Are you tired of throwing away apple scraps after making a delicious apple pie or snack? Well, you can actually turn those scraps into something useful and healthy – apple cider vinegar! Making your own apple cider vinegar is not only cost-effective but also an easy way to reduce food waste.

Apple cider vinegar is a versatile ingredient and we use it regularly. From giving our animals a splash in their water to making fire cider and cleaning it’s something we use on the daily.

While using quality apple cider vinegar for pickling and canning is important since these things require 5% acidity, homemade apple cider vinegar is fantastic for everything else. Thankfully, it’s super easy to make!

You can make it using whole apples if you have a lot of them, or you can just use scraps like we do. We will freeze the peels and cores from apples until we have enough to start up a jar and then use them up.

Benefits of Homemade Apple Cider Vinegar

Homemade apple cider vinegar is a fantastic way to reduce food waste! Instead of putting apple scraps in the compost bin, you can turn them into this incredibly beneficial ferment!

It’s also free to make apple cider vinegar at home. You don’t need any special ingredients or equipment. Apple scraps from other recipes like homemade apple pie filling or just peeling apples for your kid’s snacks will work just fine.

Another great thing about making your own apple scrap vinegar is it doesn’t require a lot of hands-on time. Just five minutes of throwing the ingredients in a jar, cover it, and wait. It will take a while for the fermentation to occur, but after you’ve put everything together, there’s not much work involved.

Homemade apple cider vinegar also has the same health benefits as storebought like Bragg’s. It’s full of gut-healing probiotics, like all ferments, it may help lower your blood sugar, aid in weight loss, and even lower your blood cholesterol levels.

Apple cider vinegar may also keep bacteria from growing on salad greens and it never hurts to put a splash or use it to make salad dressings to put on your fresh salad.

You can read more here about the many uses of apple cider vinegar if it intrigues you.

How to Make Apple Cider Vinegar at Home

It’s super easy to turn your apples into this delicious, probiotic-rich ferment. It only requires a few ingredients and time to make it! Let’s get started.

Supplies for Homemade Apple Scrap Vinegar

Apples – you can use whole apples that you’ve diced up or just scraps of apple peels and apple cores. It’s up to you. A great time to start a batch is after you’ve made an apple recipe such as canning apple butter or apple sauce.

If you don’t have enough scraps at one time, simply toss the cores and peels you collect in a ziploc bag in the freezer and wait until you do have enough.

Un-Chlorinated Water – when making any ferment, you should always be sure to use filtered water, or at least water that is not chlorinated. A basic carbon filter will remove chlorine, but with our well water, we have an RO system (no chlorine in our water, but lots of mineral deposits).

Organic Cane Sugar – yes, in order for this ferment to work, you need sugar. Don’t worry, the wild yeasts in this ferment eats up all of that bacteria and it is not left in the final product.

Apple Cider Vinegar – you can omit this, but I recommend using it to boost fermentation.

You can use store-bought apple cider vinegar, or use some from making a previous batch of apple cider vinegar. Once you have a vinegar starter, you can just use it.

A Large Glass Jar – I make ours in a half-gallon mason jar, but you can use a wide mouth quart jar to make a smaller batch or use a large fermentation crock if you want to make more at once.

Rubber Band and Coffee Filter – this is to cover up your ferment while it’s fermenting while still allowing adequate airflow. Alternatively, you could use a tea towel, or a paper towel, or fix it to the jar with a screw band from a canning lid.

Glass Bottles – to store your cider vinegar! You can use any glass vessel with a lid. I like to use flip top bottles, but you could even use old apple cider bottles or anything else that is glass and has a lid to store your vinegar.

Homemade Apple Cider Vinegar Recipe

Step One. Add your apple scraps (or cut-up apples), to a glass jar. You want your jar to be approximately half full of apple scraps.

Step Two. Dissolve sugar in warm water. I grab a small pint jar, pour in the organic cane sugar, then put a cup of warm water in with it to let it dissolve. You’ll want to use a tablespoon of sugar per cup of water.

