If you’re vinegar, you must respect your mother. She can survive for months in a dark and stuffy bottle, only to come back to life and create magical chemistry to turn cider into tangy and delicious vinegar. The mother of vinegar, much like the SCOBY (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) of Kombucha, the m.o.v. is a skin-like film that develops at the top of a batch of brewing vinegar. It’s weird. It’s amazing. It’s mysterious.
I’m relatively new to vinegar making. I made my first batch by simply leaving some raw cider out, covered with a cloth, to ferment and turn to vinegar (passing by the intoxicating hard cider). This was the best vinegar i’d ever had and i’m hopeful that this new batch made from store-bought cider will be reminiscent of this original wild vinegar.
I’d love to hear from you! Are you an experienced vinegar brewer? Please comment with your experiences or any fun facts about what’s really going on in that translucent mother floating in my mason jar. You can also read more about my vinegar making over at Pocket Pause.
Not Dabbling In Normal 
This is definitely on my list of things I want to start making on my own! Will definitely check out the other blog for tips!
here’s a link to a post I did about starting a mother and making your own ACV:
http://mossgrownstone.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/apple-cider-vinegar-making-a-mother/
I just love it! I usually use apple juice but I’m experimenting with making some from apple peels/cores- we’ll see how much it differs.
Thanks for that link! I’d really like to try making vinegar from the mucky must left over from other fruit things.
I accidently made a pinapple vinegar mother by neglecting a batch of tepache, it was great! the vinegar I made with the mother that is, not the tepache. Unfortunately, I killed her on the second try:( Diana Kennedy has a nice recipe for bannana vinegar in her cookbook The essentail cuisines of Mexico you may want to check out. paz, Abby
[…] 4 weeks ago) and started writing up my post over on my personal blog when I read Miranda’s, “Who’s your Mother?” where she talked about making vinegar and a mentioned kombucha. I figured I would follow her lead […]
We did this last year with the applecores and peelings and all the leftover bits of apple that we had. Dumped it all in a big widenecked container with a 10% sugar solution and first it bubbled into something vaguely like weak hard cider and then I got a little mother from a friend and popped it in there and several months later we had vinegar. I think the mother should appear by itself if you leave the top open, just cover with a muslin or cheescloth to keep out flies. It takes a long time! We strained and rebottled it, sometimes using coffee filter papers, which was slow but probably the best. The mother regrew in the bottles so I guess it stays alive in a vinegar medium providing you don’t pasteurize the vinegar which is presumably what happens commercially.