- Today, I want to share with you how to make fruit scrap
vinegar using pineapple rinds. (lighthearted music) Hi, sweet friends. I'm Mary, and welcome to "Mary's Nest," where I teach traditional cooking skills for making nutrient-dense foods, like bone broth, ferments,
sourdough, and more. So if you enjoy learning
how to be a modern pioneer in the kitchen, consider
subscribing to my channel. And don't forget to click on the little notification bell below. That'll let you know every
time I upload a new video. Well, making fruit scrap
vinegar couldn't be easier. And it's a wonderful way
to make use of scraps that might otherwise go into the garbage or the compost pile. Today, we're going to
make fruit scrap vinegar using pineapple rinds. This makes a delightfully
yellow colored vinegar with a wonderful pineapple flavor. Plus, this will be a raw
vinegar with the mother. And raw vinegar is very
rich in probiotics. And probiotics are good bacteria that nourishes our digestive system. And scientists tell us the healthier our digestive systems
are, the healthier we are. Well, what I've got here is
the rinds from one pineapple. And in addition to your pineapple rinds, or other fruit scraps
you may be wanting to use to make a vinegar, all
you're going to need is a half gallon-sized jar, and a coffee filter or some fabric, and a rubber band, and a chopstick, or some type of knife,
something that's long and can be completely
submerged into your jar. And then all you're going
to need is some water sufficient enough to fill your jar. Now, preferably, if you have water that is not chlorinated, all the better. Because chlorine tends to interfere with the fermentation process,
which is what we need to do. We need to ferment these fruits scraps in order to turn them into vinegar. However, I have experimented
using both tap water, as well as bottled water,
that's basically a spring water that is naturally chlorine-free. And I found that there's not always a significant difference. But our water from the tap
is not heavily chlorinated. So you may want to just
get a water report, I guess that's what it's called, from your local water service and find out what the level of chlorine may be in your water. And if it is highly chlorinated, then you may want to
try using bottled water. Now, can you boil your tap
water or leave it out overnight and allow the chlorine to evaporate? Yes, that is an option. However, some of you have shared with me that you live in water districts that use something called
chloramides or chloramines to sanitize their water. And if that's the case,
you've also shared with me that that doesn't necessarily dissipate. So knowing what type of water you have can really help you in the long run as you create your modern pioneer kitchen because the water that you're using can play a significant
role in your success when it comes to any type of ferment. And the more we can do to
have success, the better, because as I've shared
with you in the past, ferments can often be persnickety. So the more that we can do
to help our ferments along, to help them to be successful, the better we are off in the long run. Now, if you've seen my
videos on how to make homemade apple cider vinegar, and how to make citrus vinegar, and how to also make
another fruit scrap vinegar from strawberry tops, you may have seen that I do
add in a little white sugar to help kickstart the process
and feed the good bacteria. And some of you have asked me,
can you leave out the sugar? And the answer is yes if
the fruit you're using is exceptionally sweet So when making apple cider vinegar, if you're using the cores and the peels, say you're doing a fruit scrap version of an apple cider vinegar, and you're using very sweet apples, you may be able to get away
with not adding any sugar. So today, I'm going to make
this fruit scrap vinegar without adding any added sugar. Because since we are using pineapple, and pineapple tends to be very sweet and have a lot of natural sugar, I think that it may work. So when you make fruits scrap vinegar, you can start just using the fruit and initially not add any extra sugar. However, within a few days you will know whether you've been successful or not. Because if you don't start to
see some bubbling activity, you will know that the good bacteria may need a little jumpstart. So at that point, you may
want to add a little sugar. Generally, a quarter cup will really help. Now, today, we're going to
use these pineapple rinds. And as I mentioned, I
also have one where I use the tops of the strawberries that makes a lovely,
beautifully pink-hued vinegar with a lovely little strawberry flavor, because you have the green stem and then a little bit either of the core or if you just slice it across the top, you have a tiny little
