Gretchen Ronnevik

Apple Cider Vinegar – How to Use It, How to Make It

chickens, cooking canning and baking, house stuff

It’s nearly apple season!  The kids have started to grab some apples off the apple tree during their play time, and I know that applesauce making will soon be commonplace in the kitchen.  I experimented with making apple cider vinegar with apples from the store earlier this summer, and now I’m all set to make some big batches for the first time now that apples are ripening in our yard.

We go through bunches of apple cider vinegar around here.  Here are some basic uses:

-Add to chicken water.  This works to drive the chickens to drink more, which is good for general health, and also serves to keep the chickens intestinally healthier.  Just a little capful or so per gallon or two is enough.

-Homemade salad dressing Yum! (with other ingredients in a recipe involving an oil of course.  Don’t just pour apple cider vinegar plain on a salad.  Yuck.)

-Pour into a small bowl and leave on counter when processing lots of garden produce to prevent the fruit flies from overtaking the kitchen.

-keep full strength in a small spray bottle in the first aid box.  (I use a travel size spray bottle)

  • We use this as a natural spray on sore throats for humans.  It tastes nasty, but nothing scares a scratchy throat away faster.  I prefer a cup of tea, but if that doesn’t work, time to pull this out.  I learned this from a homeschooling podcast, as the mom talked about dealing with reading all day long to your kids, and how it’s hard on your throat.  It really works.
  • We also spray this on the dogs every few days in the summer if the flies won’t leave them alone.  Both dogs have gotten sores from flies in past years, and we’ve found this to be a great addition to their flea/tick medication.  We have on occasion use it on the cats too, but they will really hate you for it, and they normally keep themselves free of flies much better than dogs anyway.
  • We use it for bullying with the chickens.  Occasionally there’s a chicken who is constantly bullied by the other chickens to the point that all of her neck feathers are missing.  Sometimes it gets to the point of getting bloody or scabby.  Once chickens see blood, it only gets 500x worse.  Then they really go in for the kill.  So in the early stages, or the recovery stages, we spray full strength apple cider vinegar on the neck.  Not only does it cleanse the area, it gives the bully who dares peck on the wound a huge mouthful of yuck.  Chicken bullying slows down in a hurry after that.
So want to know how to make it in a Weck jar?  Just like other fermentation, you’re going to need the jar, a cover that fits, 2 metal brackets, and a glass cover that is for the Weck jar a size smaller to hold the apples under water inside the jar.  I’ve found that this process works really well in a liter size tulip jar, with an extra lid from, say the 1/5 liter mold jar.  
Step 1: Give all of your kids an apple for snack.  If you have 5 kids like me, this works great.  This might have been about 2 days worth of snack scraps.  Honestly, I don’t wash these scraps or anything.  They go straight from the kids’ sticky fingers to the jar.  Or you can make an apple pie, apple sauce, etc.  Basically you’re looking for any apple scraps: cores, skins, etc.  If you want organic apple cider vinegar you need to use organic apples.

Step 2: Put all apple scraps gathered into a liter size Weck tulip jar, with an inch or two of headspace.  
Step 3: Cover completely with water, and lay the extra small Weck jar lid on top of the apple scraps to keep them under water.  
Step 4: Put regular glass lid on top, DO NOT PUT ON THE RUBBER RING, but DO put on the metal brackets so that glass lid doesn’t move off if the bottle gets bumped by accident.  You want it covered, but not air/water tight.  So leave the seal off.  The fermentation process releases a gas.  So you want air to escape, but no air to get to the scraps.  The weight inside will push the apples underwater so they cannot get the air, and it will allow the excess gas to escape without any pressure building up.
Step 5:  Store jar in a cool, dark place (warmer than a fridge, but out of the sunlight.  Walk around your house and look for a dark safe place not close to a heat source.  Ours sat on the cleaning product shelf in a back hall closet).  Leave for 3-7 days.  I’ve left mine on a shelf for 2 weeks by accident and nothing bad happened.

Step 6: The jar will now look cloudy, and there should be a foam around the top.  If there is mold, scrape it off, and discard.  That means that it was stored in too warm of a place, but all is not lost.  In this picture is was just broken up apple seeds that didn’t strain out, and I just picked out with a spoon.  Just discard the mold, if you get any.  The white foam is good.  That’s the “mother.”  Think proofing yeast for bread…it means you have good yeast going on there.  It’s the fermentation process eating up all the sugars in the apples.  At this point you want to strain out and discard all of the apple pieces, and keep the precious liquid and foam that is nearly your apple cider vinegar.

Step 7: Find a smaller Weck jar, and wash in very hot, soapy water.  I used 2 mold jars that were 1/5 liter size, because that was the closest to grab when I was doing this.

Step 8: Pour that precious liquid, with foam and all, into the clean jars, cover with lid and metal brackets, but again NO rubber seal.  Do not heat up the liquid.  You are not canning them, and you don’t want to sterilize this liquid, or you will kill off all the yeast.
Step 9: Put the jars holding just liquid back to that cool, dark spot it you were storing it before.  
Step 10: Leave on the shelf for about 6 weeks.  It will darken, sometimes develop more foam, settle with “stuff” floating around the bottom, and eventually get that strong vinegar smell.  At that point, you can add the rubber seal to your Weck jar, (optional, it doesn’t matter) and store wherever you store and use your apple cider vinegar.  The yeast has eaten up all the sugar, and is now shelf stable.

So yes, it does take time, but not your time.  The only time “work time” required for this project is washing jars, and pouring water over apples.  Most of the “work” of making apple cider vinegar happens all by itself on a lonely shelf.  It’s just another way to get something free out of food scraps.  🙂

Comments

  3. I made homemade cider vinegar a couple of years ago and store it in Ball jars in the refrigerator. I decided to have some today, and noticed several small holes in the metal lid. So I suppose there’s some alternate to using the metal rings and lids, but so far I don’t have any. Considering the stuff is years old, that’s a small amount of corrosion. The vinegar doesn’t touch the lid in any way. I’m guessing evaporation or something caused the holes. Just a caution to anyone planning to store it this way. I just taped it up. It’s not like those are irreplaceable.

    Reply

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