Pineapple Vinegar and a mini-rant on sustainability

I like making anything I can from scratch.  Sure, I can go down to the local grocery store and pick up most anything that I want or need but I really like the satisfaction that comes with making it myself.  I also believe that a lot a people, including myself, need to do more of this to pass it down for future generations.  I am not talking about sitting them down and explaining all the ins and outs or insisting that this is the only way to do things.  Just by making them aware that things can be made, and that the added bonuses are that they are less likely to be full of chemicals (if it comes from your garden) and that it is a lot cheaper to make your own. I work in a high school and it continually amazes me how many young people have no idea how to make even basic foods or even where they come from.  

We rely too much on our marketing system to provide for us.  We need to be more self-sufficient and to extricate ourselves from a lot of questionable farming products and manufactured foods.  I don't think at this point in time that any of us could or would want to be completely independent of the greater world but some self-sustainability could go a long way to making the world a healthier place both for us and the land.

That said, I realize that imported pineapples are not local but I have wanted to try to make some pineapple vinegar for the longest time and up until now, I have always composted the peels.  (Yes - I feel somewhat guilty after my little rant!) Today, my desire to make vinegar finally came to fruition.  I had two lovely pineapples to cut up.  I saved the peelings and put them, well chopped, into a two quart jar.  I had already added about 1/3 cup of brown sugar to the non-chlorinated water so just poured it in.  It now sits covered, on my countertop.  Covering something like this is important.  It needs oxygen to breathe, so a clean cloth  is necessary.  As well, the cloth has to be secured  down to keep those pesky little fruit flies out!

I understand that it  has to now sit for a couple weeks, be strained and then sit again in a dark place to develop into vinegar.  This is very similiar to what I did to make cider vinegar, except I actually used organic apple juice rather than the apple peels to make it.  My other vinegars - red and white wine, cider, and malt - are surprisingly good.  We are especially enamoured with the white wine vinegar for our salads and the cider on our homemade fries.

I will post the pineapple vinegar's progress as the weeks go on.

Things are growing in the Dark...

Things are growing in the dark and destroying my beautiful batches of wines. I have had trouble with the last few batches of my wine turning, shall we say, rather undrinkable? It is very disappointing when I would bottle a batch of wine and it tasted quite nice - raw but nice - only to have it be almost undrinkable a few months later. It was a smell and taste I couldn't put my finger on. I started to super sterilize (obsessively?) all my equipment and nothing seemed to make a difference. The last batch of raspberry broke my heart and I knew I had to do something about it.

I grabbed a bottle and went down to the local wine store. Neil and his buddy opened it, sniffed it, and tasted it. They pulled out the manuals and went through it all. We finally decided that the wine was oxidizing - that perhaps I hadn't stirred it enough before bottling it. So I bought a wine whip and hopefully this will help my wines in the future.

Now, I had a conundrum - what to do with all the oxidized wine? I considered dumping it then gave my head a shake. Why on earth would I dump it? It is only a couple steps away from being wine vinegar. As you may remember, I make various types of vinegars: red and white wine, cider and also ginger beer vinegars. However, an over-sized pickle jar would not hold all of the wine that has oxidized. I dug around and realized that I had a glass carboy that had a huge opening and that I had never used because I couldn't find a food grade cork big enough locally. So - I now have a container. I can still use a paper coffee filter to act as a cover and keep the vinegar flies out and other unsavoury treasures but the oxygen can still get in. The first batch of wine to go into the carboy was my Riesling. Thirteen bottles later, I had filled it almost halfway. I added a jar of white wine vinegar that had a nice little mother in it and gave it a stir.

Now came the second conundrum, where to put this carboy? We have a nice house but it didn't come with very many or very large closets and storage is always an issue for us. I definitely couldn't put it in a closet and it is too heavy to go in the cupboard above the fridge. Vinegar, in the making, needs to be kept warm and in the dark. I mulled this over in my pea-brain and decided that a cover was the way to go. I went downstairs and again dug around for something suitable that could just stay in the kitchen in a corner. Nothing appealed or matched. As I was walking through the laundry room, I spotted an old, black heavy knit dress of mine. Aha!! the lightbulb went on and the peas sprouted! I took it upstairs, cut part of the skirt off, and sewed a sleeve out of the skirt with elastic on the bottom and a drawstring on the top. It looks reasonable enough to sit in the corner (although I think I will change the drawstring to black once I find where I put the old black shoelaces) and it solves the problem of leaving it somewhere in the dark!!
So the next conundrum will be what to do with 5/6 gallons of white wine vinegar? It has to sit probably until the spring before it is ready and mellowed. However, I think I have this one already taken care of - I have many friends who are thrilled with the prospect of vinegar in the spring when it is done.