bit of the fruit on top. So that's definitely something fun to make especially as strawberries come in season. And I'll be sure to link to that video. And then if many of you probably know, my sweet friend, Heidi, over
at Rain Country Homestead, and Heidi has many
videos on many vinegars, many videos on how to
make fruit scrap vinegar. And I'll definitely link to her channel. Now, what you want to do
is get a nice sharp knife and then just start to cut this up. The reason that I like to
go ahead and cut this up is to just make things a
little easier to be mixed in with the water. And hopefully I don't,
I'm not a scientist, I don't know if there's any
scientific basis for this, but I feel that when the
fruit is cut up a bit more and it's much easier to stir, it seems to be able to
turn into vinegar quicker. In essence, you have more surface area. So it would make sense that the process would go a little quicker
because maybe more good bacteria can be released into the water. So as you chop this
into bite-sized pieces, all you want to do is go ahead
and put it into your jar. Now, I just happen to
be using a canning jar because that's what I have, but any half gallon-sized jar will do. And if you don't have a
half gallon-sized jar, but you have two quart-sized
jars, that'll work well too. You're just going to divide
up your pineapple rinds, your pineapple rind
scraps into the two jars relatively evenly. Now, what I've got here is
just the rind of the pineapple. Now, you may be wondering,
what about the core? The core can be pretty tough
and it can certainly be used. It certainly can be cut up
and used to make this vinegar. However, I like to eat it. I just chop it into small
pieces because it's very rich in a compound, and please
excuse my pronunciation, you all know I'm the queen
of mispronunciation at times, it's either called Bromelin or Bromelain, or something like that. And it's wonderfully rich in
anti-inflammatory properties. It also helps with digestion. And so, I like to eat that
and then hopefully it'll help with whatever little aches
and pains I might have, either externally or internally, we often can have inflammation internally. And it also can help with
digestion, as I mentioned. So sometimes it's nice to
just enjoy a few pieces maybe after a heavy meal. So that's usually what I do with the core. Now we're going to fill
our jar with some water. I do like to leave a
little bit of head space because this is going to bubble and fizz, and the pineapple will float. And it's good to just give
yourself a little bit of leeway so you don't get a lot of overflow. So I'm just going to
go ahead and fill this. I've just got enough water here just to get up to about
this part of the jar. I'll show you up close. Now, all you want to do
is take your chopstick, or if you've got a long knife, or the handle maybe of a wooden spoon would work very well too, and you just want to
give this a stir around. Now, this is very important. Making vinegar is an aerobic fermentation, meaning a fermentation with air. That's the opposite of an
anaerobic fermentation, which means without air. And an example of an
anaerobic fermentation is something like sauerkraut. So if you take cabbage
and you want to ferment it to make sauerkraut, everything needs to be weighted down and the oxygen needs to be not present. And so, it's an anaerobic fermentation. And when I say weighted down, I mean weighted down under the salty brine that is going to convert
the cabbage into sauerkraut. And the same is true of
most vegetable ferments. However, when it comes to making vinegar, we now want air because the good bacteria that makes something like
this turn into vinegar is called Acetobacter. And it's in the air. And so, we want to get as much Acetobacter into our ferment, into
the making of our vinegar as possible. It's very different than
an anaerobic fermentation that basically relies on
the yeast and good bacteria that exist on the vegetables. And by keeping the oxygen
away, we give those yeast and good bacteria a chance
to really proliferate. But here, we want the good
bacteria that's in the air to get this process going. So making vinegar is actually very easy. You don't need to worry
about weighting this down. You don't need to worry about burping it. You know, if you've seen
anaerobic fermentations, you don't need to worry
about having any sort of special equipment that helps
an anaerobic fermentation. So that's why this is
a lot of fun to make, especially if you're new,
to trying to take something and turn it into something else. So in this case, we're taking fruit scraps and turning it into vinegar. So all you really need to do is get a coffee filter like this, or you can also use a
