Polski
You can find a variety of wine vinegars on store shelves, but I don’t know if I have ever seen real, unpasteurized homemade vinegar. And this one is the healthiest.
Who needs vinegar, pasteurized to death, with no life in it?
I’m crazy about consuming life (bacteria, enzymes), but also micro- and macronutrients, because of common deficiencies that result in the so-called civilization diseases.
This craziness led me to the idea of homemade vinegar, which would have much more of these super-bioavailable minerals than regular vinegar – the idea of fermentation using raw honey instead of refined sugar. It seems like nothing original, but I have not found this kind of vinegar anywhere before. So we have traditional minerals from fruit and additional ones from honey – can it get any better?
Yes it can if we ferment twice, or many times – then the nutrients from the fruit multiply with each subsequent fermentation.
The fermentation itself takes a long time, the whole process is natural, without speeding it up, using mineral water instead of chlorinated tap water, and the fruit and herbs that we add are either from our own garden or from our neighbors. The ingredients are super pure, although without certification, which would be completely unprofitable in the case of such short-term batches.
Our vinegars are therefore roughly divided into those that were fermented once or twice.
Multiple fermentation consists in using the ready made vinegar to make a new batch and as a result I get twice the concentration of nutrients and all of my favorite beneficial bacteria, enzymes and trace elements. In addition, they taste better and and clearly stronger, so if someone uses them to acidify the stomach, the bottle will last much longer.
The resulting vinegars are of such great quality that I personally use them only for food and health purposes (acidifying the stomach, daily isotonic drink with Anna Bee C MSM, salad dressings, meat marinades), but they are also great for a face tonic (1:1 with water) or a hair detangling conditioner spray, etc.
Vinegars are not exactly repeatable because I make them from what I happen to have at hand that is clean – grapes and lavender from my grandparents’ garden, virgin, unsprayed white transparent apples and cherries from our neighbor, elderberry from another neighbor, apples from a remote village, herbs from my own lawn, etc.
I buy other fruits only if they are organically grown, such as lemons from Sicily from Incampagna.pl, I also always insist on using organic non-Chinese ginger, etc.
So the supplies are uneven and are slowly running out, for example, lavender, graviola or elderberry this year.
In the blog post about digestive problems I have already written a bit, but I will repeat it here – in general, if someone has never drunk vinegar and would like to start, they should start with small amounts, such as a teaspoon per half a glass of water, so as not to irritate the stomach, but generally you should be guided by the taste – some people prefer a rather sour drink, others not so much.
I love vinegar made of currants, yarrow, or raspberries because I got bored with apple vinegar ages ago, but there are people who drink only apple vinegar and it never bothers them. For them I made vinegar from white transparent apples because it is supposedly ordinary apple vinegar, but in fact it is not 🙂
Of course, the fruit that I put inside are important because certain biochemical contents of the fruit are preserved, which can be seen in the color, aroma and taste – bacteria digest the sugar while a large part of everything else remains, which is why some people use elderberry for strengthening their organism or lemon-ginger for colds, etc.
So let’s briefly look at the types of vinegars available at the moment.
VINEGARS FERMENTED ONCE
1. Raspberry vinegar with elderberry juice – elderberry fruits, used in folk medicine for centuries, are known for their anti-inflammatory, diaphoretic, diuretic and analgesic properties, purifying the blood and supporting the removal of toxins from the body. A wild variety grows on the border of our plot. They were harvested on a hot day, squeezed and stuffed together with raspberries into a jar. 🙂 The advantage of juice over whole fruits is that it does not cause gastric problems.
2. Raspberry vinegar with a bit of apples from the garden – mixed vinegar, but only a little, mainly raspberry vinegar with a bit of apples that we picked at our family’s place in the countryside.
3. White transparent apple vinegar – how much apple cider vinegar can you drink, even it it’s the best? I was looking with interest at a huge transparent apple tree full of fruit that was far outside our fence when a neighbor appeared and asked if I wanted a few buckets. I couldn’t believe it! White transparent apple vinegar is more delicate than regular apple cider vinegar, and apple trees left to their own devices give the best fruit. It’s a great alternative for those who like apple cider vinegar but are looking for a variety.
4. Apple vinegar + grape mix – a combination of wild apples from the countryside and white, pink and dark grapes from grandpa. Grapes contain a whole lot of antioxidants, so they perfectly enrich the classic apple with anti-inflammatory properties.
5. Apple and yarrow vinegar – one of my favorite types of vinegar. Inconspicuous, small, white flowers of wild yarrow that grows on our lawn that has never been untouched by chemicals, fascinate me with their ability to transform – I would never expect that adding them to vinegar would produce such robust taste. They transform him like an ugly duckling. By the way, yarrow has been used since ancient times as an anti-inflammatory agent in peptic ulcer disease and to stimulate digestion and bile secretion so it is perfect for supplementing the processes of detoxification of the digestive tract, cleansing the liver, etc.
