My red wine vinegar has rapidly growing mushroom like things!

Question

I transferred the contents of a packaged bottle of red wine vinegar into another cleaned bottle and I suddenly realized it has this strange scoby type thing growing inside. But can scoby grown in vinegar?

Suhasini · Answer

Thanks everyone! I had a feeling it might be okay but it still freaked me out a bit! 🙈 Especially considering how quickly it's growing! Thank you for putting my mind at ease that a weird mushroom monster isn't going to break out of its jar and consume my whole family in the middle of the night! 😝

dinner A. · Answer

Yes, it's fine. The growth is the microorganisms that originally turned the wine into vinegar growing some more.

14Sasha! · Answer

Yea don’t worry girl. “Real” vinegar will do that. That’s literally how I make my own vinegar. I’m surprised that that happened in a commercial product, but that’s just means they left all the good for your health stuff. Is it gross? Heck yea. But all good 👌

C S. · Answer

In vinegar it is usually called a "mother".  I don't know a lot of specifics but if you add that to left over red wine you end up with vinegar eventually.  I'm not familiar with scoby but think it is pretty much the same thing.

My red wine vinegar has rapidly growing mushroom like things!

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