Word to your mother

The new year begins with experiments in vinegar... we had a stanky half box of wine so I decided to try my hand at making wine vinegar with it. How hard can it be, right? After some online searching, I learned that I need a vinegar mother to get things started. I had heard about mothers before, a sludge of microorganism goodness that is supposedly good for you, which is why cloudy cider vinegar is preferable over the filtered pasteurized kind. The internets told me to find bottled vinegar mother at wine and beer making stores, but no one in the city knew what I was talking about. Other websites said to just use cider vinegar. In the end, I realized that there was mother at the bottom of my organic white wine vinegar in the cupboard (it's that gooey stuff you can see in the pic), so I poured that in a bottle with the wine. I put a cheescloth over the top to allow for air circulation and put in on the shelf in the basement near the furnace (warm air is supposed to help..). So I'll let you know what happens, when it's done in six months!