clean scrap of fabric, whatever you have. And then I just like to take a rubber band just to secure this on so that it's not flopping off anywhere. This helps keep it clean, but at the same time, to allow the air to get into the mixture. Then once a day, or even
twice a day if you remember, you're going to remove this, you're going to get your chopstick or the handle of a wooden
spoon, whatever you have, and you're just going to give
this a little spin around. This is going to serve two purposes. One, it's going to help
redistribute everything to make sure that you're
getting all of your fruit under the water. And it's going to help bring
some of the Acetobacter into here, in essence, oxygenating it. Also, giving it a spin once
a day helps any bad bacteria from not developing on the top of it while you're waiting for
that good bacteria to kick in and start turning this into vinegar. Now, I just want to mention
that if you keep this in a relatively undisturbed place, you can just put your
coffee filter on like this and you don't need to worry
about the rubber band, if you find it a little
fussy to work with every day while you're stirring your vinegar, your vinegar in the making. But just make sure you have it in an area where this may not fly off. Now, let's talk about
troubleshooting for a minute. If you find that you are developing mold, mold tends to be different
colors, it tends to look fuzzy, and I'm of the school of thought, I'm very uncomfortable about that. And so, I usually will
discard things and start over. Other people feel that you
can just remove the mold and then give it a good stir. And then over time, the
whole fermentation process is going to kill any bad
bacteria, kill any mold, and make it a very
inhospitable environment for mold to proliferate. So that's up to you. But I'm of the school of thought, I do prefer to discard it. But I generally don't
have a problem with mold when it comes to making vinegar. Something that's more common and something that you might experience is
that you'll get what looks like a spider-like web, white coating on top of
your vinegar in the making. And what that is, that's
something called Kahm yeast. It's just in the air. It can be a little
frustrating to deal with. You can just pull that
right off and discard it and continue to give
your vinegar a good stir. And hopefully, it'll get to the point where it's doesn't keep coming back. But that is a little bit of a challenge if you live an area where you may have a lot of Kahm yeast in the air. It's only happened to me
once when I was making one of my batches of a
strawberry top vinegar. And I've not had it happen again. But that is something to look for. And you can look up
pictures on the internet. It's very prolific. You can find pictures everywhere of it, of what Kahm yeast looks like. And it's pretty easy to identify and it's pretty easy to distinguish from what mold looks like. So if you do develop Kahm yeast, know that it's not a serious problem. It's just sort of, as I said, these things can be persnickety. So just take a spoon,
remove it, discard it, continue stirring your vinegar. And hopefully, it'll
become less of a problem. Now the vinegar making
process takes about 30 days. And if you watched my series on how to make apple cider vinegar, that will give you an indication
of what the process takes. But what you're going to do is stir this, as I said, every day for 30 days, and preferably even twice a day. Now, after a few days, you're
going to want to start seeing some bubbles. If you don't see bubbles,
then you may want to consider adding a little sugar,
giving it a good stir, and then see if by the next
day or the day after that, you've got some bubbles coming. Now, during this 30 day process, what you're going to find is
within maybe a week or so, this is going to smell more
like alcohol than vinegar. It's probably going to smell
very yeasty, almost like beer. And after about two weeks,
you're going to notice that yeasty, almost
beer-like smell decreasing, and a more acidic aroma increasing. You may have noticed, if you ever opened a bottle of wine and
then it wasn't finished, and even if you put the cork back in, but you put it in your
pantry and forgot about it, over time, it has turned into vinegar. You might find that it
has a very vinegary smell and a very vinegary taste
because it was exposed to air. And the Acetobacter is in there and it's turning that
wine now into vinegar. Now, in 30 days, we're going
to come back and check on this and I'll go through the
rest of the process with you in terms of straining it and decanting it. But I know that you might have some questions in advance of that. But once this turns into vinegar, and we strain it, and we decant it, it's basically a forever food. Vinegar is really a forever food. It doesn't go bad. So you can decant it and
store it in your pantry. You don't need to store
