Imaginative Teaching Resources & Inspirational Career Ideas from the Chilled Food Industry

Turn Scraps of Apple into Vinegar

 

Our second festive food science experiment uses a fruit bowl favourite to make something to use in Christmas cooking or in our earlier store cupboard science experiments

You’ll need – apples, 250ml boiled cool water, two tablespoons of sugar, a wooden spoon, a clean tea towel and a clean glass jar. You’ll also need an adult to help.

Put the cool, boiled water into the jar and dissolve the sugar into the water.

Wash and Peel some apples and cut out the cores (eat the rest!) and add around 150grams of the peelings and cores to the water. It’s ok to use windfall apples if they are still around.

Using a wooden spoon mix it well and make sure the peelings and cores are under the water. Cover with a clean tea towel and stir every day. Keep watching – it will be bubbly during this time. Stir once a day until all the bubbles have gone. Strain the mixture and taste it – you have made apple cider vinegar! You can use the vinegar in some of our earlier store cupboard science experiments or in cooking – it tastes great in a winter stew, to make mint sauce or over chips!

 

What’s happening here?

Using the bacteria on the apple peels – acetobacter aceti – we have made apple cider vinegar. Microorganisms  in the apple break down the sugar into ethanol in a process called fermentation. The acetobacter aceti process the ethyl alcohol  into acetic acid which leads gradually to the formation of apple cider vinegar.

 

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