When I’m making a half-gallon jar of apple scrap vinegar, I will dissolve four tablespoons of sugar into a half cup of lukewarm water. All of this will go into the jar.

Step Three. Add all of the dissolved sugar water, and apple cider vinegar, then top off with cool, non-chlorinated water.

Step Four. Make sure the apples are completely under the water, this will prevent mold. Mold will ruin your batch. To keep them below you can use fermentation weights, fermentation springs, or a smaller jar that can help keep the apple scraps below the surface.

If you have a SCOBY from a previous batch, this will work well to keep your fruit under the water, just put it on top!

Step Five. Stir everything together and cover the top of the jar with a paper towel or coffee filter held in place with a rubber band. I don’t recommend cheesecloth unless you put several layers on as fruit flies are sneaky and they love apple cider vinegar.

Step Six. Place in a dark place at room temperature (ideally 70°F to 75°F) for 2 weeks, stirring daily. This helps ensure the sugar doesn’t wind up settling on the bottom of the container as well as preventing mold from developing on the apple scraps.

If you miss a day, it’s ok! Just pick up where you left off. I often have sourdough to feed and other fermentation projects going, so it’s just a habit to check everything daily. If you think you’ll forget it in a cabinet, you can cover the jar with a towel to keep it out of direct sunlight.

During the fermentation process, the apples will get darker, the liquid will get cloudy, and bubbles may begin to form. You may also see a layer of sediment form on the bottom, this is all normal and good.

However, if you see fuzzy green or white raised mold, it’s not and your batch is ruined. Toss and start again.

Step Seven. After a couple weeks, strain the liquid off of the apples and place it back inside a clean jar. Cover it the same way you did before.

Allow the liquid to ferment for at least one month, or longer. The rate of fermentation is going to vary with each batch.

You will know when your vinegar is ready when you taste it and it no longer tastes sweet. If it isn’t vinegary enough, ferment it longer. If it is, you’re good to go.

Note: occasionally during this process, your vinegar will develop a SCOBY. This is a membrane that will appear on the surface. It’s harmless and totally normal.

We personally keep our vinegar mother and put it in the next batch, it helps keep the apples below the surface and speeds up the fermentation process.

If you don’t want to keep it, you can feed it to your chickens, they’ll love it.

Step Eight. Once your vinegar is ready, you can bottle it up into glass bottles with tight-fitting lids. You can store it at room temperature or refrigerate it. Refrigerating will help slow down any further fermenting, keeping it at a flavor you enjoy. Room temperature storage will allow it to continue to ferment.

How Long Will Homemade Vinegar Keep?

Technically, vinegar never goes bad. It will continue to ferment and there will be some changes in flavor and appearance. That said, homemade apple cider vinegar will keep in good condition for at least five years. The flavor and appearance may begin to change slightly after approximately two years.

If it’s stored in the refrigerator the flavor and appearance will stay for a lot longer. Again, this isn’t necessary if you don’t have the room, but it will slow down any further fermentation and keep that flavor and appearance for much longer than when it is stored at room temperature.

If you smell it and it smells sour, toss it and start fresh… but I’ve never had that happen. Then again, we don’t keep it around long.

Tips to Make Homemade Apple Cider Vinegar

• Make sure your containers are all clean, and glass. Don’t use metal, and don’t use dirty containers.
• Use non-chlorinated water. This is important! Make sure it is filtered, chlorine will kill the ferment, even in the smallest amounts.
• Use organic apples. Apples are on the dirty dozen list, and especially since you’re using the peels, I highly recommend you use organic apples for making this vinegar.

Can I Use Honey to Make Apple Cider Vinegar?

You can! However, it will take a lot longer for the fermentation to occur. Organic cane sugar is readily available and inexpensive. Raw honey is another option, but more expensive and not really necessary.

Regardless of which sweetener you use, it will all be consumed by the bacteria in the fermentation process.

Isn’t This Apple Scrap Vinegar?

To be fair, this isn’t real apple cider vinegar. To make true apple cider vinegar, you first have to make apple cider, and then ferment it into vinegar. That said, this is a fantastic way to make homemade vinegar and use up some food scraps.