it in your refrigerator. Now, after 30 days, you
can taste your vinegar and see if you like the flavor, if it tastes acidic enough to you. And if you like the taste, you're all set. But if you're a little
nervous as to whether or not it is actually vinegary enough, or you need to let it
ferment a little longer, I understand completely. And especially if you're
a beginner at this, you may want to use some pH strips to test the pH of your vinegar. Now, everybody has different
tastes and has different ideas on how acidic they want
their vinegar to be. I generally like to let
it go for enough time so that the acidity level is between a 3.5 to a 3.0. So if at any point during
the fermentation process, you want to check your vinegar
to see how acidic it is, you can certainly give it a little taste and then you can use your pH strips to see where it's at in
terms of its acidity level. But basically, based on my experience, I've found about 30 days will
create the perfect vinegar. So what I'm going to do is go
ahead and put my covering on, and I'm going to set this aside, and then I'm just going to
give this a stir every day, hopefully twice a day. And in 30 days, I'm going to come back and show you what we've got. And one more tip I want to share with you before I put this aside is if
you're new to fermentation, as things bubble up, sometimes they can bubble a little over, even if you're doing an
anaerobic fermentation where you have a lid on. So what I always
recommend is whatever type of item, or fruit, or vegetable, or whatever the case may
be that you're fermenting, put it in some type of bowl
so that wherever you put it, if it does overflow a bit, it's just going to overflow into a bowl. And trust me, based on experience, I've learned the hard way
that if you don't do this, you can wind up with a sticky mess. So let's go ahead and put this aside and we'll come back to this in 30 days. Well, my pineapple vinegar has been in the making for 30 days, and now we're ready to strain it. Now, when you're making this at home, you may notice some evaporation. That's to be expected. Now, what I did was
stir this every 30 days. I tried to stir it twice
a day if I remembered, but I wasn't always perfect about that. So know that if you're not
perfect about it either, you're going to be okay. And after a few days of stirring it, I started to notice that
there was lots of bubbling, lots of activity. And I'll overlay a picture
so you can see what I saw so that you'll know what to expect when you're doing this at home. Then what you'll notice,
as you go into week two, everything will start to settle down and you won't see any more bubbling. And all of the fruit will start
sinking down to the bottom. Again, that's totally normal. That's to be expected. Just keep stirring and
aerating your vinegar and you're going to be fine. Now, when I was making
this pineapple vinegar over the 30 day process, the Kahm yeast developed
that I mentioned earlier. And even though Kahm
yeast is a bit of a pest, I'm glad that it developed in this batch of pineapple scrap vinegar because now I can show you actual pictures of what it looks like. It starts forming on top
as somewhat of a white, milky-colored substance,
almost with a little bit of a spider web or web-like pattern in it. And I know many of you who
have made fruit scrap vinegar in the past have been
very concerned about it, and was wondering if it was
in fact mold, but it's not. It's, as I said, Kahm yeast. It's a pest, but it's not harmful. What I did was take a
spoon, a clean spoon, and I just tried to remove
as much of it as possible, and then gave my vinegar
a really good stir. And during that Kahm yeast period, I kept removing the Kahm yeast whenever I would see it appear and I would try to remember
to at least stir my vinegar twice a day, and to really stir it. Normally, I'll go in,
under normal circumstances, and just give it a stir,
like no more than this. And then take out my chopstick
or whatever you're using and put my cap back on
and go about my business. But when I see that Kahm yeast, I remove it and I'll even
take like a little tissue and try to remove some of it that forms around the edge. And then I'll get in here
and I'll really give it a good stir to try to aerate as possible, to help other yeasts and
good bacteria take over as opposed to the Kahm yeast. So know that if that happens to you, as I said, it's just a pest, and just do your best to try
to keep it under control. And something interesting
that I want to share with you is I have never really had
Kahm yeast happen to me a lot. I did have it happen to me on a batch of strawberry scrap vinegar and now on this pineapple scrap vinegar, but I've never had it happen
with an apple cider vinegar, whether I'm making it with
