Problem making wine vinegar

Hello Sarge, My vinegar has been great until this batch. I have never seen the "mother' before. There is always a lot of sediment in the bottom and a slight scum on top, but no layer of the gelatinous substance. It has a beautiful, but sharp nose. Sometimes when we have friends over for wine, we end up tasting vinegar samples to see how they are when made from different wines. I had some that I made with a full bodied zin. The zin was originally very good, but tannic. I cellared some of it too long. It didn't get oxidized tasting, the balance was just terrible. The vinegar from it had a very good flavor.

When you start the vinegar, you have to have a fairly low alcohol content (I'd guess about 12%) or you need to add water to lower the concentration because the aceto bacter doesn't tolerate high levels of alcohol. The first time I made vinegar, I used a sample from a bottle of wine that had turned to vinegar. The wine wasn't very good, so I corked it and set it aside in the cellar. About a month later I was dumping it out and it smelled and tasted like vinegar. Then I started adding wine.

I'd like to learn about the balsamic vinegar, too. So far, I buy the vinegar from Modena that is available in the grocery stores, but I'd like to get a couple of small wood containers to use for making my own vinegar with left-over wine.

Fred

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