No mother in my apple cider vinegar

originally posted by: Tucket

originally posted by: butcherguy
I have never used sugar in making vinegar and never had a problem developing a mother, but the apples came from an un-sprayed tree.
My biggest problem was having any cider left after it got hard to make vinegar from.

Dont you have to let the mixture sit for a lot longer without adding sugar? Like 6 months?

I could give it a shot though..

And yeah, I wish I had some proper British Columbian apples down here..

sorry to hear about no cider being left over..

No. The idea of adding sugar is to increase the alcohol content of the cider when it gets hard. The bacteria consume the alcohol and their waste product (bacteria pee?) is vinegar.
If you add sugar to the cider the yeast has more food to convert into alcohol. More alcohol makes more food for the bacteria to convert into vinegar.
My grandfather told me when I was a kid that it was a waste of sugar because the cider would only 'get so sour anyway'. I have no idea if he was correct or not. I think I may have read that after the acid concentration reaches a certain percentage, the bacteria growth is inhibited and they stop growing.