Confidently Make Strawberry Scrap Vinegar From Scratch
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I was researching making homemade strawberry scrap vinegar using strawberry tops, likened to how I make apple scrap vinegar. Why wouldn’t other fruit work too? What I found was a WALL that just wanted me to infuse either distilled white vinegar or white wine vinegar or rice vinegar with strawberries, or strawberry tops.
THAT’S NOT WHAT I WANT TO DO. I want to make vinegar.
So, like everything, I winged it. I found myself with a bunch of fresh strawberries straight from Florida during their strawberry season and wanted to use every single part of them! I seriously hate food waste with every fiber of my being. I know I can share with the chickens… but they have plenty of snacks. And why don’t I ferment and take more from the scraps AND THEN give them to the chickens?!
Strawberrryyyyy wiiiiiiiinnnneeeeeee ssseehhveennteeeennnnnn. Anyone else have Strawberry Wine stuck in their head now? Just me? It’s probably just me.
How I Make Strawberry Scrap Vinegar
I added strawberry tops to a sanitized jar, added some sugar, water, and a blog of my vinegar mother and let ‘er rip. After about 10 days, I noticed this little experiment tasted a whole heck of a lot like strawberry fields boones farm… which, not mad! Haha.
I set it back to keep going for a few more weeks and so the alcohol would be taken over by acetic acid once the fuel ran out. Vinegar fermentation really is that easy. After that point, I strained out the strawberry tops and let it go until it tasted right to me. The thing with making vinegar and ferments is you can’t be afraid to taste them.
The timeline for ferments varies in each household and you won’t know what’s going on just by looking at it. What I have ended up with is a delightful strawberry flavored homemade vinegar that was really, surprisingly GOOD. I think this will be amazing in homemade salad dressings, switchels, and haymakers drinks and the likes… wherever apple cider vinegar is commonly used… let’s switch it up and use strawberry vinegar.
I’m currently dreaming up an strawberry and homemade goat milk feta cheese salad over fresh spinach from my garden with a oil and vinegar dressing made with this stuff. I can’t wait…… **cries in Ohio spring weather**
How to Make Fruit Scrap Vinegar
To ferment and make homemade fruit vinegars with fruit scraps, you do not need special equipment. This would be different if you were making homemade white vinegar from taters (which involves making moonshine-ish and can be ever so slightly illegal), but for acidic fruits, winging it like this is fine.
You could literally put all this in a large bowl and let it go and it would be fine. You’re basically waiting for the fruit and sugar to go through the alcohol phase, use up all the fuel, and then flip into vinegar made by acetic acid bacteria. It’s a rather fascinating process anyway.
If fermented correctly, there should be no alcohol content in the end product, but you can’t get to vinegar without alcoholic fermentation first. Well… that’s my understanding anyway and I’m willing to be wrong.
What If I Don’t Have A Fermentation Lid or Glass Weight?
No biggie deal dude! Work with what you got! I will say, having them does save my forgetful life on more than one occasion and they’re reusable over and over again, so investing in them does pay off!
But, if that’s not in the budget or you don’t want to wait for them, you can weight things down with a ziploc sandwich bag filled with a bit of water, then push the air out and seal it. The bag will settle at the top of your jar and hold allllll the fruit underwater while it ferments. Doing this really helps prevent any chance mold is going to get the top of the fruit scraps peeking out of the water.
If you don’t want to do that, simply stir the ferment up to 3 times per day to make sure things get moved around and submerged. Mold usually shows up if you forget about it and don’t shake or agitate things…. ask me how I know.
As far as fermentation lids, they do come in clutch but you don’t NEED them. They automatically create an air lock that allows air out but nothing in. You can just use an old, clean canning lid and screw band and burp your ferment at least once daily. I will recommend twice a day to get through the initial alcoholic ferment, because that does produce more gas than when acetic acid takes over.
Vinegar Mother
If you don’t have one, that’s fine, you don’t need it to make vinegar. But it does help speed things up and ensure your ferment heads the right direction!
