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    Home » Pickles, Preserves, Etc

    How to Make Foraged Berry Infused Vinegar

    Published: Jul 22, 2016 Modified: Feb 15, 2023 Author: Alan Bergo

    Jump to Recipe

    An easy, delicious infused vinegar using your favorite fruits. Chokeberries, cherries, black cap raspberries and many other juicy berries can be used. Read on and I'll explain how I came up with it, how to make it, and what to do with it.

    Chokecherry Vinegar_
    Black cherry vinegar

    Infused Vinegar vs Fermented Vinegar

    The vinegar in this post is infused. If you want to know how to make homemade fermented vinegar from fruit scrap (which is awesome), you'll want to see my Fruit Scrap Vinegar Recipe.

    Background

    My foraged fruit infused vinegar recipe started with a batch of concord grapes years ago. Chef told us to juice the grapes, and when we were done passing the juice through a strainer, there was all sorts of skin an pits left. The daily changing menu relied on our experimentation, so I called dibs on the berry pits, sensing some possibility.

    wild berry pits and seeds from making vinegar
    This is a great use for pits and scrap from juicing or making jams and jellies.

    I poured vinegar over them with the idea of infusing it with the flavor of the berries, which I suspected would only get better hanging out in the cooler for a month or two while I thought of what make with it. Vinegar and alcohol have this uncanny ability to extract flavors from things, I love experimenting with them to layer flavors.

    After a couple months, I got around to straining and cooking with the vinegar. I started cooking it down to a syrup with sugar to make a gastrique, or sweet and sour sauce. The vinegar was impressive: deeply colored, fragrant, with a flavor like concentrated grape essence, made without grape juice.

    blackcap raspberry, blackcap berry, blackraspberry
    Blackcap raspberries-another great vinegar candidate.

    Dark Berries Make the Best Infused Vinegars 

    It worked so well I started saving all the skins and pits from all the fruit I could get my hands on. Results varied, but one things was constant: dark, ripe fruit like cherries, blackberries, red wine grapes, josta berries, and currants (I could go on) were the best. Stone fruit like peaches, paw-paws, and wild plums was ok, but nothing like the berries.

    Ambitious cooks might mention that you can make vinegar out of fruit, and that's true. It takes time though. It also usually needs fruit juice to make the base to which the mother starter is added. If you're feeling ambitious and have a bunch of extra ripe fruit, by all means, try it.

    beets glazed with chokecherry vinegar
    Beets glazed with chokeberry vinegar, maple syrup and butter.

    The infused vinegar here is great because it lets you get juice for making jam and such, and infused vinegar without sacrificing one for the other. At the end of the day, you're making something from what other people throw away which is real cooking, a thrifty kitchen hack.

    chokeberry vinegar glazed cipollini onions
    Onions glazed with chokeberry vinegar, instead of balsamic.

    What can you do with berry infused vinegar?

    • Cook it down, then add meat stock, reduce a bit more and whisk in butter to thicken it for a simple pan sauce (especially good with poultry and game).
    • The vinegar can be cooked down by itself and a pinch of sugar too to make a simple sauce, then just whisk in a knob or two of butter to thicken at the end.
    • Use it to deglaze a pan of roasted beets, adding a little butter and herbs at the end to make a sweet and sour glaze.
    • It makes an excellent base for pickles, especially things that go well with fruit, like beets, or to layer flavor, pickle a fruit (like red wine grapes) in the vinegar you made from last year's harvest. Cherries are especially good like this, just make sure the pickle liquid is a bit sweet.
    • If you make jelly from something (like elderberries), cook down some of the vinegar with the fruit you're going to make jam with to layer the berry flavor and add a bright note to cut the sugar.
    • Reducing the vinegar with equal parts sugar would make an excellent flavor base for ice cream or panna cotta.
    • Combined with a little sugar and reduced with spices, etc, it makes an excellent glaze for grilled foods, like pork chops or sweet and sour ribs.
    • Cooking the vinegar with some sugar to taste and reducing to a light syrup will make a great garnish for vanilla ice cream, just like Italians do with balsamic vinegar.
    vinegar, chokecherry

    More

    chokecherry vinegar
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    5 from 2 votes

