How do you increase the acidity of vinegar?
Asked by
ibstubro (
18804
)
December 24th, 2014
I know that I can buy 10% acidic vinegar for use in the yard.
However I bought some regular vinegar really cheap and I was wondering if I could up the acidity?
If left opened will some of the water evaporate?
Would boiling do it?
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7 Answers
Vinegar is diluted from stronger acetic acid to 5 %, it doesn’t work the other way around. It would be like trying to make stronger whiskey by putting in a glass on the counter.
It would be GONE in my house.
You could try freezing distillation (aka fractional freezing). Acetic acid has a higher freezing temperature than water, so you would scoop out the crystals of acid and put it into a different container. You’d need to do some research to figure out what temperatures to use, and I don’t know what concentration of acid you’d end up with. There’s some discussion of this process here.
The boiling point of water and acetic acid are close to one another and adding acetic acid to water increases the point at which water boils.
@ibstubro “Probably earn me too small of quantity to mess with”
This would only depend on how much vinegar you start with. If you expect not to end up with enough concentrated acetic acid to bother… then why are you trying to begin with?
No, @Tropical_Willie. That acidic acid evaporates faster than water, like alcohol.
Followup: So is there a way to use 5% acid store bought vinegar to cold pickle and in so doing increase the acidic level of the liquid?
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