I’ve heard it’s appearance compared to liver and if I had been strictly feeding red wine I could see how that would be so. This gelatinous mess is mother of vinegar. It forms on the surface of vinegar or wine that is becoming vinegar. I know it looks nasty as it can be but if you have never had homegrown vinegar you have missed out. After having my first taste I refuse to buy that nasty white stuff in the plastic bottles for anything other than cleaning.
I bottled a gallon of peach wine and a gallon of raspberry wine today. Bottling day is usually a major vinegar feeding day too. I usually get a little over 3 bottles per gallon and the ‘little over’ goes into the vinegar barrel in the kitchen along with what ever partial bottles are in the fridge that are past their prime. I used to try to position the tube part of a turkey baster just right so as not to disturb the floating mother. Once or twice of wine spilled all over the place and a drowned mother was enough to give that up. Now I usually fish the mother out and discard it prior to the major feeding. There is enough of the bacteria in the remaining vinegar to convert the new wine and create another mother over time. If I don’t remove it, the act of feeding will submerge it and cause it to fall to the bottom. This just ends up plugging the spout on the side of the barrel. No good if I ever hope to harvest any of this goodness. This is the thickest mother I’ve had so far at almost an inch thick.
I don’t understand what I’m looking at here. Are you making vinegar? And if so, why? Pickling, Salad dressing? And what is that darker red stuff underneath? I thought when someone makes fruit wine, that vinegar is failed wine because the wrong kind of yeast took over. Is this something like Kombucha, Kefir or Scoby? Maybe you can give some novices like me some reference point to make sense of that alien world?
If you have never tasted homemade vinegar you haven’t lived. It is kind of like the difference between store bought tomatoes and the ones from the garden. A good vinegar is not harsh like the stuff you buy in the store. It is acidic to be sure but it has a flavor is so much more than just acidity. I use it in recipes, salad dressing, give it to friends and family etc. I don’t pickle with it as the acidity can fluctuate too much. It is a great way to use up the rest of the half emptied bottles of wine that might otherwise get tossed.
Vinegar happens when wine is ‘innoculated’ with the bacteria that makes vinegar. This can happen accidentally ‘failed wine’ or on purpose by using a starter or mother. You can also get vinegar by setting wine out and letting fruit flies get to it. A little too gross for me. I preferred to buy the organic unpasteurized vinegar and use that as the starter.
The glob is the cellose matrix created by the bacteria. It is kind of a protective covering that sits atop the vinegar. I pull it out of my barrel every time I harvest a batch. The red coloring comes from the red wine that was added at the time that layer was created.
Oh, I see. We have several bottles of “bad” muscadine wine. So do you think it can be salvaged for something? In that picture, what is that darker red blob underneath the mother? And where is the vinegar? Did you already siphon it off and everything in that bowl is now compost, or is some of it “starter” for the next batch? This is obviously not my department: my wife, Patty does pretty much all the food preservation/fermenting, etc. Maybe you could just point me to an earlier post or “Vinegar 101” website. Thanks!
Ron, I w0uld definitely try to make vinegar with the wine unless it is corked. If it has just started to turn to vinegar then you are already on your way.
The blob you see is the mother that I had removed from the barrel. The red layer of cellulose was created when I fed the vinegar a large amt of red wine. The whole blob is the mother’s cellulose matrix. There is also mother bacteria back in the vinegar that I left in the barrel. I remove the blob when I harvest to help keep the spigot from being plugged.