How and why to make apple cider vinegar that is raw, enzyme and probiotic-rich for all your detoxification, cooking, and medicinal needs. This recipe uses raw honey, which makes the final result even more healthful and potent.
It’s apple season in many parts of North America which will continue through the Fall. Time to take advantage of the seasonal bounty and make some raw apple cider vinegar! If you don’t have locally grown apples available in your community, a bag of organic apples from the health food store or veggie co-op will work just fine.
Unpasteurized, or raw apple cider vinegar is expensive, so making your own is very thrifty. A typical quart of organic, raw apple cider vinegar will run you $5 or more at most health food stores. You can make a whole gallon, four times that amount, yourself for about the same price or even less if you use apple scraps that you were going to throw out or use for composting anyway.
Which Apples Make the Best Raw Apple Cider Vinegar?
A mixture of apples produces the best tasting and most healthful raw apple cider vinegar. Making it is very similar to kombucha. If you’ve made this or other fermented beverages before, you will find the process simple.
If homebrewing is new to you, try these approximate ratios for your first batch or two and then change it up from there to your own personal liking:
- 50% sweet apples (Golden Delicious, Fuji (my fave), Gala, Red Delicious)
- 35% sharp tasting apples (McIntosh, Liberty, Winesap, Northern Spy, Gravenstein)
- 15% bitter tasting apples (Dolgo crabapples, Newtown, Foxwhelp, Porter’s Perfection, Cortland)
In my neck of the woods, bitter-tasting apples are hard to find. If this is your predicament as well, simply increase the proportion of sweet apples to 60% and the sharp-tasting apples to 40%. While the flavor of this mixture won’t be as complex as with the inclusion of some bitter apples, it will still taste fine.
If all you have is a single apple tree in the backyard, however, feel free to use just that one variety to make your raw apple cider vinegar!
Uses and Benefits
The uses for raw apple cider vinegar are seemingly endless. It’s widely used in homemade tonics, recipes and even for cleaning. I like to use it for detox bathing (1 quart to a tubful of warm water). Friends of mine use raw apple cider vinegar as a hair rinse or for a natural, at-home hair detox.
The well known Master Tonic, a natural flu anti-viral, uses raw apple cider vinegar as the fermenting medium. It’s also an essential ingredient in all types of bone broth made at home.
Pasteurized apple cider vinegar doesn’t have the same benefits as raw apple cider vinegar. Valuable vitamins, probiotics, and enzymes are destroyed by the heating process. If you are going to go to the trouble of making apple cider vinegar, always make it raw for maximum benefits. Another problem with pasteurized ACV in the store is that it is frequently packed in plastic. The acidic ACV leaches chemicals into the vinegar! If you must buy apple cider vinegar, always buy it packed in glass.
How to Make Raw Apple Cider Vinegar
The recipe below outlines step by step instructions on how to make apple cider vinegar that is potent enough to use for all your medicinal, detoxification, cleaning and cooking needs. It is no doubt the most beneficial vinegar to have in your home followed by traditional balsamic vinegar.
Please always store any type of vinegar in glass containers. Storing in plastic risks leeching contaminants into your cider vinegar.
3 Medicinal Uses
Your homemade apple cider vinegar can be used not only in the kitchen and for cleaning. Try it in a vinegar bath (2 cups per tubful) to greatly aid detoxification.
It works much better than a skin-damaging bleach bath for relieving eczema symptoms too.
To ease acid reflux symptoms and for a natural cal/mag supplement, soak crushed eggshells in your homemade ACV to make a simple eggshell and apple cider vinegar remedy. 1 teaspoon in 8 oz of water up to 3 times a day works wonders.
DIY ACV can also be used to make a vinegar compress for sprains and bruises. This is what people used before ice was readily available, and believe it or not, raw vinegar works extremely well!
How to Use the ACV Mother
After you’ve made a few batches of ACV at home, you may notice that you have a number of vinegar mothers stacking up! What to do with them?
First of all, know that these are living cultures that have a number of beneficial uses around the home. Here are some suggested ideas instead of just throwing them out:
- Share them with friends so that they can make their own apple cider vinegar too!
- Use them as a gentle, rejuvenating face mask.
- Add them to the compost bin for fertilizing the garden.
- Dry them out at a low temperature (less than 150 F/ 65 C) in a food dehydrator or a warm oven. The low temperature will preserve any food enzymes as well as the probiotics. After drying, cut them into strips and eat them like fruit leather. Store in an airtight container in a cool pantry or the refrigerator.
Apple Cider Vinegar Recipe
Step by step instructions on how to make apple cider vinegar that is raw, enzyme and probiotic rich for all your detoxification, cooking, and medicinal needs.
Ingredients
- 5 large apples or scraps of 10 apples, preferably organic
- filtered water
- 1 cup raw honey preferably local and organic
Instructions
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Before you can make your raw apple cider vinegar, you must first make hard apple cider. The alcohol in the hard cider is what transforms via fermentation into acetic acid, which is the beneficial organic compound that gives apple cider vinegar its sour taste. Nature is amazing!
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Wash the apples and coarsely chop into pieces no smaller than 1 inch. Cores, stems and seeds may be included.
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Put the chopped apples into a 1 gallon, clean, wide mouth, glass jar. Please do not brew your apple cider vinegar in stainless steel pots, as the acidic vinegar will causing leaching of heavy metals such as carcinogenic nickel.