apples or with apple scraps. And I'm just wondering,
I'm just theorizing here, I don't know for sure, but if you have a scientific background and you do know a little
bit more about this than me, what I'm wondering is if when
I make these sweeter vinegars, like the strawberry vinegar
or this pineapple vinegar, does that in some way
attract the Kahm yeast more than the apple cider vinegars, which I generally make
with much more tart apples? Alrighty, so we've got
the Kahm yeast covered, and now that problem is behind us. Next, what I want to
talk about is determining if your fruit scrap
vinegar is in essence ready at the 30 day mark to
go ahead and strain it. Now, I've been making
these fruit scrap vinegars for a long time, and
I'm very used to knowing when they're ready. You know, I'm not afraid
to take a taste of it and see if I like it. The aroma, by the way, on
pineapple vinegar is wonderful, if you like pineapple. But in any event, that's
usually how I'll determine whether I'm at a point where
I'm happy to strain it. But I know that many of
you have shared with me that you're very new to this, and you want something
of a little bit more of a scientific method, so to speak, to know if your vinegar has reached a proper pH and is ready to be strained. And that's where these
pH strips come in handy. These things are terrific. And I will be sure to put a link to them down in the description
below, underneath this video. But keep in mind, you
may be able to find these in the pharmacy section at
your local grocery store or at an actual pharmacy. They're pretty common. But I like this particular brand. And it runs pH from 3.0 to 5.5, which is what I like. There are ones that run
a more broader scale, but I generally just use these for things that I'm fermenting. And when you're doing
a traditional ferment, like making a sauerkraut, you always want to make sure
that your vegetable ferments are at a pH of 4.6 or lower. And that basically tells
you that they're ready and that you can go ahead and
enjoy them, refrigerate them, whatever the case may be. Now, for vinegars, generally
I like to go 4.0 or lower. Even 3.0 is nice. And that's usually what I'll get with an apple cider vinegar. However, some of my sweeter
fruit scrap vinegars, like the pineapple and
like the strawberry, I am suspecting they're going
to be a little higher than that. I'm not sure you can get
them extremely acidic. And the reason that I'm saying that is I just know from experience with my strawberry fruit scrap vinegar, I'm not sure that I was able to get it all the ways down to 3.0, the way that I can with
an apple cider vinegar. So, now, what I'm going
to do is just take out a little bit of this pineapple vinegar, if I can get it out, this may have not been the
best spoon to use. (laughs) I just want to get a little bit, and we're going to go ahead
and test the pH on this. And I have to thank some
of you who shared with me the idea of putting a
little bit of the vinegar into a glass rather than
dipping the pH strip right in. Because the pH strip may
have some chemicals on it that we wouldn't necessarily
want to introduce to our vinegar. So that was a wonderful tip. Alrighty, so now what I'm going to do, and as I mentioned, I like this brand because you can just sort of pull off and rip a little strip. Some of them come, you know,
they're a little larger, and you just take out
one of the little sticks. But some of you have shared with me that you cut them in half. And I thought that was a good idea. Alrighty, here we go. Okay, well, this looks
like it's pretty good. And I will take a close up
so that you can see this. But basically, we're at,
yeah, we're between a 3.5 and a 4.0, so I'm very happy with that. Now, the reason we talk
about pH and acidity level and we use pH strips as a backup if we're new to fermentation is because you want to make sure that your ferments reach
a certain acidity level. And that acidity level is important because when you get below 4.6 and work your way down the pH scale, that high acidity level makes a very inhospitable environment for bad bacteria and molds to form. So that's why we always want to make sure, whenever we're doing an anaerobic ferment, like making sauerkraut,
your vegetable ferment, where you don't want any air, and you're creating a lactose ferment, using all of the good yeast and bacteria that are already on the
vegetables and fruits that you may be fermenting in that way, or in this case, an aerobic
fermentation with air, where we want the Acetobacter
to help turn our fruit, basically with water,
into some type of vinegar. So that's why acidity
level is very important. And these pH trips can
be a nice comfort to you, especially if you're new to
making any type of ferment, where you want to make