Due to its anti-inflamatory properties for the skin it can be used as an ingredient in cleansing and disinfecting toners for the skin, but it is best to dilute it a bit first.
6. Dark grape vinegar – with the authority of a someone who doesn’t drink wine at all, I can say that of all the vinegars this one resembles wine the most – in this form even I can pretend to be an 🙂 alcoholic. Delicious, really delicious. Grapes, of course, from my grandfather’s garden. Unsprayed, they grew and ripened in the sun on their own.
7. Red currant vinegar – this vinegar is something amazing – inside this bottle there is the vivid color and taste of red currants, and when, contrary to all the warnings, I decide to smell it, I have the impression that I am standing next to a bush covered with red fruit. The fruits that I used come from the Trzebnica Hills, famous for their viticulture. Summer, come back!
8. Apple, raspberry and graviola vinegar – organic graviola pulp from the Amazon jungle didn’t particularly appeal to me, but it brilliantly enhanced the apple and raspberry vinegar with its famous anti-cancer properties. Some people claim that graviola also helps to survive chemotherapy and reduce its side effects. I don’t know, but I assume that it is packed with anti-inflammatory goodness, and we can never have enough of that. It smells sweet, like candy, so those who are not allowed to eat sugar can inhale the scent coming from the 🙂 bottle
9. Lavender vinegar – this vinegar was a complete surprise for me. I don’t like the smell of lavender, so when my grandmother brought me an armful of flowers, I expressed my displeasure at ‘the stench’. However, I made vinegar out of them and… I fell in love. Lavender vinegar amazingly preserves the scent of lavender and is the only vinegar that I feel is a waste to drink, although it would probably be good to soothe my nerves. However, I use it to make a face tonic (1:1 with peat distillate) and a spray/conditioner for detangling my hair. However, I would like to point out that it is best to spray your hair after washing, but before drying, otherwise the vinegar smell will take longer to evaporate and not everyone likes that. However, in the case of long-haired blondes that are sent to school at the crack of dawn – I don’t worry about it at all, I just spray and comb, spray and comb, spray….
10. Vinegar from dark grapes, organic raspberries and apples – another version of the wine-like mixture, this time with eco-raspberries and apples from wild apple trees. As you can see from the dark red color, the mixture is full of bioflavonoids and antioxidants.
11. Cherry vinegar – an absolute experiment and an absolute surprise – smells and tastes like fresh cherries! Of course, the fruit comes from our huge cherry tree, which rewards us generously, albeit briefly, with buckets of goodness every year.
12. Detox vinegar: dandelion, kombucha, lilac – fermented lilac fruits brewed in the form of tea are the bullseye in liver detox, plus the detoxifying dandelion flowers from our lawn and kombucha that is full of life… if you don’t try it for the taste, they do if for the health. And in oxymel, no one will smell the olfactory shortcomings 😉
….and a few more varieties will appear in the store soon 😉
VINEGARS FERMENTED MULTIPLE TIMES:
1. Lemon-ginger vinegar – vinegar made from organic lemons straight from Sicily and non-Chinese eco-ginger. Some love it, some don’t, but most people choose it because of the synergistic effects of lemons and ginger on immunity. Perfect as a base for autumn and pre-harvest oxymel, not bad for weight loss diets 😉
2. Organic raspberry and lemon vinegar – very pleasant in taste, very popular, so we are almost out. But don’t worry, lemons are in blooming in Sicily, soon we will start a new batch and in a few months we will replenish the 😉 supplies
3. Organic blackcurrant vinegar – I fermented this blackcurrant vinegar four times, so it’s really VERY STRONG. In the last fermentation, I added a bit of our famous white transparent apples, which added a hint of sweetness to the taste. However, it is not sweet vinegar, far from it. It intensely tastes like currants and is very rich in everything that is good in currants – one teaspoon per glass of my daily isotonic drink is enough for me.
4. Macerated lavender with dandelion, kombucha and lilac vinegar – this detoxifying vinegar made of dandelion+ kombucha + fermented lilac may not be the king of taste and smell, but it can support the liver in detoxification. Macerated lavender, on the other hand, is great for tonics that cleanse the skin, especially acne-prone skin, although I also use it on my hair 😉
5. Eco-raspberry vinegar – raspberries fermented by adding raspberries? Why not! As a result I created an intensely raspberry-flavored, very dark and bioflavonoid-rich vinegar.
Soon the category of twice-fermented vinegars will also include white transparent apple and aloe vera vinegar which I will use to support the regeneration of the mucosa of my underacidified stomach. I’ll try to find some geraniums to add to it. Why not!
And here you can buy our real home made vinegars