Which vinegar for pickling?

Yellow40

Hello, I would like to quick pickle onions and cucumbers as I found some recipes (American). I do love pickles but I find they have too much sugar and are quite expensive, it seems easy to do your own. 

The recipes call for white vinegar. I cannot find white vinegar online on the biggest supermarkets, only found it on Amazon, but very expensive, I mean vinegar should be cheap. 

Which vinegar do you use for pickling are malted or white wine vinegar any good? 

Thanks 

Sandtree

Depends what you are going for... most our pickles (beetroot, mushrooms, cucumber) tend to be lighter pickle and so use cider vinegar. If doing a rapid pickle like red onion slices will normally use a wine vinegar. 

For classic pickled onions or eggs etc then it'd be Malt vinegar (white/distilled or normal)... Tesco's sell "white" vinegar but they call it distilled vinegar... its just the colourless version of malt vinegar

Yellow40

I find a recipe on BBC good and they still called for white vinegar… my first attempt I used apple cider vinegar (with the mother) and rice vinegar because it was what I had at home, didn’t like it. I’m going to try with the white malt vinegar I just saw on Asda online next time then. Thanks 

-taff

White vinegar is just clear vinegar, as above, called distilled here, you can buy it in 5ltr containers if you like. Use whatever you like. A very quick pickle can be made with thinly sliced [ think mandolin] cucumbers and half wine vinegar, half water, same with thinly sliced onions. The finer the slice, the quicker it pickles.

gran3

Distilled is about 29p for 500ml in tesco

Yellow40

Thank you very much! 

RAS

Also available in Aldi, mixed in with the bottles of malt vinegar.