First, I want to wish all of you a wonderful 2015! We’ve had a lovely New Year’s Day today. It’s a lot cooler than yesterday, which I appreciate, but sunny and beautiful. I went out to the garden this morning and found a lot of things ready to pick. We are eating well these days!
This afternoon, I went to the garage to get something, and made a side trip to check on the barrel of apple cider vinegar I’ve been brewing since last March. One of the boys had gotten a small cup of it this morning, and it tasted just slightly weaker than the double-strength vinegar we usually buy from a stockfeeds store. He thought there was a scoby in it (like kombucha). I looked, and sure enough there was a huge “mother” floating on top!
That was exciting. There were also a lot of fruit flies in it, so I decided it was time to strain and bottle all of it. We ended up with 21 liters, just over 5 gallons, for the price of a rubbish bin (maybe $15). The apples were free from the roadside, and the only other ingredient was water. To buy that much vinegar at the stockfeeds shop costs about $80. I’m pleased with this experiment!
I put the “mother” in a jar to save till I start the next batch, so hopefully it will work even faster than this batch. Sure looks ugly! It’s kind of rubbery, a lot like a kombucha scoby.
Esther wanted to see what the cows would do with the vinegary apples, so she dumped them out in the paddock. They wanted to eat them, but the acid was apparently kind of hard for them to handle. They keep coming back for more, though!
