Finished grape juice vinegar experiment

Home made grape juice vinegar.  Jar on left is filtered vinegar and larger jar on right is unfiltered vinegar.  Notice the ring of slime and layers of slime around the larger jar.  The upper ring is mostly yeasts and molds that fermented sugar into alcohol, and the lower slime layers are mostly Acetobacter sp. bacteria that metabolized the alcohol into acetic acid or vinegar.

It has been four weeks since I started my batch of grape juice vinegar.  (Click here for original post)  For some unknown reason this batch is a lot "cleaner" looking then the last batch of cider vinegar I made.  Despite the differences in appearance it was still the same process that made this batch of sugary grape juice into a vinegar.  This batch started with grape juice and sugar, then when through fermentation where yeasts and molds converted the sugar into ethyl alcohol.  Once alcohol levels were high the yeasts and molds were killed off for the most part and Acetobacter sp. bacteria metabolized the alcohol into acetic acid making it vinegar.

This batch of vinegar tasted much better then my previous batch.  I believe using the old vinegar as a starter and adding extra sugar was the key.  It had an interesting complicated sort of flavor.  A sort of sweet, fruity, musty, acidic flavor.  It might not win any state fare prizes but I'm satisfied by the fact that it tasted at least somewhat good.