Discussion – Making Vinegar at Home

Hello all, this is my first time trying to make vinegar and I have what is probably a basic question. Six days ago I gathered some oak exudate from a wound on the trunk and mixed it into a sugar solution (using molasses) with a potential ABV of 4.5%. This was in hopes of capturing and propagating a saccharomyces strain of yeast, in order to ferment some alcohol and later try and turn it to vinegar. For 2 or 3 days I oxygenated it with an aquarium aerator. Well, strange thing--this morning I smelled it and it already smells like vinegar. How can that be? After 6 days in solution, there has been only a hint of bubbles, so it's hard to imagine any significant alcohol production by yeast, much less a chance for an acetobacter to have converted it to acetic acid. In reading about heterofermentative lactic-acid-producing bacteria, I learned that some of them can also produce acetic acid directly from sugar (if I understood right), so perhaps that's what's happening? pH is currently at 4.6. Unfortunately, silly me, I did not check the pH at the beginning of this process 6 days ago.

Any thoughts on what might be happening?