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The chopped apples should at least fill half the container and maybe a bit more. If at least half the container is not filled, add additional apple scraps until you achieve this level as a minimum.
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Pour in room temperature filtered water until the chopped apples are completely covered and the container is just about full leaving a couple of inches at the top.
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Stir in the raw honey or cane sugar until fully dissolved.
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Cover the top of the glass jar with cheesecloth, a thin white dishtowel or floursack cloth and secure with a large rubber band.
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Leave on the counter for about 1-2 weeks, gently mixing once or twice a day. Bubbles will begin to form as the sugar ferments into alcohol. You will smell this happening.
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When the apple scraps no longer float and sink to the bottom of the jar after approximately one week, the hard apple cider is ready. If for some reason, the apple pieces still do not sink to the bottom after 2 weeks but the mixture smells alcoholic, proceed to the next step anyway.
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Strain out the apple scraps and pour the hard apple cider into a fresh 1 gallon glass jar or smaller sized mason jars of your choosing.
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Cover with a fresh piece of cheesecloth and secure with a rubberband.
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Leave on the counter in an out of the way spot for an additional 3-4 weeks to allow the alcohol to transform into acetic acid by the action of acetic acid bacteria (these are the good guys!). A small amount of sediment on the bottom is normal. In addition, a mother culture will form on top, similar to what happens with kombucha.
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Taste your raw apple cider vinegar to determine if it is ready starting after 3 weeks. If it has the right level of vinegar taste for you, strain it one more time and store in clean, glass mason jars or jugs. After 4 weeks, if the taste still isn't quite strong enough, leave it for another week and try again. If you accidentally leave it too long and the taste is too strong, just strain and dilute with some water to a level of acidity that pleases you.
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Use as desired and store in the pantry out of direct sunlight.
Recipe Notes
Cane sugar may be substituted for raw honey if desired. Using raw honey will result in the healthiest apple cider vinegar, however.
Raw apple cider vinegar doesn't go bad, but if you leave it for a long time, another mother culture will likely form on top. This is fine, just strain it again if desired and dilute with a bit of water if the taste has become too strong.
Hey Sarah! Just found a SCOBY in my braggs ACV bottle. Can I use it to make some more? Would I use this same process or would it be more like a Kombucha recipe?
Probably could! I haven’t ever tried that though. It would be more like kombucha is my guess.
Mine floated after 2 weeks but was definitly smelling like wine now I’m just waiting. I’m at room temp also of 68. I know the merky is settling at the bottom. So I’m still hopeful
I used your recipe and started the batch on 3-7-2016 and the apples are STILL floating and haven’t sunk like the instructions say. What do I do?
Please see other comments where this has been answered before.
Okay, I made the hard cider, no problem,. But, it refuses to cross over into ACV. It tastes like apple beer, not hard cider. It is like it has stalled in the process. What can be done to restart the process or force it to covert?
This recipe is for raw apple cider VINEGAR, not hard cider.
Hi Thomas,
What’s happening is that your ‘hard cider’ is lacking a bacterial component to complete the acetic acid conversion. One way to get this process going is to inoculate it with some already made raw acv, such as Bragg’s. I’d say a tablespoon will do it. Just like when making kombucha, it’s a good idea to hold on to 8 oz or so of your previous batch of fermented product so you never have to start from the very very beginning again. Best of luck to you and your vinegar! -L
That’s exactly right! Just like making Kombucha it help the new mix and also protect it from bad bacteria and mold trying to form. Love this article!
Hi,
I know you get this question SO much by reading the other comments, but is there any way you could possibly post a picture of what the Mother Enzyme will look like once it’s formed? That would be very helpful for us first timers. Thanks so much!
I harvested many pounds of an unknown apple during the fall and have since chopped most of them and frozen them. Would it be okay to use these exclusively to make vinegar?
Is naturally fermented apple cider veniger equally to the task, I mean is it good for the health ? that’s the only apple cider veniger sold here in Ghana.
Hello,
Ive made ACV before using scraps and cores, and it came out great.
This time around however, the result after straining is thick.
Is this okay?
Should be fine. Feel free to dilute with a bit of water if you want it thinner.
Good morning. I am in the process of making my first batch of ACV. My house temperature probably averages around 68 degrees right now so I know from fermenting other things that it takes a lot longer than, say, the summer, when items ferment in less than half of the time. I created the first step concoction about 11 days ago. It’s definitely “working” and fizzing. But, the apples have not dropped to the bottom of the container. Is this step a certainty? Or, should I go with what I have and strain the apples? Just looking for a little guidance. Thanks for sharing! Peace
Hello
I made a couple of batches of ACV and all worked out well. The last batch, in two containers, I left untouched for about 2 months and when I went to taste it, it was like apple water…..what happened?
Thank you
Somehow it didn’t take. This sometimes happens when doing fermentation at home.
1 did 3 jars, 2 with apple and 1 with apple&pear. The apple and pear tastes lovely (never formed a mother). The apple jars both formed mothers but both taste like apple water. Can I add some other ACV to them? Or do I need to throw them out?
I made this recipe three weeks ago. The apples never stopped floating. I’m still stirring it once or twice a day, but I haven’t strained out the apples in hopes that they would signal me to by sinking, as described in your directions. Could there by a typo with the size of the apple chunks? Is it meant to say “no smaller than one inch”? I’m just trying to troubleshoot. Wondering if I should filter this out anyway or let it go longer.
Thank you for sharing the recipe!
Some apples are denser than others … what types did you use?