Wood shavings and Vinegar

I work at a vinegar plant. I don't make the vinegar, but we have several tanks and the plant does produce a lot of vinegar, especially to support the local mustard production plant. We have about nine old wooden tanks, kind of like the kind wine is made in, and we are in the process of eliminating them from the plant. We use steal tanks now and the process is much different than when vinegar was made in wooden tanks. However, all the old tanks have wooden shavings in them. If you drive by the plant you will see the mounds of shavings that have been collected from a huge, noisy truck called the "Guzzler"- no joke! The shavings have a mucous-like odor to them. Such a fascinating process to watch!!

We get some of the silliest questions about vinegar. Is it organic? How is it made? Does it go bad?  Vinegar is made from alcohol and some nutrient mash. Then live acetobacter (a type of oxygen-loving bacteria) convert the alcohol to acetic acid or what the layman would call vinegar.  It is usually bought at about 6% strength or 60 grain. But we produce up to 300 grain vinegar because we ship it concentrated for manufacturing other products.  I just got some 300 grain vinegar on my hands today. I am so used to it, I barely felt it. It does dry out the skin, though. It would be very, very painful to get in your eyes and can cause eye damage. For some people, at 300 grain, it would be irritating if the vapors were inhaled. It does bother me when I have a cold at that strength.

White vinegar has a very long shelf life. Balsamic vinegar gets better with age, especially if it was made well to begin with. Wine vinegars last about six months on the shelf. Cooking wines have varying shelf life depending on what the alcohol base is. For instance, sauterne is about six months whereas sherry and marsala last for years. We also make champagne vinegar,

The mother in vinegar is just a glob of live bacteria. But when I go to the grocery store and see apple cider vinegar "with mother" it makes me laugh because most of what is floating around in there is apple particles, not mother. If the particulates floating around are flakey this is not mother. If it is stringy, snotty-looking and even possibly chunky, then you have yourself some mother.  Does mother make a difference? It is harmless, but I really don't whether the health claims are true since I am not a food scientist. I do know it is required to make more vinegar, no matter what kind, though apple cider seems to have the most.

That's all I have to say about that.