Vinegar
I'm really all about vinegar right now. On my list for the next things to be all about: coconut oil and honey. But right now--- vinegar gets my nomination for most amazing natural household product.
You can google it for yourself! (you can tell I'm REALLY excited because of the exclamation mark!)
So yesterday, I was thinking to myself, "what if I need to use a very small amount of vinegar, but would like the vinegar (specifically the acetic acid) to be more concentrated than your normal supermercado shelf stuff?" EVERYbody at one point in their lives asks themselves this exact same question, and yesterday was my day. So I googled it and came up with crap.
It's my experience that the BEST questions in the world are those which Google has no good answers for. The really important stuff like the meaning of life, why are american presidential elections always a lose-lose situation, and how to clean Bailey's out from a laptop computer.
So yesterday, I ran an experiment. Maybe the next poor lost soul who searches Google for this particular answer will have more luck than I.
How-to Concentrate Household Vinegar a.k.a.
Increase concentration of acetic acid in household vinegar a.k.a.
A poor-man's zone-refinement of acetic acid from household vinegar
1) Pour your household vinegar into a container that will fit inside of your household freezer.
2) Place your container containing your household vinegar into your freezer.
3) Check to make sure that your container containing your household vinegar has some "head-room", because you will be freezing it, and it will expand, and unless you would like a lot of household vinegar running wild inside your household freezer you should make sure that the container containing your household vinegar will continue to contain the vinegar once it expands.
4) Wait until the household vinegar freezes completely. This is one of those clear-cut situations where patience is a virtue. I really hate it when someone interrupts my impatient stamping of feet by matter-of-factly stating that "Patience is a virtue". Half of the time, all patience does for you is leave you at the back of a misshapen many-forked semblance of a line with a full bladder. "Cleanliness is next to godliness" and I'll be damned if I'm going to stand in a puddle of my own urine thankyouverymuch.
5) Take the container containing your now-frozen household vinegar out of your household freezer, and wait for it to begin to unfreeze. You can help it along by running it under some water from your kitchen faucet, or singing to it (this patently obvious choice will work just fine, though I prefer something with a little funk).
6) Don't let it unfreeze completely. Unfreezing the vinegar completely will leave it much the same as when you first started, albeit contained (hopefully still) in a different container. The household vinegar closest to the outside of the container containing it should melt first. Pour this first-to-melt household vinegar into another container. Quickly find another container if you don't have one already. You should have thought of this before you took the vinegar out of the freezer, and definitely before singing to it. Duh!
7) The first-to-melt vinegar should have a higher concentration of acetic acid, so you now can use it to do whatever it was that you were hoping and dreaming of for so many more-highly-concentrated-household-vinegar-less days. Congratulations! High fives all around!
You can google it for yourself! (you can tell I'm REALLY excited because of the exclamation mark!)
So yesterday, I was thinking to myself, "what if I need to use a very small amount of vinegar, but would like the vinegar (specifically the acetic acid) to be more concentrated than your normal supermercado shelf stuff?" EVERYbody at one point in their lives asks themselves this exact same question, and yesterday was my day. So I googled it and came up with crap.
It's my experience that the BEST questions in the world are those which Google has no good answers for. The really important stuff like the meaning of life, why are american presidential elections always a lose-lose situation, and how to clean Bailey's out from a laptop computer.
So yesterday, I ran an experiment. Maybe the next poor lost soul who searches Google for this particular answer will have more luck than I.
How-to Concentrate Household Vinegar a.k.a.
Increase concentration of acetic acid in household vinegar a.k.a.
A poor-man's zone-refinement of acetic acid from household vinegar
1) Pour your household vinegar into a container that will fit inside of your household freezer.
2) Place your container containing your household vinegar into your freezer.
3) Check to make sure that your container containing your household vinegar has some "head-room", because you will be freezing it, and it will expand, and unless you would like a lot of household vinegar running wild inside your household freezer you should make sure that the container containing your household vinegar will continue to contain the vinegar once it expands.
4) Wait until the household vinegar freezes completely. This is one of those clear-cut situations where patience is a virtue. I really hate it when someone interrupts my impatient stamping of feet by matter-of-factly stating that "Patience is a virtue". Half of the time, all patience does for you is leave you at the back of a misshapen many-forked semblance of a line with a full bladder. "Cleanliness is next to godliness" and I'll be damned if I'm going to stand in a puddle of my own urine thankyouverymuch.
5) Take the container containing your now-frozen household vinegar out of your household freezer, and wait for it to begin to unfreeze. You can help it along by running it under some water from your kitchen faucet, or singing to it (this patently obvious choice will work just fine, though I prefer something with a little funk).
6) Don't let it unfreeze completely. Unfreezing the vinegar completely will leave it much the same as when you first started, albeit contained (hopefully still) in a different container. The household vinegar closest to the outside of the container containing it should melt first. Pour this first-to-melt household vinegar into another container. Quickly find another container if you don't have one already. You should have thought of this before you took the vinegar out of the freezer, and definitely before singing to it. Duh!
7) The first-to-melt vinegar should have a higher concentration of acetic acid, so you now can use it to do whatever it was that you were hoping and dreaming of for so many more-highly-concentrated-household-vinegar-less days. Congratulations! High fives all around!
