Our fourth and last vinegar for this year - Quince Vinegar.
Made with gorgeous looking and smelling Quinces (Quitten auf Deutsch).
Quince is a "... deciduous tree that bears hard, aromatic bright golden-yellow pome fruit, similar in appearance to a pear. Ripe quince fruits are hard, tart, and astringent. They are seldom eaten raw, but are processed into marmalade, jam, paste (known as quince cheese) or alcoholic beverages." (Wikipedia)
And again, just like with our other vinegars, just three ingredients.
Self-picked Quinces from our friend's garden.
Those we cut into pieces.
And they go into our glass jars.
Once the jars are filled...
We add a decent amount of unrefined Organic (BIO) sugar. It is exactly the same sugar that we use to make our Bärbucha Kombucha.
It already looks delicious.
And finally, when all set, it is ready for the first part of fermentation. This is the so called "Anaerobic" fermentation, which means "without oxygen".
At this point our jars are closed (the cloth is for decoration only), and during this phase, natural yeasts that are present on fruits (Quinces in this case), break down our unrefined sugar and produce ethanol.
That ethanol will be converted into acetic acids in the following second fermentation.
But before that happens, it will take about a month for the ethanol build up.
After a month, all sugars are gone, and it is time to strain the fruit.
And here, you can see two jars.
The liquid in the strained jar looks different than the one with Quinces still in it. But that is because yeasts and some pulp got mixed back with the clear liquid. After a week or so, it will clarify again.
So, now it will be at least a month till, this liquid gets transformed into vinegar.
It actually took a bit longer for this vinegar to be ready.
One of the reasons for that is the lower temperatures that we had in our Fermentery, and that was a result of first, a Christmas break, and then of our Winter break.
With the solids down on the bottom, the liquid is relatively clear again, a beautiful Vinegar Mother built herself on top of the liquid.
That can be seen on this showcase jar that was sitting on our display window.
So now, it was definitely time to transfer the contents of the first jar into some retail bottles, and the rest into extra glass storage containers.
Finally, our Quince Vinegar in the good company of our other raw vinegars.
Ingredients: Raw and Unfiltered Quince Vinegar
To purchase / zum Kaufen klicke bitte unten.