Real Food Friday Feast - Homemade apple cider vinegar

I am so excited to be able to finally post this! I have been trying to make my own apple cider vinegar for about a year! I kept trying different recipes I found, and none of them worked... until now:)

We drink apple cider vinegar daily in our house. In case you aren't sure why, I did an entire post on the benefits of it and how to drink it. Just to recap though, apple cider vinegar has been scientifically proven to help cure, improve, and/or prevent the following:

• Diabetes
• High cholesterol
• Blood pressure and heart health
• Cancer
• Weight loss

Other known benefit and uses for it include:

• Detoxification
• Strengthen the immune system
• Aid digestion
• Prevent bladder stones and urinary tract infections
• Increase stamina
• Alleviate symptoms of arthritis and gout
• Reduce sinus infections and sore throats
• Improve skin conditions such as acne
• Protect against food poisoning
• Prevent muscle fatigue after exercise
• Fight allergies in both humans and animals
• Prevent bad breath when used as a gargle mixed with water
• Prevent body odour when used externally
• Prevent night time leg cramps

Sounds like something you might want to include in your daily diet, doesn't it? The thing is, if you are going to take it as a tonic, you don't want to be using the cheap, refined variety you find at a grocery store. Those have been stripped of all goodness and loaded with preservatives and will probably do more harm than good. You want to use the raw, organic kind that contains what's known as "The Mother". "The Mother" is that cloudy sediment that settles on the bottom of the vinegar bottle if you leave it to stand for a while and it is made of of living nutrients and bacteria which is why it is so beneficial for you.

Dischem sells a brand of raw apple cider vinegar for R19.95. It's the brand above in the picture. The only problem with it is that it isn't organic, but it IS raw. If you go for the organic one, you are looking at about R40 at least. If you drink it daily, as we do, that ends up costing a fair bit a month. So I thought, why keep buying it if I can make it?! Hence the constant experiments. 

It didn't really cost me anything to experiment because all I used were apple peels and cores, and water. I add an apple a day to our breakfast smoothie so all I did was peel and core the apple before adding it to the smoothie. I placed all the apple peels and cores in a container in the fridge and I collected them for a couple of weeks and then, when I had a decent amount, I'd experiment. But it wasn't working and I finally discovered that there was a vital ingredient missing all along that should have been obvious to me, and wasn't! The sugar was missing! Duh...

The sugar is absolutely necessary as part of the fermentation process because it feeds the bacteria. You don't have to worry though. It all gets eaten up by the bacteria as your vinegar is brewing so you won't be ingesting sugar when your apple cider vinegar is ready.

So, without further ado, here is the recipe!

Apple Cider Vinegar

CLEAN apple peels and cores (They MUST be organic, sweet apples. Granny smith won't work too well and the more you have, the merrier!)

1 cup sugar (or 3 Tbs honey)

2 litres clean, filtered water (or boiled tap water left to cool)

Big glass container

Method

• Boil your kettle and fill the glass container with boiling water and swirl it around to get it nice and clean, then pour the water out (you don't want your good bacteria to be fighting any other bacteria. You want them to focus on making you vinegar!)
• Quarter fill the container with boiled water again and add the sugar or honey
• Mix until dissolved
• Add some cool, filtered water to about halfway (so that you don't cook your apple peels!)
• Place all apple off-cuts into the container
• Top up with cool, filtered water
• Take a piece of cheesecloth, or a stocking (something that will prevent bugs falling in while still letting air in!) and use an elastic band to attach it over the top of the container.

I just used a little tea tray cloth I inherited from an elderly relative;)

• Be sure to mark the date you started the process somewhere on the container (I got this handy 3 litre jar from Westpack for about R30 and it gets used A LOT)
• Put it somewhere out of the way where it will be warm (ish) I put mine on top of the fridge because fridges tend to throw a lot of heat
• It needs to sit for about 2 weeks (yes, this is not a quick one!)
• If you peek at it during the course of the 2 weeks you'll see it starts to bubble a bit and even grow a little mold. This is all good believe it or not. Leave it be!
• After 2 week, strain the apple off cuts and mold out and pour the liquid into a clean jar that's also been cleaned out thoroughly with boiling water
• Place the cheesecloth back over the opening of the container and put it back on top of the fridge
• Keep checking it once a week to see how it smells. It'll first turn to cider and then vinegar. You'll know when it's vinegar. It's not a hard smell to pin down;) Once you can smell vinegar, taste it and see how strong it is. If you are happy with it, decant the liquid into smaller bottles, put the lids on and store in a cupboard or pantry. It keeps indefinitely!

You will notice that the longer the vinegar sits, the more of "the mother" it develops. 

Don't strain that out. It's so incredibly good for you and it doesn't make it taste bad or anything. Without that stuff, you're pretty much wasting your time. When you are going to use it, just shake the bottle up so you get some of it into you. You'll see it doesn't make it taste any different, it's not chewy or grainy or chunky. It blends in so it's not even noticeable. 

The scoby

You may even notice that your vinegar develops a scoby. A scoby is a spongy layer that usually sits on the top of your vinegar and it is a culture of yeast and bacteria. It looks revolting and feels worse but don't let it freak you out;)This is a very GOOD thing. It means you can use it to make your next batch of vinegar and it will be even easier. Put it in a container and pour some of your vinegar over it to protect it. Remember, it is a LIVING thing. Just keep it in a dark cupboard, covered with vinegar, until you're ready to make more vinegar.

This is a more frugal method because it only uses apple peels and cores but, if you want to spend a little money and get more bang for your buck, use whole apples. You'll see in the picture I posted with the 11/10/13 date, that I used whole apples. I ended up using 7 of them. Just chop them up and core them. If you think about how much you spend on one bottle of apple cider vinegar at a store, and how many bottles you end up with when you make homemade vinegar, it's not a lot of money to spend at all. I bought my apples from pick n pay. They often have organic apples so go and check them out. Failing that, visit your local farmer's market and get yourself some.

Once you have made a batch of your own vinegar, you can actually use it to start the next batch. If your vinegar didn't develop a scoby, that's fine. Just add a couple of tablespoons of your vinegar, containing "the mother" to your next batch and it will speed up the process.

You may notice that your homemade vinegar isn't as strong as the store bought one. I'm not entirely sure why this is. But it's really, really good for you and it's far easier to drink as well so I don't see it as a problem.

And how do you drink this stuff on a daily basis? Well, it's really simple. We have it before we have anything else in the morning. So I make it, and drink it while I'm feeding the cats and packing GLM's lunch and making our breakfast. Here's how to drink it:

• Half fill a mug with hot water
• Add a teaspoon of raw honey and mix until dissolved
• Add a dash of cinnamon (this is optional but it makes it taste yummy and cinnamon is also really good for you!)
• Top the mug up with cold water
• Only THEN, stir in 2 capfuls (or tablespoons) of vinegar (the reason you do it last is because it's raw and it contains LIVE bacteria. If you pour those into hot water, you will kill them and that will defeat the whole object)
• Drink!

That's it! Super easy and super good for you!

Have a wonderful, healthy weekend:)