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Honey, Vinegar Made From
A strong and excellent vinegar may be made from honey. Dissolve two pounds of pure honey in half a gallon of water. Put it into a small cask and leave the hole uncorked, merely covering it with a piece of muslin to preserve the liquid from dust, etc. Expose it to the heat of the sun--the hotter the better--and in about six weeks it will be ready for use. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for nearly three quarts of vinegar.
A two-stage ferment written as one step: wild yeast turns the honey water to a weak mead, then acetic bacteria turn that to vinegar. The recipe leaves both stages to chance, which is where most failures happen.
- The hinge: give it a motherNothing here inoculates the liquid, so the outcome depends on whatever yeast and bacteria drift in. Adding a little raw unpasteurised vinegar with visible mother, or a sachet of wine yeast followed by vinegar mother once fermentation slows, is what turns a hopeful jar into reliable vinegar.
- VesselA small cask is not needed and is hard to keep clean. Use a wide-mouthed glass jar or food-grade crock, filled no more than two-thirds so there is plenty of surface area for the acetic bacteria, which need air.
- The muslin mattersCover the mouth with muslin or a coffee filter under a rubber band. It keeps out dust and, more to the point, vinegar flies, which carry the bacteria but also carry spoilage organisms and lay eggs in an open jar.
- "Expose to the heat of the sun"Read this as warmth, not sunlight. Acetic fermentation runs best at around 80-85F, and steady warmth in a dim place is easier to manage than direct sun, which can overheat the vessel and encourage mould on the surface.
- The yield does not add upThe yield -- Half a gallon of water is two quarts, but the dissolved honey adds roughly half a quart of its own volume, which brings the total to about two and a half quarts and accounts for most of the "nearly three quarts" claimed. Work to the volume of liquid actually in your jar.
- Six weeks is optimisticWithout a starter, alcohol fermentation alone can take two to four weeks, and acetification another one to three months. Taste from week six onward and stop when it is sharp and no longer sweet.
- Testing before you pickleHoney vinegar is fine for dressings and drinking as it comes. If you intend to use it for preserving, test with pH strips or a titration kit and do not use it below 5 per cent acidity; home vinegars vary widely. Discard any batch that grows fuzzy coloured mould rather than a smooth grey-white film.
- Probable costTwo shillings was real money for a condiment in the 1870s, which puts this well above the price of bought vinegar.
Vinegar from honey is old in northern Europe, honey having been the available sugar before vines and cane were within general reach; mead that soured became honey vinegar, and it is recorded as a deliberate product in beekeeping households, made from the washings of the combs and the darker honey. Classical and medieval medicine leaned on it heavily: oxymel, a mixture of honey and vinegar, was a standard preparation for coughs and fevers for centuries and is still met with in nineteenth-century domestic manuals. The reliance on sun heat is characteristic of the period's fermentation instructions, written before anyone could name the acetic bacteria doing the work or hold a jar at a steady temperature.