Apple Cider Vinegar Start to Finish

today we are taking you along our process of making apple cider vinegar and this one is going to be a first for us we've never done this we went ahead and purchased some apples from a local orchard they're organic apples so they're a little bit smaller really really beautiful and they are a good variety for making apple cider vinegar I don't quite remember the name of the variety that these apples are it's a few different kinds they all look the same because they've been sitting in our root cellar for about six weeks so they do store wonderfully down there Erick and I hope to have our own little mini apple orchard one day so we can go out there and pick our own apples but for now we're going to start with these and we are going to get two products out of these apples today we're going to be making apple cider vinegar out of the peels and the course and then I'm going to be turning the main portion of the Apple into apple sauce let's talk about why we would even want to make apple cider vinegar maybe you're not a big fan of it so in our house we're a huge fan of apple cider vinegar we use it for everything besides the digestive benefits and immune benefits we also give it to our animals on regular occasion including our chickens we can use it for household cleaning products I use it for my skin and my hair and you can also use it for eating and drinking and of course canning recipes so let's go ahead and dive in and talk about how the process of making apple cider vinegar works it is a two-step process or two-stage process for the fermentation to happen and it takes anywhere from four to six weeks so it does take a little while to complete this we're going to be starting with the apple course and peels and adding a sugar water to that and what happens is wild yeast comes along and it changes the sugars to alcohol so that's our first stage and at this point acetobacter which is a bacteria comes in and changes that alcohol into acetic acid which gives apple cider vinegar that vinegary tastes that we're all used to some of the things you will need is apples and sugar of course we're going to be using a five gallon food grade bucket to be doing this process and you can also use a different type of container we just bought this one specifically for it since we plan on making quite a bit and a way to peel them we're just going to be using an apple peeler and I might add that you can use the whole Apple to make apple cider vinegar we just also want to make apple sauce and we don't really need the meat the Apple to make the vinegar and that's why we're just using the cores and the peels we're first going to get started with prepping these apples I'm going to peel them and come back and get the cores out next we need to prepare our sugar water to add to our apple peels and our apple cores and we want to use a 1 tablespoon - 1 cup water ratio I don't quite know how much I'm going to add in here so we're gonna see at the end how much we use this is the last little bit of water we ended up adding in when we ended up putting about 20 cups so that means 20 tablespoons of sugar and I just stirred in that sugar with room-temperature water if it's not completely dissolved that's ok this is what you want it to look like you want the water to barely cover the cores and the apples and if I actually push down on them I can tell that it is covering them what we need to do now is put some sort of weights on top so we can keep all of that underneath that liquid I'm going to be using a plate since that's all I have and then we'll be setting our top back on and I'm not going to actually put the top back on all the way I'm going to allow a little bit of air because we do want this to be able to breathe since the plate is floating up a little bit we are going to put this mason jar of water on top of it to help weight it down and make sure it stays down there we've got a lid on this just in case I don't want extra water in that brine and our lid will fit perfectly over now the next step is to let this sit for two to three weeks and we want this to sit in a warmer room temp area in a dark place so just a closet or something like that I'm going to be throwing it behind us in our kitchen and a cupboard and just checking it every so often to make sure it doesn't get any sort of mold it may get a little bit of like a scum on top and that's okay you couldn't scrape it off or you can leave it and you will probably see a little bit of fizzing the other thing we're gonna be checking is to make sure that all of the contents stay submerged so we will see how this looks in a few weeks when we come back to check on it we're back with our apple cider vinegar project and we are on our second phase this has been sitting for about two and a half weeks and you can smell that it is slightly sweet and a little bit alcoholic so we've done that first stage and now we need to strain the apples and at this point the alcohol is going to be turned into vinegar so we will end up with apple cider vinegar so let's go ahead and get started and straining this this was our weight that I'm going to be taking off you can see there's bubbles and that is totally normal that's actually a really good sign that this is working the way we want it to so we're gonna get this strained and we're going to be giving the mash to our chickens I'm gonna get this been rinsed out so we can put the liquid that we just strained back in here that smells really good I'm gonna be putting the cover back on and we are going to put this back in the cupboard that we had it in for another three to four weeks and at this point we actually want to be giving the liquid a stir every day or every other day we will check back in a few days and see how this looks we are back in the kitchen with our final product our apple cider vinegar is finally done we