Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - Re: [NAFEX] old chokecherry wine/aronia

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] old chokecherry wine/aronia
  • Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 14:04:11 -0500

At 06:35 PM 9/26/2002 +0000, Del rote:
"wine is wine, vinegar is vinegar" My wife doesn't believe it, I'll ride the fence in ignorance.....but we both remember hearing that a fruit fly in a wine bottle can make wine into vinegar.....and we have a bottle of 'red wine vinegar'..?

Here's where my industrial microbiology course from my college days, years ago, comes in handy.

They may be doing it differently on an industrial scale now, but traditionally, vinegar has been made by allowing the fermentation of carbohydrates - the sugars/starches in fruits, grains, etc. to produce ethanol. So long as this process is kept under anaerobic conditions, when the alcohol level reaches the point that it kills off the yeasts, you end up with a stable alcohol product. But, if anaerobic conditions are lost and Acetobacter bacteria, which are ubiquitous in nature, are introduced( like on that fruit fly) the Acetobacter organisms can then convert the ethanol to acetic acid(vinegar).


Lucky Pittman
USDA Zone 6
Hopkinsville, KY





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page