Kitchen Wisdom: Turn Apple or Pear Scraps Into Homemade Vinegar

Before you toss those apple peels and cores into the compost bin, consider giving them one more job.

Fall baking and preserving can generate an astonishing amount of fruit scraps. Apple pies, crisps, applesauce, pear desserts, preserves, and poached fruit all leave behind perfectly useful peels and cores — exactly what you need for a batch of homemade vinegar.

Homemade fruit vinegar is one of those wonderfully old-fashioned kitchen practices that turns something headed for the scrap bowl into a genuinely useful pantry ingredient. Apple and pear scraps both work beautifully, and the process is surprisingly simple: fruit, sugar, water, time — and a little help from naturally occurring yeasts and bacteria.

Fall is also an especially good time to make it. Apples and pears are abundant, kitchens are busy with seasonal cooking, and the lingering warmth of early autumn provides comfortable conditions for fermentation.

If you don’t accumulate enough scraps all at once, simply tuck clean apple and pear peels and cores into a freezer bag as you cook. Once you have enough to fill about half of a gallon jar, you’re ready to begin.

Instead of composting those scraps immediately, you can give them one more useful life — and a few weeks later, have a bottle of bright, tangy homemade vinegar to show for it.

Apple or Pear Scrap Vinegar

Makes approximately 2–3 quarts, depending on the amount of fruit used

You’ll Need:

Clean apple or pear peels and cores, enough to fill a 1-gallon glass jar about halfway*
1 cup granulated sugar
Non-chlorinated water, enough to cover
Fermentation weight, if available
Cheesecloth, a coffee filter, or another tightly woven breathable covering
Rubber band or jar ring
Optional for the second fermentation: 1/4 cup raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar with the mother

*Chopped whole apples or pears can be used, too

First Fermentation: Fruit to Alcohol

Place the apple or pear scraps in a clean 1-gallon glass jar, filling it roughly halfway. Don’t pack the fruit tightly; there should be room for water to circulate.

Dissolve 1 cup sugar in several cups of warm non-chlorinated water. Pour the sugar water over the fruit, then add additional water as necessary to completely cover the scraps, leaving several inches of headspace at the top of the jar.

Place a fermentation weight over the fruit to help keep the scraps beneath the liquid. Fruit exposed to air is much more likely to develop mold.

Cover the jar with cheesecloth, a coffee filter, or another breathable fine-weave cloth and secure it with a rubber band or jar ring. Do not seal the jar with an airtight lid.

Keep the jar at room temperature, out of direct sunlight.

For the next 1–2 weeks, stir the mixture once a day with a clean utensil. You should begin to notice bubbles and a pleasantly fruity, fermented aroma. The activity will gradually slow as the natural sugars are converted into alcohol.

If you see fuzzy mold or growth that is green, blue, black, pink, or otherwise suspicious, discard the batch and begin again.

Second Fermentation: Alcohol to Vinegar

After about 1–2 weeks, strain out and discard or compost the fruit solids.

Pour the strained liquid back into the clean jar.

At this point, you may add 1/4 cup raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar containing the mother to help introduce active vinegar bacteria. This is optional; naturally occurring acetic-acid bacteria can also do the work.

Cover the jar again with the breathable cloth.

Allow the liquid to ferment for another 3–6 weeks, still at room temperature and away from direct sunlight. Oxygen is important during this stage because the bacteria responsible for making vinegar need it to convert the alcohol into acetic acid.

Begin tasting the vinegar after about three weeks. As it develops, the fruity character will remain, but the flavor will become increasingly tart and distinctly vinegary.

When it has reached a sharpness you like, strain it once more and transfer it to clean bottles or jars.

How Do You Know When It’s Done?

Trust your senses.

Finished fruit vinegar should smell pleasantly tart and distinctly like vinegar, with some of the fruit’s aroma still lingering in the background. It should taste bright and acidic rather than sweet.

You may also notice a translucent, gelatinous layer forming in the jar. That’s the vinegar mother, a natural collection of beneficial bacteria and cellulose produced during fermentation. It isn’t harmful, and you can save some to help start another batch.

Half-Gallon Batch

Prefer to start smaller? The proportions are easy:

Fill a half-gallon jar about halfway with apple or pear scraps.
Use 1/2 cup sugar.
Add enough non-chlorinated water to cover the fruit.
For the optional second-stage starter, add about 2 tablespoons raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar.

Everything else stays the same.

Ways to Use Homemade Fruit Vinegar

Once you have a bottle in the pantry, you’ll find plenty of ways to use it.

Whisk it into vinaigrettes with olive or avocado oil, Dijon mustard, and a touch of maple syrup or honey. Use it in marinades, pan sauces, glazes, slaws, bean salads, grain salads, and quick refrigerator pickles.
Pear vinegar is especially lovely with walnuts, blue cheese, goat cheese, winter greens, pork, squash, and roasted root vegetables.
Apple vinegar is a natural partner for cabbage, mustard, maple, sage, pork, chicken, roasted vegetables, and fall salads.

And because every batch begins with different fruit, no two homemade vinegars will taste exactly alike. That’s part of their charm.

An Important Kitchen-Safety Note

Homemade vinegar is excellent for salad dressings, sauces, marinades, cooking, and refrigerator pickles, but its acidity cannot be assumed to be the same as commercial vinegar.

Do not use homemade vinegar for shelf-stable pickling or canning recipes that require 5% acidity. For those recipes, always use commercially produced vinegar specifically labeled 5% acidity.