    How to Make Foraged Berry Infused Vinegar

    Use fruit pits, berry skins, and seeds to make awesome homemade, infused vinegar
    Prep Time20 minutes mins
    Infusing Time30 days d
    Total Time30 days d 20 minutes mins
    Course: Appetizer, Snack
    Cuisine: American
    Keyword: Berry Infused Vinegar, Wild Berry Vinegar
    Author: Alan Bergo

    Equipment

    • 1 Mason jar or glass container

    Ingredients

    • 1 part berry pits and skins left over from juicing
    • 1 part rice wine vinegar or white wine vinegar, or red wine vinegar

    Instructions

    • Combine the vinegar and berry pits/skin in a non-reactive container (I like a mason jar) and refrigerate for a month, shaking occasionally.
    • Occasionally taste the vinegar to check on it's progress, when it's to your liking, strain it through a fine strainer or cheesecloth, pressing down on the skins and pits with a spoon or ladle to get as much vinegar as possible. If the vinegar is very cloudy, strain it again.

    Notes

    I should mention many wild berries and things I make this with need to be cooked to extract their juice. I do this by putting the cleaned berries in a stainless steel saucepan and adding water about ¾ of the way up to the surface of the berries, then I heat them gently until their hot and have released their juice, pass them through a strainer or food mill, then reserve the pits/skins, and juice separately.
    Wild and cultivated grapes are my favorite for this, since they don't require cooking to release their juice, which yields a much more potent flavored vinegar. Both uncooked and cooked methods will give you decent results though. 
    « Kinome Leaves
    Simple American Wild Plum Sauce »

    Reader Interactions

    Comments

    1. Bo

      October 10, 2024 at 12:40 pm

      Hi Alan, what would you say is the largest flavour difference between your fermented fruit scrap vinegar and the infused vinegar?

      Reply
      • Alan Bergo

        October 10, 2024 at 4:49 pm

        Infused vinegar has a fresh flavor of the fruit that's used. Vinegar made from fermented fruit is very different the flavor changes. For the best of both worlds you can infuse a fermented vinegar with the fresh fruit, heating it to kill the fermentation after if you really want to lock the flavor in,

        Reply
    2. Catherine Zanev

      May 15, 2024 at 3:54 pm

      Thank you very much this recipe and your overall wonderful website. Have you tried using apple cider vinegar for this?

      Reply
      • Alan Bergo

        May 15, 2024 at 4:02 pm

        That would work fine, and thanks!

        Reply
    3. Barbara

      August 09, 2023 at 10:51 pm

      How do you safely store the infused vinegar? Canned? In the fridge? At room temperature? How long does it last?

      Reply
      • Alan Bergo

        August 10, 2023 at 12:19 pm

        It will last forever. In the fridge, room temp. Treat as regular vinegar.

        Reply
    4. Kathy Smith

      December 05, 2022 at 4:22 pm

      I'm looking for quantity information here. How much vinegar per pound of berry skins and seeds?

      Reply
      • Alan Bergo

        December 05, 2022 at 4:27 pm

        I'd start with equal parts by volume, which should be comparable to weight here. I forgot to add I usually season it with a little sugar to taste after the maceration.

        Reply
    5. Jackie Skrypnek

      September 21, 2020 at 5:35 pm

      Thanks for this recipe, Alan - I was looking for something other than jam or syrup to do with a bunch of chokecherries! I just wanted to double check that there isn't an issue with the vinegar drawing the toxic element out of the chokecherry pits? Thanks!

      Reply
      • Alan Bergo

        September 23, 2020 at 8:42 am

        Indigenous people have used the entire chokecherry, stone and all, as a food product for millenia from Siberia to North Dakota, to The Middle East. Just find a way to apply heat to the stones. You could boil them, dehydrate and crush to a flour and infuse, etc. If you don't crack the stones and you only do a maceration, if it makes you feel more comfortable, bring the vinegar to a simmer before you bottle it, after you strain.

        Reply
    6. Julianne Vanderhoop

      February 13, 2020 at 12:47 pm

      My pear vinegar is developing a mother on top is that a problem?

      Reply
      • Alan Bergo

        February 15, 2020 at 9:48 am

        Hi Julianne. I can probably help you trouble shoot that, but I need more information. This post is about a simple maceration of vinegar and berries, not fermentation to create vinegar. Walk me through the process you're using to make pear vinegar and describe the "mother". You can also send images to alanbergo3 at gmail.com

        Reply
    5 from 2 votes (2 ratings without comment)

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