We'll know how this will turn out in about a month!
This morning before brunch and with the help of a certain roommate, Ryan was persuaded to pick up a pineapple from the store for the weekly celebration of food and friends. I asked him to save the peels, as I have meant to try my hand at making pineapple vinegar.
The real peel
While I’ve seen a few recipes that use chunks of pineapple, this method promotes efficiency, eating the tasty inside of the fruit, while finding a role for the more prickly parts.
I’ve been admittedly slow on the vinegar-love train. Only when introduced to a spicily infused apple cider vinegar in Portland last year did its culinary uses pass my palette’s path. Nowadays, vinegar has found many applications in my comings and goings: white hangs out in the cabinet under our sink for cleaning, apple cider will cook large cabbage salads in the refrigerator. Though it’s been a while since a red wine or balsamic graced the shelves of my living quarters, I would return to them in equal enthusiasm.
The impetus to give this concoction a try also arrived with my new gallon jars, another addition to my food project arsenal.
Thank you Orem, Utah!
Already, I have a gallon or so of Kombucha Tea brewing up (thanks Jonny), and I plan to have some Egyptian beer started early next month. Spring’s around a few corners in Chicago, but I’d love a vat of Kim Chee readied as the city emerges from its hibernation. The increase in batch-size of fermenting projects reminds me of last summer’s gallon of vegetable ferment at Fort Awesome, made when I was cutting my teeth in what would become the forceful obsession of sticking food in jars for weeks and seeing what would come of it. The beauty of these jars derives from their wide mouths, offering an increase in surface to air exposure, keeping both mold and longer fermenting times both farther and further from my projects. It also will be much easier to reach for bok choy at the bottom and manipulate stuff with my hands and utensils if needs be. Needless to say, with warmer weather will come more brewing over in this part of the country at an even greater ease.
I dispatched with these in minutes at brunch today, because I had a headache and wasn't much on talking. Apologies if I seemed moody guys!
My favorite blurry picture out of the bunch.
Dissolve 1/4 cup of sugar into a quart of water, and add chopped pineapple material and give it a swirl or two. I doubled the recipe. As always seems to be the case when fermenting in a wide mouth jar, cover the opening with a towel secured to the jar with a rubber band. Find a dark spot, or at least a place out of direct light, for this mixture to rest and relax. The liquid will become dark after about a week or so, at which point the pineapple pieces should be strained. The fermenting vessel should be returned to a dark spot, towel-covered and all, and allow to ferment for another two to three weeks. It should be ready by then (I’ll have to keep you folks posted on how it turns out).
Silly simple graph
One crucial difference in this ferment: it’s the first completely aerobic fermentation on this site and the first that I have attempted. Alcoholic ferments rely on seclusion from air; when such liquids come in contact with air, Acetobacter bacteria and Mycoderma aceti yeasts convert alcohol to the acetic acid that we all know and love (correct me if I’m wrong, any scientists who are reading this). The emphasis on contact with air provides a nice change of pace for this fermenter: most of the time in vegetable pickling I’m trying to avoid it! Because making vinegar entails an aerobic process, stirring occasionally to increase air exposure will help the conversion along.
You might be asking yourself what I’m going to do with a half gallon of pineapple vinegar…the vague answer: anything I want to! The more detailed answer might be that I want to enjoy pineapple type in the way I usually enjoy vinegar: on a salad or mixture with water as a beverage, to spice up some roasty vegetables. I’m also hoping to separate this huge amount into smaller containers, to produce a few different infusions (garlic, hot pepper, ginger etc.). Maybe I can even gift a bit to friends (I’ll see what I can do Kirstin). In any case, it should be ready at the end of March.
Kirstin wanted to admire this fellow before I set him up high on a shelf in our closet.
Fermenting on the Brain 