our peach saga lead to a lot of not great peach bits. we set out to make two large batches of fruit vinegar. did peaches, sugar water, nothing else in two large plastic containers. the particular recipe we found literally said let it sit for a week under cheesecloth. we thought that was perfect since we went on a week long vacay. came back today and I’ve got a medium bit of blue-ish mold on one and a fair bit more on the other on checking further almost every other recipe says stir daily.
at this point ive scooped off the mold. the mixture smells like it’s still in the alcohol phase. I added some white vinegar to help acidify it earlier so maybe the mold doesn’t grow as rapidly.
am i sunk? I’ve seen everything from throw it out now to just keep scraping it off to a more common scrape it off and if it comes back then you’re sunk…what would you do? this is two 2.5 gallon batches that I really don’t want to throw out.
Hi Mark, While I’ve never made peach vinegar I have made quite a bit of apple and wine vinegar. I’ve had to throw some out in the early years because it didn’t get working early enough and got mold or other things going. Now I add something to begin with to make sure it gets going in the right direction, what depends on what else I have going or have on hand. Basically you’re making wine then vinegar and want to get the right bugs working. These are what I’ve used:
Wine yeast
Unpasturized Cider Vinegar such as Bragg’s (or some of my own previous made vinegar)
Homemade (no additives or chemicals) wine, or the lees from a current wine crock
Mother from a previous batch. I usually save a jar of mother. Not something you’ll have this time but if all goes well, save some mother for next time.
The purpose, and goal, is to get the right ferment going, wine or vinegar. You might try generously skimming off the mold and adding one of the above. Unpasturized cider vinegar (not white vinegar) would probably be my first choice.
on checking further almost every other recipe says stir daily.