Anyway, now 9 to 10 months after making it, it's not vinegar yet, just very hard and very alcoholic cider. While some people might enjoy that, I don't drink at all, and I really was looking forward to vinegar. I had fantasies of using my homemade vinegar this year to make pickles (with the acid level augmented, of course, to be safe).

I used recycled, cleaned out vinegar jugs and gallon containers from distilled water. Those with the tighter-fitting lids actually have a fairly substantial amount of CO2 building, so some of it is highly carbonated, sparkling hard cider.

There is a pretty heavy sludge layer on the bottom, but it will go back into suspension temporarily if I shake it up.

So, what am I missing here? I think the answer is oxygenation - do I need to open the lids, or even pour it out into something like a crock and then loosely cover it so that it gets more oxygen? Would that make it transition to vinegar?

Or, do I just need to leave it in the basement and wait for it, even if it takes 5 years? Sooner or later, doesn't pretty much all wine and hard cider turn to vinegar?

"as apple cider ages it turns to alcoholic apple cider then to apple cider vinegar.

So take apple cider leave it out preferable in a cool dark place and wait after a certain amount of weeks you will have apple cider vinegar. "

i hope this helps.

WM

If you pasteurized or used camden tablets and threw bought yeast that is why you were lucky, you killed the bacteria.
You now need to throw the bacteria that turns the alcohol into vinegar. You should be able to find it by searching homebrew stores for "mother of vinegar".
Alternately you can throw some unfiltered unpasteurized natural vinegar from a healthfood store and grow your own culture to inoculate all your bottles with.

If you are the one that tempted fate and used the natural yeasts you probably want to tempt it again and use the natural bacteria. In that case expose them to air and hope for the best, but it didn't work the first time so I wouldn't hold your breath.
Know you would be taking a crap shoot with the correct bacteria entering and being the one to grow the fastest (a dog in the yard and feeding ecoli to little kids is why I pasteurize my cider).

By expose it to air I mean really expose it to the air, put it back in the vat you pressed into and whisk it. This will drive off the CO2 and since you said it was carbonated it may be helpful no matter what method you use, if I'm remembering right the carbonation serves a purpose other than tickling the nose.
If I didn't want to expose it to random acts of bacteria I'd siphon it from bottle to bottle letting it slosh before throwing the mother of vinegar.

You can test and adjust your own acidity pretty cheaply (again from the homebrew stores). If they don't go by the simple "acid test kit" it would be a "titration kit".

You're really lucky you didn't have blow ups if you had those sealed the whole time. The amount of potential alcohol it takes to blow a beer or wine bottle designed to take pressure is not that much and if you plugged fresh cider bottles that tends to finish around 5%, that's a lot of gas.
The bubbler tops are not that expensive, you can even use balloons and burp them (and if you want to know some other ways just ask me in the other forum where I'm sure to see it). I wouldn't doubt if now that you've taken the pressure off some of them start fermenting again.

BTW, my apple wine came out pretty good. I don't normally drink either but 1 gallon is not going to be anywhere near enough. It has to be 12%-15% and I can't taste the alcohol (I can normally taste any alcohol). For the cheap yeast I used the yeast flavor isn't so bad either.
I'm hardening at least 5 gallons this year, probably 10 gallons if I get enough apples.

Sorry, nope wasn't me, must have been somebody else.

I didn't actually have a plan - just put the cider in gallon jugs and let it do its thing. I thought it pretty much all turned into vinegar eventually.

IF I were a drinker, it probably would be pretty good, actually. It smells pleasant and "winey" sort of. I do cook with wine at times, I should try some that way.

Actually, a few of them have "blown their tops" -- they are mostly in plastic vinegar jugs with a flip-up plastic top. As the pressure builds, it pops open.