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20 January 2003
one hell of a mother!
Having decided that Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was as good as any to liberate our homemade vinegar from its barrel, we removed the vinegar and an ENORMOUS mother from our one-gallon wooden barrel, strained a pint or so of lip-puckering red wine vinegar for our everyday use, and gave the barrel a thorough rinsing. The unstrained vinegar with its bits of mother has been returned to the barrel, and we'll add a bit of wine and water tonight to keep the process going.
One of the things missing from our kitchen is a pH testing kit so we're not sure where our vinegar falls on the pH spectrum. Inhaling naturally over a bowl of it gives one the same kind of jolt as a blast of good wasabi or horseradish. The stinging tingles start at the nostrils and zoom past the tonsils--wheeeee! Our target pH is 6.5 and I'm sure we're below that. With a little practice and attention I think we'll be able to gauge better how long it should sit.
Our vinegar experiment was spurred by a visit to Oak Barrel Wine Craft in Berkeley and Paul Bertolli's praises of homemade vinegar in Chez Panisse Cooking. We found that it's a great way to make something of the wine that hasn't found its way into our glasses.