How do i fix my apple cider and turn it to vinegar?

[Ariel]

I tried making hard cider with Red Delicious apples. I juiced them myself and bottled them. For this brew I wasn't so careful with sanitization as I should have been.

My recipe:

Juiced apples to fill 1 gallon carboy
Filtered off some of the pulp with a nutbag. Squeezed out some juice from the bag.
Poured in my carboy with safeale us-05.
Let it sit till I saw no more action in the airlock and then another week in the carboy

I periodically tasted it by pouring into a cup slowly to taste it. At first it tasted horrible like pure alcohol (to me). As I waited a couple of weeks it mellowed out with not much taste. Nothing that I would want to drink. At this point how can I turn it to apple cider vinegar?

If I try this again what should I do to get something that tastes good/decent?

 

[TheBluePhantom]

Cider often needs to be aged to have any flavor. 6 months to a year. I usually age a year.

Last year I had bad flavor, and the color was light green. I blame the apples, I will change orchards for next year, I had better luck at another one previously. Make sure you get tasty apples.

The severe hot alcohol taste is fusel alcohol. Not great, causes bad hangovers. Fermenting cooler will usually help, keep below 68F.

Bad sanitation is how you get vinegar in my experience. If you want it to be vinegar, you can buy vinegar culture, but it is not cheap.

If you like sweet cider, stabilize with pot meta, pot sorbate and back sweeten, that can bring some of the flavor out, or back sweeten with frozen concentrated apple juice, this will definitely boost the flavor.

If it is very little flavor, buy a bottle of flavoring at the brew shop or grocery. Apple juice is often used as a base for sugar and body in many other juices, ciders, etc. It is easily masked by other flavors. Stabilize it and put in lemonade mix, iced tea mix, or even koolade mix if you are really bored. Don't think of it as a failure, think of it as an opportunity for something new.

 

[TheBluePhantom]

If you have your heart set on vinegar.....

Vinegar Making Consumables - Vinegar Additives and Sanitizers

 

[Chalkyt]

I had an abundance of Red Delicious Apples this year and so made a small batch of straight Red Delicious Cider. I normally use them as fillers or to top up if I don't have enough other juice.

As expected it was a bit Blah! It was low in acid (around pH 4.1) with an OG of 1.055. Adding Malic Acid to bring the pH down to 3.4 gave it a bit of "bite" and made quite a difference. I addied the acid by taste rather than to reach a particular pH and didn't bother measuring the TA which with my apples is usually in the order of 7 g/L. It still wasn't great and a little insipid but useful to have as a quaffer. Adding about 1/3 Gravenstein juice helped a lot by giving it a slightly more complex taste, but adding the Malic Acid made the real difference .

I suspect that with single variety "eating apple" juice, much of the flavour comes from the sugars and goes away once they are converted into CO2 and alcohol.

I have made a Granny Smith and Pink Lady cider in the past and imagine that a Granny smith and Red Delicious might work O.K. also.

Maybe an approach like this will let you salvage your cider to a drinkable stage. Certainly adding crab apple juice or any tart apple is worth trying.

 

[Beer666]

If your cider tastes horrible your vinegar probably will too. I have used this method for making vinegar and works well enough.

Apple scrap vinegar > https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj0hOmMt7LxAhVGgFwKHSOTArYQFjAEegQIBhAD&url=https://www.thespruceeats.com/apple-scrap-vinegar-1327756&usg=AOvVaw2hPUo4D805L7AhuJhCnsxS

 

[madscientist451]

Blend the blah cider with beer.

 

[TheBluePhantom]

I have to agree with Chalkyt, Acid may be the issue as well. Malic will give you the typical apple 'tart' flavor. If you want more of a bite you can use Acid Blend, but for cider, I stick with Malic.

 

[Maylar]

At this point how can I turn it to apple cider vinegar?

You need something called a mother of vinegar. You can order them online, but some "natural" apple cider vinegars come with it in the jar.