I have a mother hotel since I make apple scrap and other fruit scrap vinegars occasionally and I use the mothers interchangeably. My vinegar mother hotel is currently purple because I fed those ladies some leftover red wine from a picnic that I can’t drink (wine makes my heart race), so I figured I’d treat my mamas. The LOVE wine.
When storing a vinegar mother, if you leave the jar unsealed, the mother will continue to ferment the liquid and grow. If you would like to slow your mothers down because they’re overtaking your house and your life, put them in a jar with some food, like wine, and vacuum seal it. This makes them go inactive or dormant. And a good feed or new ferment wakes them right up!
You can add a whole floppy pancake mother to a ferment but I normally just rip a hunk off. Sometimes a ferment will form a good sized mother on it, but I usually don’t see thick mother formation until after I have strained the fruit scraps and the liquid has been fermenting for a while longer.
How to Tell Your Vinegar is Ready
I always tell folks to be brave and smell and taste your ferments as they go. This is the best way to learn. If your ferment turns, you will know it. Fermentation is just a controlled rot of your food after all, and actual bad rotten food smells not good.
Taste it!
Is it tangy and to your liking or do you want it more sour?! Has it not started vinegar ferment yet and instead tastes like Boones Farm?
If it makes you feel better, dip a pH strip in a verify your pH is 2-3 ish for vinegar and you should be good!
Kahm Yeast
Also, familiarize yourself with what kahm yeast looks like on a ferment. Here’s an apple scrap vinegar ferment with kahm yeast on top!
It’s completely harmless and I’ve never had it affect a ferment or its flavor, yet. I know some people claim it can give an off flavor, and maybe it can, but I haven’t had that experience. Yet.
Kahm yeast is a harmless white, powdery appearing film that appears at the top of your ferment. Don’t confuse it with mold. Mold is fuzzy and splotchy and usually green or blue on fruit ferments. It can be known to smell a touch odd, kind of musty and acidic, but I just scrape it off the top none the wiser and use!
How to Store Homemade Vinegar
I store my homemade vinegar either in canning jars with reused canning lids, vacuum sealed, or in swing top bottles. I usually have large gallon jars of my vinegar stored in my cellar where it’s cool and dark for my second layer of storage and keep my primary layer in swing top bottles in my kitchen pantry.
Vinegar is VINEGAR… it’s shelf stable as long as it’s properly fermented. You don’t need to refrigerate it! Remember, as long as your vinegar is sitting and exposed to oxygen, it will continue to ferment. If you’d like to slow it, vacuum seal it or store it in an air tight container.
You can also store your finished vinegars with the mother still in it. She definitely doesn’t need a separate house!
Let’s make this strawberry vinegar recipe, shall we?
Equipment You Might Want:
- Wide Mouth Quart Jar
- Glass Fermenting Weight
- Clean Used Canning Lid & Screw Band
- pH Testing Strips
- Swing Cap Bottle
- Fine Mesh Strainer
Ingredients:
- Strawberry Tops from 2 lbs strawberries
- 1 tsp raw unrefined sugar
- 3 cups warmed filtered water
- Vinegar Mother (optional)
Step 1: Prep
Start by sanitizing your jars prior to filling, along with the lid and weight.
Add strawberry tops to a wide mouth mason jar.
Mix the warm water and sugar, stirring just until sugar is dissolved. Allow the water to cool.
Pour over strawberry tops to about the shoulder of the jar. You need to leave enough room to add your glass fermenting weight so you don’t overflow the jar (like I always do).
Make sure all strawberry tops are submerged to prevent mold, add a piece of your vinegar mother culture if you have some, and cover with a lid and lightly secure with a screw band.
Step 2: Ferment
Place jar in a dark place; the warmer it is, the faster the ferment will move along.
Allow jar to sit at room temperature for about 2 weeks, checking to burp the jar to prevent overflowing every day.
Once the liquid has taken on a slight vinegar sour smell and tastes sour, it’s ready to strain. I dump through a sanitized fine mesh strainer and add the liquid back to the same jar.
Add a lid again and allow the vinegar to sit for 4-6 more weeks, or til it’s soured to your preference and/or has a pH of 2-3. I normally go by flavor, but if you’re concerned, checking the pH isn’t hard!
