Pineapple scraps put in water and just let outside to ferment. It worked but because I was not checking it at all, a lot of the water evaporated.
I think each time I tip the bottle to use some ACV, the pellicle/SCOBY drops down.
haha just kidding. I placed my 1st attempt at ACV in this old vinegar bottle.
The ACV was not as strong as I wanted so relegated it to washing veggies and cleaning. It grew a healthy-looking SCOBY though.
Time to clear out the freezer. Accumulated 1 kg of apple scraps, 1032g to be precise.
Ori recipe calls for 1 heaped teaspoon sugar per apple. According to Google, medium apple is about 180g so added 6 heaped teaspoons of sugar.
200ml of my ginger bug to act as the yeast at the start of stage 1 in the fermentation.
Enough water to cover, which was 1400ml.
Weighed it down with a bag of water.
Will leave for 2 weeks before decanting and adding the mother from the last batch.
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.
I think it is a Brazilian Snapdragon. That's the closest result I could find.
This is my mum's recipe with a few adjustments...
Wash the pork (1kg belly) well and slice into 1 inch pieces.
Marinate the meat with the following...
Keep for 2 hours at room temperature, preferably in the pot that you are going to cook in.
Cook on high heat for 10 minutes, constantly stirring to avoid burning. Do not add oil or water, as the oil and moisture will come from the meat after a few minutes of cooking. (If you have to add water, just add the tiniest amount to prevent burning in the first few minutes before the oil starts appearing)
Cover and cook on low heat for a further 20 minutes. Open only once or twice to stir and make sure the meat is not burning.
Turn off the heat. Add 3 TBsp vinegar and salt to taste, and mix well.
My tips...
Don’t cut the pork too thinly.
Place meat in fridge if marinating for longer periods.
Adjust vinegar in the final step to suit how sour you want it. Vindaloo is actually pickled curry, so without the vinegar, it isn’t Vindaloo.
500g lean + 500g belly if you dont want so much fat.
For better flavour, refrigerate after cooking for 24 hours. Reheat and serve the next day.
It's strange but I dont have a picture of my vindaloo even though I cook it every 2 weeks or so. This is a pic of my sister's version. Basically the same but she adds a bit of water.
29Sep2020 update: ok I have a picture now...
I have seen references to vinegar in cooking, cleaning, gardening etc tc. So this will be ongoing list from articles I come across... uses for vinegar.
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!
Following this guy's method coz he seems like the only one who knows the science behind it all...
Slight variations but still sticking to his methodology...
- I won't be juicing the fruit.
- I will use my ginger bug instead of yeast
The ingredients and amounts I used...
1 litre dechlorinated water
357g apple scraps
1 TBsp white sugar
150ml ginger bug (liquid only)
The slightly cloudy top is from the ginger bug I added. It cleared up the next day.
Oh and later at the start of stage 2 I will add 2 TBsp Bragg acv.
Moved the apple scraps around daily.
17Aug2020 day2:
20Aug2020 day5: a thin pellicle has formed and as a result I havent mixed it today...
23Aug2020 day7: Removed solids. Total juice was 1239ml (145ml of that was from squeezing the solids through a cloth). After allowing to settle, I used the liquid minus the sediment which amounted to 1176ml. pH was around 5. Added 2 TBsp Bragg acv
Now wait till 12 Sept to test again.
29Aug2020 day14: First signs the liquid is clearing.
** 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.
This is just a test. The main thing I want to know is ... can I make vinegar with next to no regards for cleanliness and measurements?
If it works, I will use the vinegar for cleaning.
1. Cleanliness...
One of my neighbours passes me all her kitchen scraps for my compost. I will only use pears from that coz I know she eats them regularly. I wont wash it. I will just separate the pears from the rest and chuck them into a 1.5 litre plastic Coke bottle.
The bottle I chose was lying outside in my collection of plastic bottles to reuse. I rinsed it out with tap water.
2. Chlorine...
I used water direct from the tap so I know for sure it is chlorinated. All Youtube instructions stress the need for dechlorinated water. I will add rainwater too if available, but collected in my dirty buckets I use for gardening.
3. Dark place...
Its not going to be dark. It will be in the shade but still its quite a lot brighter than indoors.
4. Temperature...
Indoors is on the upper limit of what is recommended for making vinegar, under 30C. This test will be outdoors, so I think, even in the shade it will get to over 30C.
5. Measurements...
None at all. I put a teaspoon of white sugar, in about 500ml water. I will increase the water as I get more peels. The peels are whatever I get, so not much at the start.
6. Starter...
I will add just a tiny bit of ginger bug, maybe a tablespoon. That's hardly anything at all coz any recipe that calls for ginger bug asks for more than 100ml of the stuff.
7. Start and end dates...
This test will have multiple starting points coz I will just keep adding peels until it reaches maybe 3/4 of the container.
As for the end date. I will try to get my hands on some pH testing strips. Hopefully that will be the indicator the vinegar is ready. I dont want to taste it coz I dont know how much dirt will be in it.
19Aug2020 update: more from my neighbour...
21Aug2020 update: today I decided to simplify things and put both pear mixtures into one container. Both smelt and looked good before combining. The new container is nearly opaque so it will cut out most of the light. It has a wide mouth which will make handling bigger pieces easier. The screw top will not be tightened to allow for air. Tightened only for shaking it up.
28Aug2020 day 18: quite a nice pellicle/mother/scoby has formed.
Supposed to be good as a hair rinse.
Day0 9Aug2020: started. reddish flowers. all had no sweet smell.
Day7 16Aug2020: removed top layer of leaves.
The top was looking a little off. So opened it up to see. After removing a little, we realised that it was actually ok. But decided to remove all the leaves.
