Apple Cider Vinegar from Scraps
This Apple Scrap Vinegar is a great frugal way to use up apple scraps. This fruity vinegar can be used for many household and cooking recipes and tastes very similar to apple cider vinegar.
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 4 weeks
- Total Time: 672 hours 10 minutes
- Category: condiments
- Method: fermenting
- Cuisine: vinegar
Ingredients
- Apple peelings or cores
- Sugar (1 tablespoon per one cup of water used)
- Water
- Glass jar (like this) (a quart is a great place to start, but you can definitely make larger quantities, too.)
Instructions
- Fill the glass jar ¾ of the way with the apple peels and cores.
- Stir the sugar into the water until it’s mostly dissolved, and pour over the apple scraps until they are completely covered. (Leave a few inches of room at the top of the jar.)
- Cover loosely (I recommend a coffee filter or fabric scrap secured with a rubber band) and set in a warm, dark place for around two weeks.
- You can give it a stir every few days, if you like. If any brownish/greyish scum develops on the top, simply skim it off.
- Once two weeks has passed, strain the scraps from the liquid.
- At this point, my vinegar usually has a pleasantly sweet apple cider smell, but is still missing that unmistakable tang.
- Discard the scraps (or feed them to your chickens!), and set the strained liquid aside for another 2-4 weeks.
- You’ll know your apple cider vinegar is complete once it has that unmistakable vinegary smell and taste. If it’s not quite there yet, simply allow it to sit a while longer.
- Once you are happy with the taste of your vinegar, simply cap and store it as long as you like. It won’t go bad.
- If a gelatinous blob develops on the top of your vinegar, congratulations! You have created a vinegar “mother”. This mother can be use to jump-start future vinegar batches. You can remove it and store it separately, but I usually just allow mine to float around in the vinegar as I store it.
- Use your homemade vinegar just like you would storebought vinegar– for cooking, cleaning and everything in between!
Notes
- If your family doesn’t like peels in their homemade applesauce, this is the perfect way to keep them from going to waste.
- It’s perfectly fine to use scraps from slightly bruised or browned apples for your apple scrap vinegar. However avoid using rotten or moldy fruit.
- Don’t have enough apple scraps for a full batch? No problem– just collect your scraps in the freezer until you have enough for a full jar.
- Since we’re using the peels for this recipe, I highly recommend starting with organic apples to avoid any pesticides or chemical residues.
- You can give your homemade vinegar a quick start boost by adding some raw apple cider vinegar to it.
- Your apple scraps might float to the surface. We want them under the liquid, so consider using fermenting weights.
- You could use honey in place of the sugar in this recipe if you really wanted too. However, using honey will slow down the process a bit. Also, keep in mind the beneficial organisms will be eating the sugar throughout the fermentation process, so there’ll be little to no sugar left in the final product.
- You can make any quantity of vinegar you like—my first batch was in a quart jar, but now I’ve graduated to a gallon jar.
- You can definitely experiment with other fruit scraps too– pears and peaches especially.