sure that you have reached a proper acidity level to prevent anything going bad on you. Now, when I strain this, what I like to do is get a big, I've got a
big measuring cup here, but a bowl will work fine. And then I like to get
a fine mesh strainer. And then I like to take my mesh strainer and I like to line it
with a flour sack towel. Now, if you've seen any
of my bone broth videos, you know I love these flour sack towels. Now, you can certainly use
cheesecloth if you have it. Also, the commercial-sized
coffee filters could work well. I have tried sometimes using
the smaller coffee filters, the ones that are like this, you know, that are frilly. But sometimes they can collapse on me and just kind of make
a little bit of a mess. But I think if you have
those commercial grade ones for the big coffee makers,
those might work well. But the reason I like
these flour sack towels is they're reusable. Now, in the past, what I would
do is just put this right in. I'd start in the corner
because I might have to move it along. And someone here gave me a
wonderful tip here on YouTube. One of you wonderful viewers who said that you like to wet your
flour sack towel first, which helps to discourage
it from absorbing whatever you might be straining with it, whether it's bone broth
or a ferment like this. And I just think that's a wonderful idea, so I'm going to do the same thing. Now, I know you may have
concerns if your water is heavily chlorinated and you
really don't want to introduce any of that into whatever
you're straining. I understand that completely. I'm not too concerned about that because our water is
not heavily chlorinated. But I do like the idea of being able to retain
more of what I'm straining as opposed to having the towel absorb it. So that option is completely up to you. And if you want to go ahead, as I said, and use the commercial coffee
filters or cheesecloth, by all means, and especially
if you have a busy household and you really don't want to worry about having to rinse out and
then wash all these cloths when you're doing ferments, or bone broth, or whatever you may be
straining, I understand that too. So just pick what's easiest
for you to work with. Well, I've rinsed my flower sack towel, and then I rung it out really well. And now I'm just going to go ahead and push it right down into my strainer. Now, all I'm going to do
is pick up my jar here and go ahead and strain this. Now, I poured this out
as gently as I could, trying to leave the bulk
of the pineapple scraps in this jar. Now, we will press these to get every little last bit
of liquid out of them. And I'll show you how
to do that in a minute. But normally, what I do
now is I let this drain down into my bowl, or a big measuring cup, whatever you're using. And you can basically just
walk away from it at this point and do something else if you want. But sometimes, if I'm
like rushing a little, I'll just start moving my
flour sack towel around to kind of speed up the process because what you're going to find is that some of the
pineapple has disintegrated into a bit of a puree. So there is some thickness here. You can see it on the flour sack towel. And that does slow the process of the liquid draining
down into your bowl. So normally, what I do is just
start moving things around and speed up the process. I do the same thing with bone broth. And you'll see, there's
all this puree left behind on the towel. Now, what I'll do is just
take a spatula like this, as pretty much all of
the liquid is drained out and I'm left with just a lot of puree, and I'll just move it back into the center of my mesh strainer. And then I'm going to
press it to try to get as much liquid out as I can. So once I get everything best I can, scraped off of my towel and
back down into my mesh strainer, I'll just take my spatula
and I'll just start pressing against this little mush, (laughs) getting out as much liquid as I can until it looks just like
kind of fairly dried out, best that you can do it. And then I'll just have
this little bit left over. Now, if this meets the
requirements of your composter, you could certainly throw this in. Now, once I feel I've pressed out as much liquid from this as possible, I'm going to go ahead and
I'm going to put this aside. I'm going to actually scoop
it out of my mesh strainer. Then I'm going to go ahead
and put all this fruit in here or fruit scraps. (laughs) And then I'm going to do the same thing. And I'm just going to
go ahead and push out as much liquid as I can
from these pineapple rinds. Now, could you have added this right in when you were originally straining it? Sure, but the only problem
is the mesh strainer that I'm working with
only has so much capacity and I didn't want things to overflow. So there are variations depending on what you're working
