Home Pickling: Vinegar Method

This method allows great flexibility in your temperature range and gives you the option of a sterile controlled environment. Most of the preparation steps are the same as the brine method; this section outlines the differences.

When using vinegar the thing to control is starting acidity. You need at least 2 1/2% acid to keep away nasty microbes. In a brine solution your friendly local lactobacillae would produce that acid for you. Here you have to pay a little more attention to the chemistry. Your first order of business is to select a vinegar. Vinegars normally state their percent acidity somewhere on the label. The simplest thing to select is a 5% or a 6% acid vinegar; either can be mixed with water at a 1:1 ratio. If your diet is very restricted then distilled vinegar is the safest choice, but a more complex vinegar yields a tastier pickle. My favorite is an Italian white wine vinegar that sells at a local ethnic market for $6.50 a gallon. Apple cider vinegar deserves special discussion. This can make a delicious pickle but it is also the least acidic type of mass market vinegar. Read the label, run your calculations, and dilute with less water accordingly.

Be aware that a particular subtype of apple cider vinegar sold at health food stores is live culture vinegar. This can also make pickles if you want but it carries its own set of issues. Live culture vinegar contains acetobacter, which has different properties from the lactobacillae used in the brine method. Both of these classes of bacteria are harmless to humans; yet while lactobacillae can take residence in the gut and provide beneficial effects, the main thing acetobacter likes to do is turn low concentrations of alcohol into vinegar. A few acetobacter will float into the air if you open a bottle of live culture vinegar, which means they will also go to town if provided the opportunity. Acetobacter will happily turn half a bottle of recorked cabernet sauvignon into vinegar for you, and that will probably make an outstanding vinegar--but that was probably not your intention. Home brewers who work with live vinegar cultures usually keep their vinegars on the other end of the house from their brewing. If you are a teetotaller none of this matters but if you aren't then be forewarned: the few cider vinegars that are live will state so on the label. Other types of vinegar do not risk this problem.

Since a vinegar pickling does not need to feed microbes, distilled water is fine and iodized salt is OK. Use an airtight lid--a wide mouth half gallon mason jar is perfect. If you feel jittery about aging vinegar pickles at room temperature then keep them at the back of the refrigerator. Submerge the cucumbers if you age vinegar pickles at room temperature but with refrigerator aging you can skip the submersion.

An side benefit of vinegar pickling is that if you make a habit of removing pickles from the jar with a clean fork you can reuse the pickling solution several times. Just top off the ingredients as necessary, keeping the solution sufficiently acidic. The ease and savings of doing this was a main reason for offering to write this guide because when I want more dill pickles it rarely costs me more than a bag of cucumbers. Quite frankly, I can think of other spending priorities than $10 a jar on somebody else's recipe.