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I accidentally created rice wine vinegar a couple of weeks ago, and it was the first time it happened. How the hell did that happen, and what am I going to do from now? I have made other vinegars in the past, how does this fit in with that?

I have two 12-ounce bottles of rice wine vinegar with me. I didn’t intend for it to be this way.

I just forgot about an old batch of rice wine for several months, beyond what I usually do, and it turned into vinegar. The two bottles taste quite different, and I say that in a good way. What I want to do is mix them and combine the flavor, let it mature for a bit more, and then eventually use it in my cooking.

The reason they turned out different is because one of the containers was attacked by a bunch of fruit flies. That probably changed the chemistry of the booze and caused it to turn into vinegar faster, due to yeast cells on their legs and on their bodies. The other one is a bit funky, I think, because it probably didn’t get as many yeast cells and didn’t get to ferment properly, and there was probably some sort of bacterial fermentation that I didn’t necessarily care for. So, the one with additional yeast is a bit sour and the one without the additional yeast is a bit off-flavor. If I mix them enough, they will consolidate into a more unified flavor.

That’s one of the things I’ve understood. Even in the same batch across different containers, it’s very difficult to maintain consistency. So, big blends of wines and whiskeys and beers are used for creating consistency across batches and within the same batch because there are so many different variables to control. It’s literally not possible. So I’m going to have a vinegar blend for myself.

This is not the first kind of vinegar I have made. I have also accidentally/on purpose made a couple of batches of kombucha tea vinegar. It’s a bit harsh, a bit tannic, but you know for sure it’s vinegar, and if you weren’t told it was kombucha vinegar, you would think it was a smoky-flavored vinegar of some sort.

That vinegar has lasted me for a couple of years, and the great thing is, there’s no way for it to spoil further. So, it’s been pretty great. The one reason I don’t use the tea vinegar as much as I use a distilled cooking vinegar or rice wine vinegar is because it’s too flavored, and unless I want that kombucha tang on my food, it’s not the best tool in the toolset. But with this rice wine vinegar, I could probably just make it always going forward, and it would be really good.

So, what do I want to do going forward?

I’m thinking of putting the two bottles into one larger bottle and adding a bit of sugar so it can further, completely go sour and the yeast get additional energy to further break down the off-flavors. I also want to age it a bit, so it has a more clear, clean flavor, and again, the raw flavors die out. One potential way to really speed up the aging process would be to start bubbling air into it, and I do have an air bubbler for this particular purpose, but I don’t want to do that because there’s no urgent need for me to do that. Ideally, my goal with this batch of rice vinegar is to have it as good as store-bought rice vinegar, if not better. That way, I know for sure that I can create a product that’s better than market offerings with minimal effort.

Even though vinegar making has been accidental mostly, I have grown kind of interested in it because this is also a field that has been mostly automated at an industrial scale, but there’s a lot of craftsmanship and handmade vinegars around as well. Often, you can turn any wine into vinegar, and I already have an old wine that’s now vinegar that I use sometimes. You can also use fruit juices, add yeast to them, and turn them to vinegar. There are so many opportunities to experiment in this additional field, that I want to do more of this. The fun thing with vinegar making is you can be quite lazy about it. You can let your other booze go bad, and the worst thing that will happen is it’ll turn into vinegar, which you can still use to cook your food. That’s exciting for me. Now, it’s a different matter that I don’t cook anywhere near enough to warrant the vinegar usage, but that’s beside the point.

I’m also thinking if I can smoke the vinegar or add additional flavoring to the vinegar at the end, after it’s been finalized and pasteurized, so that way the fermentation has stopped and the flavor won’t be fermented away. But the acidity of vinegar will still preserve the flavor, so flavored vinegar with additional flavors could still be an interesting thing to explore.