with in your kitchen. And I'll just go around with my spatula and I'll just keep pressing on this until I feel that the rinds and the little scraps look fairly dry. Alrighty, well, I think
this is pretty dry. And I've pressed out
as much liquid from it that I think I'm going to get. So now I'll show you how
I like to decant this and we can talk about its shelf stability and how long you can expect it to last. Now, I do want to share
one tip about cleaning your flour sack towels,
if you decide to use this. I actually used to rinse
these out really well and then wash them with
my white dish cloths with a little laundry
detergent and a little Clorox to keep them white and clean. And then I would do a double rinse and I was content with that. That was really what I thought was best to keep it nice and sanitary. But again, like with
some of the other tips you all have shared with
me, some of you said, why not wash your whites
like this with vinegar instead of trying to introduce
some Clorox into the mix, some bleach. And I thought that was such a good idea. So, now, I don't use
the fruit scrap vinegar, I usually just use a plain white vinegar. So now I'll go ahead and I'll
give this a real good rinse in my kitchen sink. And then when I wash my white dish cloths, along with all of my flower sack towels, I use a lot of these so they
accumulate pretty quickly, and I wash them in vinegar. And they wash up beautifully
and I don't have to worry about any bleach residue. And they also really stay nice and white. Well, this is just wonderful. I got five cups of
pineapple scrap vinegar. And as the name implies,
it's just from scraps, from basically the rind of the pineapple that might have gone into
the garbage or the compost, whatever the case may be. And instead, we've got five
cups of wonderful vinegar. Now, I want to mention,
I think many of you know my friend, Heidi, over
at Rain Country Homestead. Heidi really is the vinegar queen. She makes so many types of scrap vinegars, from flower cuttings, and tree
cuttings, and herb cuttings. I mean, it's just endless what you can do with things in nature and
then turn them into vinegar. So I will be sure to leave
a link to her channel in the pinned comment so that
you can go check that out, 'cause I think that if you enjoy, I think once you, you
will enjoy this process, and I think once you start doing it, it almost becomes a little addictive, that whenever you start
to have vegetable scraps, or fruit scraps, or
different things like that, you're like, "Oh, what can
I do with those scraps?" And one of those is make vinegar. Now, if you've seen my video on kitchen treasures from the trash, that's basically where these
bottles have come from. I know many of you ask me, "Oh, Mary, where do you buy your bottles?" I don't really buy any bottles. I recycle ones that I have. And also, if you have
friends and neighbors and they may just put theirs
into their recycling bin, but you think they're bottles that you might be able to use, you can ask them to save them for you. And then I just clean
them up and sanitize them. And then I go ahead and use
them to decant different things. And I'll be sure to link to that kitchen treasures
from the trash video. That's a very popular video. And so many of you shared
with me the different things that you find that might be things that most people would throw
out that you find to recycle in your own kitchen and use. So that's always a lot of fun. And I love hearing from all of you, the different things that you saved to use in your traditional foods kitchen. And so, be sure to let me
know in the comments below the different things you like to save. But what I'm going to do
is, this is a 32 ounce jar, now I've got more than that here. But what I'm going to do is
put as much as I can in here. Alrighty, let me just
start decanting this. (vinegar sloshing) Well, this is going nice and smoothly. I really always like to make
sure that I have a funnel to help me with these jobs. Now what I'm going to do, let's see, now this is probably, even
though this is a 32 ounce jar, when they package things in
here for commercial purposes, I don't think they come
up as high as I came. So I was able to get a
good amount into this jar. Then I'll just go ahead
and put the cap on. And now I'm all set. And the rest of this, I'm just go ahead and put in a small jar. And I'll just use that
quickly over the next few days when I make salads. Now, what to do with this? Vinegar, because it's so acidic,
basically is shelf stable. And you can go ahead and put
this on your pantry shelf. You can put this in your working pantry or in your extended pantry
and it should stay fresh. Technically, vinegar is
considered a forever food. So if you buy raw apple cider
vinegar at the grocery store, it's a forever food. If you buy white vinegar, one
