preservation Favorite Vinegars to Use

[TV_LI_111]

Hi All,
 
Wanted to see what types of vinegar's everyone likes to use when making a shelf stable, bottled hot sauce.
 
I've really only used white distilled and apple cider, but both are extremely strong. For the white distilled especially, it makes some new sauces I've been trying out, too vinegary, which is not what I'm going for. It just seems to over power everything.
 
I don't know if all vinegar's are good to use for shelf stable hot sauces, but I did just order some rice wine vinegar, and white wine vinegar, as I've been told rice wine is not as strong, and white wine is used in a sauce I use at home.
 
Does anyone have any recommendations on this? Is rice vinegar good to use? I've seen some very conflicting things on google. Some saying rice vinegar and rice wine vinegar are the same, some saying they are not.
 
Thanks in advance!
 
 

 

[D3monic]

I love vinegar, I use ACV ( the good stuff), cane vinegar, rice wine vinegar, white wine vinegar, rarely balsamic, I like mixing vinegars finding that balance of tart and sweet.

 

[ShowMeDaSauce]

The ingredient list on that Greenist fig vinegar looks good. Its just fig vinegar and naturally occurring sulfites. Zero sugar. Product of Turkey.

 

[dragonsfire]

Sulfite's not that great as an ingredient for a Vinegar, I would guess the Figs were sulferized first.

 

[ShowMeDaSauce]

Sulfites occur naturally during fermentation.

Yeast naturally produce sulfites during fermentation so there is only a rare wine which contains none
 

 
Ferment apple juice sometime. The smell is often referred to as "Rhino Farts". Yeast produces SO2 during fermentation.
http://theorganicwinecompany.com/sulfites-in-wine-facts/

 

[The Hot Pepper]

The ingredient list on that Greenist fig vinegar looks good. Its just fig vinegar and naturally occurring sulfites. Zero sugar. Product of Turkey.

 
Yup, zero sugar means sugars fully converted so not a sweet vinegar like many would think... would like to taste it, probably a deep flavor good for BBQ or wings... with a plum sauce...

 

[ShowMeDaSauce]

Yeah, i would love to get my hands on a bottle if its cheap. Lots of the expensive Euro fig vinegars are infusions or balsamic types. Japanese fig vinegar is crazy expensive.

 

[The Hot Pepper]

I have a couple middle eastern shops here going to see what they have... that's where I get my canned paprika pulp (it's like tomato paste but peppers!) and pomegranate molasses. 

 

[kathylikeschiles]

Has anyone ever used Pineapple Vinegar? I have some in my fridge that I made and am wondering about using it. I've got a bunch of ghost peppers and want to make a fermented sauce with some of them. I've never done this, so I'm a little nervous about trying it. 

 

[salsalady]

Greetings kathy~. to thp.

Check out the fermenting 101 thread in the making hot sauce section. The peppers can be fermented, but don't add any kind of vinegar to the ferment. Vinegar will kill the fermentation.

Pineapple vinegar sounds really interesting. Maybe ferment the peppers and then add some pineapple vinegar when processing.

 

[nice.chili]

My go to "white" vinegar is Maille chardonnay white wine vinegar. Of course it's not white vinegar, but it's pretty smooth stuff.
 
And Maille also make lots of other interesting vinegars... I've made some real nice sauces with their raspberry / mango / fig vinegars. (Duly noted I'm in a position to have relatively easy access to these.)

 

[nattymari]

I use white wine or champagne vinegar. I find the lower acidity lets the pepper flavor dominate.

 

[ProjectileTeeth]

Has anyone ever tried using red wine vinegar? I imagine it would lend some powerful flavor, but I cant imagine what would pair well with it.

 

[The Hot Pepper]

You have to worry about muddying the color of your sauce, but for red sauce sure.

 

[Maverick27]

My Chili Sauce recipe recommends use of Malt Vinegar.
 
Unfortunately, i can't find it in the local shops.
 
Can I substitute it with normal, distilled table White Vinegar (or rice vinegar) ?
 
I've seen brown vinegar, which it seems is not the real thing, only some colour added to it.
 
 

 

[dragonsfire]

you can use any vinegar, will be just a slight different taste.

 

[ShowMeDaSauce]

Has anyone ever tried using red wine vinegar? I imagine it would lend some powerful flavor, but I cant imagine what would pair well with it.

 

I like it with ripe jalapeno hot sauce or mixed with cider vinegar.

 

[ShowMeDaSauce]

My go to "white" vinegar is Maille chardonnay white wine vinegar. Of course it's not white vinegar, but it's pretty smooth stuff.
 
And Maille also make lots of other interesting vinegars... I've made some real nice sauces with their raspberry / mango / fig vinegars. (Duly noted I'm in a position to have relatively easy access to these.)

 

Chardonnay is one of my favorites but it can be very expensive here.

 

[ShowMeDaSauce]

Got a bottle or Datu Puti black/red whatever cane vinegar today for just $1.69 in glass. Haven't gotten around to sampling it yet.

Sukang Iloco is a sugarcane vinegar made from an Ilocano wine called basi. The sugarcane is cooked into a molasses-like syrup, where it is further left to ferment into a light, sweet sugarcane vinegar.
 

 

[Chorizo857_62J]

Well the advertising looks interesting..  Waiting for your review.

 

[Pharthan]

I've been experimenting with different vinegars thusfar, and so far my go-tos are rice-vinegar and white vinegar. I'd sworn off regular white vinegar after I tried using Heinz, which seems to make everything just taste vinegary, and not in the way I wanted it to, even if I used 50% vinegar/50% water.
Rice vinegar really seems to work for a lot of my verde sauces as it helps to keep the original flavor pretty well while lowering the pH, and it also seems to keep it relatively smooth. After a recent blunder with white-wine vinegar in my red-paper-flake/cayenne powder ferment experiment (the white-wine vinegar simply has too much of a non-complimentary flavor for the perfection I'm looking for - I like it, but it could be better), I decided to go back to white vinegars. 

I asked my wife to pick up vinegar that she thought looked like quality vinegar (neither of us really seems to know how to tell, and I hadn't been having luck), and she grabbed White House Vinegar.
Surprisingly, the stuff is cheap as all get-out comparatively to what I'm using, is available just about everywhere that I can tell, and after using it and no water at all in a sauce I'm making now, the flavor is just right. Smooth vinegar flavor, but not overpowering. I've currently got it pickling some jalapeno slices and a non-fermented verde-sauce experiment I'm working on.

It's now going to be my go-to vinegar, I think.