are actually in February so this whole project took a lot longer we first started this back in September and the first step took about two to three weeks and the next step I was only anticipating it to take about one to two months and it ended up taking about three to four months for us to have it finished products which I'm going to talk to you guys about but I want to show you what it looks like so we lost a little bit of liquid due to evaporation but that's the final product and there is some of the yeast strands on the bottom that's that cloudiness and we are going to be saving that of course let's talk about why this process took longer so this was our first time making apple cider vinegar and I had to research a little bit what was going on for the second stage of the process I put this in a cold covered in our kitchen and it was just too cold so I didn't realize that at the time we let it sit down there for about one to two months and I was stirring it every other day to get that air mixed in there for this process to take place and I realize it just still smelt like you know sweet alcohol it's real it smelt really good no mold nothing like that but it wasn't getting any sour and it wasn't getting more vinegar ish so I just figured let's get some more time more time went by and still nothing happened so I researched it a little bit more and I found some information indicating that needs to be kept warmer we went ahead and moved it up to her loft and a few weeks later we did notice some changes going on so I would recommend keeping this for the second part of the fermentation at least 70 degrees and that's what we did our Loft is about 80 degrees we opted to let it go to the four month mark because our we wanted it to be you know a little more concentrated a little more vinegary so we are finally there and it's totally okay if it takes a few months just know that ahead of time I wasn't aware of that when we first started it like I said before this process is done so we are ready to bottle it up I have two bottles behind me that we're going to be using I think it'll fit in both of them we may have some extra room in these and you can cap it off at this point too since it's not actively bubbling anymore we're gonna go ahead and pour this out into a bowl first there's that cloudy those are the dregs before we get this bottled up Eric and I thought it would be fun to compare this to the store-bought apple cider vinegar I have behind me so this is one of the brands that we buy and it does have you know the mother in it too we were aiming to get our pretty strong like this although we were starting with sweeter apples I don't know if they were quite the best choice for apple cider vinegar very very strong I mean it's there's definitely vinegar in there but it is not quite as potent as this one and again from what I've read the longer you let it sit the more of that will take place especially if you're stirring it and keeping it in a warmer place we're okay with this as is looking back I may have done slightly less water and just covered off the apples a little bit less squish them down we're back at that first point another thing I want to know if you try making apple cider vinegar for the first time I did read that you can jump-start your batch at its second phase with some apple cider vinegar that's store-bought and again you want to use that you know that we're ganna kind with the mother and it will just help jumpstart your batch or you can even save some of this for the next time that you're doing it and it's going to help that process happen a little quicker [Music] so we already filled up this one I wasn't expecting that that's good news because it did take so long to make and from what I've read this has an excellent shelf life we are going to be putting these down in the root cellar so keeping it a little cooler and I anticipate that they'll be fine down there I bet we'd probably use them up in a year because we go through apple cider vinegar quite a bit around here it's a favorite of ours but you now know with what we started with about the ratio you make it at the end you may have a little more evaporation we're gonna be ending up with about three of these 64 ounce bottles we have these bottles left over from when we used to brew June tea which is a kind of kombucha so I'm going to be using these to do the last bit of it so I have just one more of these to fill up and like I said again I think that this is gonna last us quite a while I would totally do this again I recommend it it was simple not time-consuming it just takes a little bit of time for the process especially in our colder house so again if you have a warmer area why not go ahead and place it there it's definitely economical and it's you know good high quality vinegar too because that's that's what we like to buy you know for the purposes we're using it for that is the kind we need with the mother so it just makes sense to get the apples hopefully there'll be our own apples in the future and do this process and I hope you guys found it's helpful maybe you will be interested in making vinegar or maybe you already have let me know if you have any tips or suggestions in the comments and we will see you guys next time

Channel: Simple Living Alaska

Views: 255,790

Keywords: off grid living, living in alaska, off grid vlog, homestead alaska, cabin life, tiny house alaska, off grid cabin, winter in alaska, off grid in alaska, cabin in alaska, winter cabin living, homestead tour, homemade apple cider vinegar, making acv, making apple cider vinegar, how to make apple cider vinegar, homemade vinegar, apple cider vinegar with the mother, apple cider vinegar recipe, apple cider vinegar from scratch, how to make acv at home, acv recipe

Id: vAoU6cT26Ew

Length: 12min 14sec (734 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 21 2020