Nature Done Wright

On Monday, I asked, "What is the 'Mother' with you?"

And got lots of replies, the first and most definitive from Carol Flanagan, who wrote:

from http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-mother-of-vinegar.htm

Mother of vinegar is the slimy, gummy, jelly-like substance or layer of film that can form on the top of or in the liquid of apple cider vinegar. It can sometimes make the vinegar look cloudy. Sometimes, it's wispy and looks a lot like a little spider web.

The mother is actually a cellulose substance made up of various Acetobacter, a very acidic strain of bacteria. The Acetobacter combine with the oxygen in warm air to cause fermentation in apple cider, wine, or other alcoholic liquids to produce vinegar. It is the mother that gives the vinegar its characteristic sourness.

This substance can form naturally in store-bought vinegar if there is some non-fermented sugar or alcohol contained in the bottle. While not exactly appealing in appearance, it is completely harmless and the vinegar does not have to be thrown away because of it. Mother of vinegar can be easily filtered out using coffee filter, or, perhaps even better, the mother can simply be left in the vinegar and ignored.

Thanks, Carol! 

When I was young our vinegar always had this weird cottony thing floating in it.  This was the only time that my mother's mother was not my grandmother.

You can stop groaning now. It's not very becoming.