I've had my first real success with vinegar. Other people who talk and write about vinegar make it sound as easy as falling off a log, but it has eluded me. I got a nice robust new mother to grow on a jar of old beer and it fell the other day, so I tasted it and it's great.
It's ready to use, but of course it's full of mother and sludge, so pictured below is the following process of filtration and renewal: on the left is a coffee filter slowly separating the finished vinegar from all the mother and sundry other gunks. In the center is the remainder of the unfiltered vinegar waiting its turn to be strained, and on the right are two more bottles of beer poured into a gallon tub to degas and receive the solids in the coffee filter and turn into *more vinegar.*
I also added 1/4 cup of sugar to the 24 fl. oz. of beer to give the bacteria something to munch on besides ethanol and hope. Now the cheese cloth goes back on and the jar goes back on the shelf. I'm thinking that this batch should go a little faster since I'm putting more mother in (the initial chunk plus what grew this time) and the particular bacteria that did well on this particular diet of beer should be right at home. For now... we wait...
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