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.