yeast can go even higher it could go
depending on how sugar your apples are up to about 12%
higher alcohol better vinegar down the road so these are really cheap and you
only need about a teaspoon worth of these there's enough yeast in there to
do 30 liters and we've got one liter so I've probably added too much already
so give it a little bit of a swirl you could do this in any container that you
could put a stopper in an airlock on you could use a old wine jug an old wine
bottle you could I don't know I've got these beakers I thought it looked cool
it's going to allow us to see the fermentation happening very easily in
the next step fermentation lock-in and you just add a little bit of water in
the top and that's it for the first step we'll just leave this on the counter
five or six days you'll see the action in the bubbler stop and you'll know at
that point that you have reached the end of the first step so come on back in
five or six days so but a week has gone by and the airlock has stopped bubbling
and we've converted pretty much all of the sugar in here to alcohol in fact
that happened in probably the first two or three days I left it for a few more
days just to make sure that everything's settled out so at this point what you
need is a large open mouth container it could be anything it doesn't have to be
a beaker like this as long as you can cover it with a piece of cheesecloth and
I would suggest using a really good cheesecloth not super market cheesecloth
the holes in that are too big and you don't want fruit flies to get in because
they will be attracted to this so we will take what's in here and there's a
layer on the bottom of sediment you don't want to pour that in well that
smells good you know what you could pour it in if you wanted to but you're just
gonna have to strain it out later so if you can be careful try to leave it in
the bottom and that is really just Apple sludge and yeasts
there you go so let's give that a taste I would
encourage you to taste everything at pretty much every step of the process oh
that's good tart happily that'd be good just you
know cold sitting in the back yard instead of a beer so at this point if
you've never made apple cider vinegar before you've got a couple of choices if
you have made apple cider vinegar before then you already have a mother that you
can add from your last batch but if you haven't if this is your first time
making vinegar you've got a couple of different choices to make and you can
just cover this with cheesecloth stick it over there on the counter and forget
about it there is a Siegel backer which is the the next process there is a Seto
bacter everywhere it's in the air it's on the countertop it's on your body it's
on any fruit that you've got in your in your kitchen it's all around us and that
acetobacter will eventually find its way into here and start the next process
which is converting the alcohol to acetic acid which makes vinegar a couple
problems with that I use the word eventually because it could take two or
three weeks before it really starts to get going the acetobacter that's in the
air isn't isn't in a high concentration so it needs to get in there needs to
establish itself it needs to start working and that could take some time
the second thing is you don't know which strain of acetobacter is in the air it
could be a strain that gives a really good flavor it could be a strain that
gives a really bad flavor so you want to start it with a strain that you know is
going to give a good flavor I mean why wouldn't you you eventually want to eat
this drink this use it in salads however so you want it to taste good so you can
buy online a strain of acetobacter that would make a really good mother
for this or you could just get raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar from the
grocery store the acetobacter or the mother is in here
and it has to be raw has to be unfiltered unpasteurized and you just
put a couple tablespoons in this amount and what's gonna happen is the
acetobacter in here is going to activate it's going to start eating all of that
alcohol that we've produced in the last part of the process and it will multiply
and over the course of about a week or a week and a half you're gonna start to
see like a mat grow on top a sort of a thick slimy mat and that is the mother
that's exactly what you want that is the acetobacter working hard and so what I'm
going to do now is I'm just going to take this I'm going to sit it over here
on the back counter out of direct sunlight at room temperature and we'll
come back to this and see it well we'll come back and we'll see it when it's
done
and so there you have it this has sat on the back counter for probably three or
four weeks smells absolutely amazing and it has a very healthy mother sitting on
top so I'm gonna pull the mother out and I'm gonna hang oh the mother is really
slippery but it's it's fantastic and since this is really healthy I'm gonna
use it almost right away in a couple of other vinegar experiments so keep your
eyes out for those videos and now what you have is is you have the vinegar and
there's some sediment on the bottom I'm gonna try to leave as much of that as I
can behind you can filter it out if you want to you don't have to you can leave
all of that in and you can use it it's edible tastes fantastic
oh my that is some good dinner excellent
vinegar
so just a little bit of sludge left in the bottom pour that down the drain
don't need to keep that the mother I'm going to break into two or three parts
and use in other vinegars and this can just stay on the counter
now this apple cider vinegar is loaded with probiotics and it is really good
for you thanks for stopping by hope to see you again soon
you