I wanted an over ripe pineapple as recommended by some Mexican tutorials.
This one was that, and more! Rotting at the bottom!
By the time I cut out all the rotten parts, I was left with only half the fruit. So instead of using just the peels and core, I added all the good flesh too.
Sugar was gula melaka. I like being precise with measurements so that I can try to reproduce or adjust better next time. But what the heck ... since the pineapple threw me a curveball, lets just wing it with the sugar. 1 piece.
No spices this time. I want to see what the taste is like without complex flavours.
No ginger bug like the last time which resulted in carbonation on steroids!!
1 litre water looked too little.
1.5 litre looked too much! Hope I didnt dilute it too much.
Fyi whole fruit 1133g, Useable skin and flesh 574g, gula melaka 191g, water 1.5litre.
Since it's a lot faster than ginger beer, I will log by hours instead of days.
For methodology I loosely followed these guys...
Hour 00
Hour 15: Bubbling... not as crazy as the ginger bug version. That's one problem solved.
Taste was sweetish, but not enough pineapple taste for my liking. The plan is to bottle at 24 and 48 hours. If the pineapple taste doesn't come out more after 48 hours, I will try juicing core and flesh next time.
If you compare this pic with the video of the tepache method earlier, you will see that theirs took longer to get to this stage. My guess is the weather sped it up.
Hour 24: Bubbling. Sweet. Bottled 300ml of the tepache. Took out one small piece of flesh, squeezed its juice and pulp into the bottle too. Total 315g.
I like it a little less sweet so didnt take much tepache. Will wait till more sugar gets eaten up before I bottle the bulk of it.
Hour 38: Forgot about it last night. Bottle hard with carbonation. Refrigerated it. The rest tasted ok, less sweet.
Bottled 1200ml, with added pieces.
Added 700ml water and 3 tbsp white sugar just to see if I can extract another batch before composting the pineapple.
Hour 49: Refrigerated bottle 2
Hour 51: Refrigerated bottle 3&4. Opened bottle 1. Excellent taste and correct fizz.
Hour 53: Brew taste was ok, not as nice as with jaggery. Added 3 tbsp white sugar.
The next day: tastes not great. I didnt throw it out. Will keep as my next batch of pineapple vinegar.
Day10: I cant believe it!! I have vinegar already! And it tastes good. pH is around 3-3.5.
This is a summary of the vinegar experiments I have started. It's really addictive... I feel like starting a new batch of vinegar everytime I see some fruit lying around!
** The whole uncut pineapple was 1047g. Flesh 490g. Skin 428g.
With one pineapple, I am trying to...
A) grow another fruit using the top bit.
FAILED! No roots after more than a week. I must have bought a really old dead fruit or they did something to it to make it stop growing. Went into the compost.
B) make tepache with the flesh.
In this was...
1 litre water, 150g jaggery, 490g pineapple flesh (tasted almost sour so didnt expect this to succeed), all blended into a smoothie.
To that added 50g ginger from my ginger bug, 100ml ginger bug juice, 1 cinnamon stick, 4 cloves.
Covered with a cloth. The jaggery gave an illusion of a nice tasting result.
The next day tasted it and decided to throw it out! Thats how bad it tasted.
FAILED! The pulp will go into the compost.
I will try again and next time NOT use the ginger bug, and DO use a better sweeter pineapple.
C) make vinegar using the skin and core.
In this went...
80g white sugar, 900ml water (enough to cover the skin and cores), 428g skin and cores, 100ml ginger bug juice (instead of yeast)
I will follow roughly this guys instructions and timeline...
15Aug2020 update: bubbling nicely, no signs of mold, moved the top layer into the liquid.
16Aug2020 update: You can see it at the start of the video...
19Aug2020 day6:
If the bottle is moved, tiny bits of the pellicle drop off.
20Aug2020 update: It's day 7 and I was supposed to have strained out the solids today. But I am awaiting a reply on one of the forums to see what to do with the pellicle that has just formed on top...
21Aug2020 day8 update:
Took out all the solids. This pellicle was a thin film and powdery, unlike the thicker one in the acv batch1. I just sieved out the lot, pellicle, skin, core, and whatever.
It tasted ok, nothing great but better than expected considering the fact that the starting point was mostly pineapple skin and the core from a really tasteless fruit.
Now I presume stage one is done, converting the fruit sugar to alcohol.
The pH was 5.
Washed and baked the container.
Onto stage 2 of converting it to acetic acid / vinegar, hopefully with a pH of 3.
Added 2 TBsp of Bragg raw acv.
Strained again and left out the sediment.
Final liquid was 1112ml
acv batch1 on the left, this pineapple vinegar-to-be on the right.
Now wait!
10Sep2020 day28: FAILED :(
I did 2 tests. Firstly smell... it smelt like the toilet. Second was pH... it didnt even change colour. No acidity at all!
On the plus side, it did have a pellicle half sunken. Luckily I did enough research to tell me that the pellicle wasn't the mother. Or else I might have kept it and contaminated future batches.
***
So in conclusion... dont use any pineapple. This one was not sweet, it was not ripe either. Make sure it's over ripe, not rotting anywhere, no mold, and wash the skin thoroughly. I also suspect that pesticides could have been an invisible enemy.
I have one more pineapple vinegar in the making, using an over ripe fruit. I did include the skin so maybe that one's results will shed some light into the pesticide factor.
The next batch of pineapple vinegar will be without skin, just the flesh and core.
