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).