Step 3: Store
Once the vinegar is to your liking (meaning it tastes good, has a nice tangy flavor, and smells normal… YOU WILL KNOW if your ferment went wrong.. promise), transfer to a new clean jar and store in a cool dark place until you need it. I use plastic lids since the acidic vinegar really wants to eat at old canning lids, especially if the enamel is compromised in any way. Make sure it is not exposed to direct sunlight or you will unalive all those wonderful cooties available in homemade vinegar!
It’s vinegar so the shelf life is indefinite and stores best in a sealable jar, whether that be a canning jar or a swing top bottle or even old glass vinegar jugs. If the jar is not vacuum sealed, the vinegar may (likely will) form a mother culture on top. Totally normal and fine! If you don’t want a mother to form, vacuum seal your jar and the mother will not form :) (this goes for those of us that hoard vinegar mothers like they’re our family lol).
To Use:
Use as you see fit! Use as you would regular vinegar wherever a fruit flavor would be appreciated. Look up switchel recipes, add to fruit salad for an interesting zing, or use in salad dressings. Be creative!
Shrubs or switchels or haymakers punch are great to use fruit based vinegars in!
Enjoy your homemade strawberry vinegar! You just made a flavored strawberry top vinegar completely from scratch instead of infusing a store bought vinegar so go brag ;)
On my list next is to make homemade peach vinegars (maybe with some herbs) once they start ripening on the trees. I have a while but I’m really allllll about fruit flavored vinegar lately and making electrolyte drinks wit them and I’m not mad about it.
Equipment
- Wide mouth quart jar
- Clean used canning lid & screw band
- Swing Cap Bottle
Ingredients
- Strawberry Tops from 2 lbs strawberries
- 1 tsp raw unrefined sugar
- 3 cups warmed filtered water
- Vinegar Mother optional
Instructions
- Start by sanitizing your jars prior to filling, along with the lid and glass weight.
- Add strawberry tops to a wide mouth mason jar.
- Mix the warm water and sugar, stirring just until sugar is dissolved. Allow the water to cool.
- Pour over strawberry tops to about the shoulder of the jar. You need to leave enough room to add your glass fermenting weight so you don’t overflow the jar (like I always do).
- Make sure all strawberry tops are submerged to prevent mold, add a piece of your vinegar mother culture if you have some, and cover with a lid and lightly secure with a screw band.
- Place jar in a dark place; the warmer it is, the faster the ferment will move along.
- Allow jar to sit at room temperature for about 2 weeks, checking to burp the jar to prevent overflowing every day.
- Once the liquid has taken on a slight vinegar sour smell and tastes sour, it’s ready to strain. I dump through a sanitized fine mesh strainer and add the liquid back to the same jar.
- Add a lid again and allow the vinegar to sit for 4-6 more weeks, or til it’s soured to your preference and/or has a pH of 2-3. I normally go by flavor, but if you’re concerned, checking the pH isn’t hard!
- Once the vinegar is to your liking (meaning it tastes good, has a nice tangy flavor, and smells normal… YOU WILL KNOW if your ferment went wrong.. promise), transfer to a new clean jar and store in a cool dark place until you need it. I use plastic lids since the acidic vinegar really wants to eat at old canning lids, especially if the enamel is compromised in any way. Make sure it is not exposed to direct sunlight or you will unalive all those wonderful cooties available in homemade vinegar!
- It’s vinegar so the shelf life is indefinite and stores best in a sealable jar, whether that be a canning jar or a swing top bottle or even old glass vinegar jugs. If the jar is not vacuum sealed, the vinegar may (likely will) form a mother culture on top. Totally normal and fine! If you don’t want a mother to form, vacuum seal your jar and the mother will not form :) (this goes for those of us that hoard vinegar mothers like they’re our family lol).
To use:
- Use as you see fit! Use as you would regular vinegar wherever a fruit flavor would be appreciated. Look up switchel recipes, add to fruit salad for an interesting zing, or use in salad dressings. Be creative!