that's not necessarily raw, it doesn't contain the mother, maybe you buy it for cleaning, that also is in essence a forever food. And you can keep that in your pantry or your extended pantry. And it shouldn't have any
type of true expiration date. Now, manufacturers will put best buy dates and things like that on their bottles and on all foods, but technically, vinegar is
considered a forever food, meaning that it doesn't go bad. Now, when it comes to homemade things, there's really no way to know 100% if something is prepared exactly the way something may have been
prepared in the factory. So I can never 100% tell you, yes, this is going to be
perfectly shelf stable, or yes, this is going to be a forever food because it's something that's homemade. So I highly recommend that you experiment. If you are uncomfortable keeping this at room temperature in your pantry, even though it is very acidic and the potential for the
growth of bad bacteria or mold has become quite low because the environment is inhospitable, but if you feel uncomfortable about that, by all means refrigerate your vinegar, your homemade vinegars, they'll be fine. The good news is either way, whether you keep this on your pantry shelf or in your refrigerator, it definitely has the mother
in it because this is raw. And what that means is it's
rich in good probiotics, good bacteria, wonderful
for our digestive systems. But of course always
remember that the nose knows. If for any reason you
keep this in your pantry, unrefrigerated, or you keep
it in your refrigerator, and you see anything in it
that looks like something other than the little bit of sediment that may develop on the bottom, which is usually the mother. If you notice something that's
fuzzy or things like that, that's the development
most likely of mold. And then you will want to discard it. At least that's my
personal humble opinion. Many people feel that if
something is very acidic, and you just remove some mold
that may form on the top, and you give it a good stir, and the environment, again,
may not be hospitable to the development of mold,
so they decide to keep it. Everybody is different. I'm not comfortable with that. If I see anything develop
mold, I will discard it. And a separate issue from
that, regarding the Kahm yeast, chances are now that you've strained this and you're putting a cap on it, Kahm yeast should be less of a problem. But certainly if you see any of that, you can just remove it. But since this is homemade, if it does give you peace of mind, you can refrigerate it. It won't affect the quality at all. Now, just like we talked about vinegar being a forever food, when you buy it, where it's been prepared
and packaged commercially, homemade vinegar, again, we can't 100% say if this is in essence a forever food, that if you decant this and then open it 10 years from now, will it still be perfect? Again, homemade things are
a little unpredictable. So what I generally recommend is to try to use your homemade
vinegars up within a year. Now, what to do with
a fruit scrap vinegar? This works wonderful when
making salad dressings or marinades and things like that. I generally don't use fruit
scrap vinegars for cleaning. And the only reason is
that sometimes they can be a little bit on the sweeter
or even the stickier side. So if you decided you wanted to experiment and use this for cleaning, you would probably want
to dilute it considerably. And if at any time you
get a little concerned about the state of your vinegar, you can always come back to
your pH trips and check the pH. See what range it's in. If you're keeping it in your pantry, these might give you
wonderful peace of mind, as well as if you're keeping
it in your refrigerator. I really can't say enough
good things about these. I think they're perfect for
the traditional foods kitchen, because even someone like me, who's been making ferments
for many, many years, I do from time to time like to use these when maybe I'm making a new
type of vegetable ferment and I'm not a hundred percent sure how long I really need to leave
it on my counter to ferment. And this helps me know,
oh, okay, it's below 4.6, which is usually, that's
kind of the benchmark for sauerkraut. But I usually let everything
go a little bit lower, a little more to the 4.0 range. But these give me peace of mind. So that's a wonderful thing to have in a traditional foods kitchen. Now, if you'd like to learn
how to make other types of fruit scrap vinegar, including a raw apple cider vinegar so that you never have to
buy that at the store again, be sure to click on this video over here, where I show you how to
do that and lots more. And I'll see you over there in my Texas Hill Country kitchen. Love and God bless. (lighthearted music)
