Apple Cider Vinegar Mother | Mother Of Vinegar | Vinegar Starter | ACV | SCOBY | Natural | Probiotic | Make Your Own Vinegar

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NOW AVAILABLE WITH LIMITED EDITION ENGRAVED GLASS SWING-TOP BOTTLE
This delightful 4 oz bottle is engraved with our own design and the words "Home Made Apple Cider Living Vinegar Culture". It's cute and perfect for giving (including to yourself, or re-gifting YOUR home-made vinegar to a loved one)!
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You'll love how easy it is to make an endless supply of your own, natural, live apple cider vinegar!

Your taste buds will love how much better home made vinegar is!

Enjoy the many benefits of a live, probiotic, cultured food!

Use for cooking, giving, healthy living and more!

A NOTE ON SHIPPING:
Your new mother is very hardy, but you'll want to treat her like the living being she is.
We will package her very carefully.
We encourage you to choose the USPS PRIORITY shipping option, especially if temperatures will be over 100 F anywhere along the route from Portland, OR, to you.

You will receive:
1 (generous) ounce of concentrated apple cider vinegar mother solids*
4 (generous) ounces natural, live, unfiltered, unpasteurized apple cider vinegar liquid culture*
(These amounts are ideal for giving mother room to grow in her new home.)
Instruction booklet

*Vinegar mother is the name given to the solid part of a vinegar culture. The solid parts include colonies of the bacterium Acetobacter aceti floating on rafts of cellulose. Acetobacter turns ethanol (the alcohol in cider) into acetic acid (the acid in vinegar), and makes cellulose along the way. After a time, the cellulose can become big enough to make an impressive disc that floats on the surface of the vinegar culture (sometimes mistakenly called a SCOBY, a word used by people who make kombucha).

Many vinegar mother offers (on Etsy and elsewhere) focus on these cellulose discs but it's the billions of near-invisible colonies suspended in the live, liquid culture that form the real, hardworking mother of vinegar. As your vinegar culture matures, it will start forming discs like those shown in the pictures.

You will need:
A glass or pottery crock with a wide mouth and a loose-fitting lid. (A purpose-made vinegar crock / kombucha crock with a spigot is ideal.)
Hard cider (organic is best), store-bought or brew your own!
Clean cotton cheesecloth or tea towel.
A couple of weeks.

Q: How do I make Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV)?
A: There are (at least) two ways to make apple cider vinegar (ACV). The traditional way is to start with what these days is called "hard cider" (see below). You can buy hard cider or brew your own like we do. In our opinion this is the most authentic, reliable, delicious and healthy way to make ACV. Another way starts with apple juice (with or without cores, peels or seeds) in the hopes that two-step fermentation will be a success. This is sometimes referred to as the "easy" way to make ACV. But, in our opinion, this option leaves a lot to luck, and often results in a spoiled, inedible mess.

Q: What's the difference between apple juice, cider, and hard cider?
A: In current U.S. usage, the term "apple cider" means the unfiltered, unpasteurized juice extracted from apples; after being filtered and pasteurized, it's called "apple juice"; and "hard cider" is the modern phrase for apple juice / cider that has been fermented to turn the sugars into alcohol (basically, apple wine). This is what we mean by "hard cider" in our ACV recipe. Don't get confused, though! Traditionally, the word "cider" always meant the fermented product (and still means the fermented product in places like the UK today), while "hard cider" was a term used to mean a fermented cider that was crude, rough, or sour. So, when you see "apple cider vinegar", the word "cider" is the traditional (fermented) meaning.

Our vinegar mother has been alive for decades. We use her vinegar in our herbal extracts and tonics.
She is extremely temperature hardy.
She has been fed with (hard) cider that we brew from organic apples / juice.
Does your taste run to white wine or red wine vinegar? You'll love our other offers!