DIY Homemade Apple Cider Vinegar

With things changing across parts of the world and economy, one of the things that's important to try and do is learn how to do some things ourselves. The more things we are able to do ourselves and independently, the better off we are long term! We are able to empower ourselves by making or doing things without needing to rely on others. There are certainly limits to that of course, but I think there are so many things that we are perfectly capable of doing!

Apple cider vinegar is one of the things in our house that gets used fairly regularly. I ran out of bottles of it myself so I haven't bought it in a bit but we got a bunch of apple cider from our farm share (CSA) week after week and I couldn't drink the stuff fast enough lol. It ended up sitting in the fridge for a while and then sadly was beyond drinking. Instead of pouring it down the drain and totally wasting it, I decided to see if I can try and make my own Apple Cider Vinegar!

We start with some fresh, local apple cider. What's good about this cider in this regard, is that it's completely raw which is surprising. People are pansies nowadays and consuming things raw is beyond many people. I get the pasteurization of some things but a mixture like Apple Cider is delicious when it's raw like this!

With that comes all kinds of things you don't normally see in apple cider that one would get from the grocery store. There is a lot of extra stuff like bits of apple pulp and other pieces of the apple that get crushed and turned into the apple cider here. I think this should add to the overall flavor of the vinegar when it's done!

With the apple cider being completely raw, it does mean that it doesn't last as long as the stuff you would get from the store. This is because it's got no preservatives except whatever things are natural to the apples. This is great for things like wine, since you are able to let the stuff turn into wine. For me at home, what that means is also that sadly I can't let my son drink it yet! I think he might be okay to drink it now, but we aren't risking it. We are limiting it to just me, which is why it has started turning on it's own from apple cider over to apple cider vinegar lol. No big deal this year that's for sure! Previous years we ended up dumping the stuff out but not this time!

I am bottling two different batches which is good. I think, if it turns out okay, this should certainly last me! This is a gallon of cider here, turning to vinegar. I don't know if you can tell in the picture here but this AC is a lighter shade of brown compared to picture after this one below here. It is starting to look a bit more like the apple cider vinegar that we are used to!

What's more, is that I ended up waiting a few days between trying to get these going. I don't know if it will make a huge difference but I put this bottle in the cabinet away from the temperature changes and the light so that it can start the process of fermenting into wine, then fermenting further and eventually turning into the delicious vinegar.

This batch here is the latest one that I took out of the fridge to turn into ACV. As you can see it's had less time to sit there on the shelf so the color is still a lot darker, more like the apple cider that we enjoy drinking so much. Except that this one started turning in the fridge too lol so I figured let's give it a go with a bunch at once!

What I'm looking forward to with the ACV here is being able to get the "mother" of the vinegar. If you're not sure what that is, it's the hazy stuff that is in a bottle of raw apple cider vinegar. If you get processed apple cider vinegar they take all of that out and it ends up looking a lot clearer but that's bad for vinegar! You're essentially just getting darker white vinegar. If you've gotta drink apple cider vinegar, you might as well use the best stuff! I can appreciate using the cleaned apple cider vinegar for cleaning and stuff if one chose to but consuming it, gotta have the good one!

I'm looking forward to keeping this little homemade process going! We are making homemade wine too, and I will eventually be posting a little bit about that, though not as detailed as the ACV process here. The wine I didn't take pictures as I was doing it sadly so it's already in a bottle and hanging out lol oops.

Have you made anything like this on your own? Let me know how it went!

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