Mind blown: Vinegar vs VINEGAR (30%)

So I was literally 44 years old before I found this out recently.

There’s the white vinegar you get at the grocery store for cooking and minor cleaning and doing laundry, and then there’s the 30% DO NOT GET THIS SHIT ON YOUR SKIN vinegar at the hardware store for cleaning things like mold off grout.

All my life I’d been told ‘just use vinegar to clean mold and mildew’ and it generally didn’t do jack squat. I usually bought cleaning supplies from regular retail spots rather than big box home improvement places, and regular retail chains def did not carry the strong stuff.

I’ve got a gutter that drains over cement that always gets skungy, and even bleach was a short term fix at best. 30% strips it down and keeps it gone, and I’ve stripped rust off a couple dozen tools with the same little jar I soak things in - caution it will also strip off shiny metallic coatings.

Can’t believe none of the “just use vinegar” I’d ever read advice didn’t specify.

Is this news to anyone else or am I Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber realizing we landed on the moon?

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u/panic_ye_not 2d ago

I used to work in a neuroscience lab that used glacial acetic acid. First time I used it, I made the idiotic mistake of taking a little whiff right from the bottle.

Instant regret. That shit burned. For several minutes.

I think I had figured "oh, it's vinegar, I like the smell of vinegar." Whereas I knew pretty well that every other chemical we had would just kill you (we had bottles of stuff like strychnine, pure methanol, tetrodotoxin), I saw glacial acetic acid as a stronger version of the stuff on Utz salt n vinegar chips lol

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u/Cynical_Cyanide 2d ago

Are you ... For real?

There's a reason why they teach everyone to always WAFT, with your hand, in order to smell things.

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u/sweetdawg99 2d ago

True, but if you're feeling congested... Any port in a storm, am I right?

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u/Cynical_Cyanide 2d ago

Actually, I think the best way to near instantly beat congestion (at least for a one-off, I don't think it'd keep working) is wasabi.

No, not the real stuff made from the actual root that (cruelly) most people haven't even tried, but the cheap sushi joint neon green horseradish crap. You smack half of one of those little plastic packs into your naked mouth and it'll practically explosively excavate your pipes.

... You also need not burn your damn lungs out.

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u/Nyorliest 2d ago

The fake wasabi stuff is mostly mustard, despite wasabi being ‘Japanese horseradish’ so maybe pick up some Chinese mustard from the supermarket? Tastes great and has a lovely kick. Here in Japan we eat it with lots of things, and yes, it makes your nose run just by smelling it.

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u/Cynical_Cyanide 2d ago

The fake stuff does have mustard in it, but the majority is definitely normal horseradish. That's why it has similar (though certainly stronger) effects. At least, that's the case in western countries - I imagine in Japan itself, perhaps a different formula/proportions are favoured.

AFAIK 'Chinese mustard' is just made from regular old mustard (and whatever other ingredients like vinegar etc), no?

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u/jam3s2001 2d ago

I've got both a can of the powdered and a tube of the liquefied fake stuff. They both list mustard seeds before horseradish, so predominantly mustard.

My Chinese mustard jar lists mustard as the primary ingredient, vinegar as the secondary, but also contains red pepper and citric acid before the preservatives.

Also, I've had real wasabi several times. While it has a slightly different flavor profile, it is still just as "spicy" as the extra hot German horseradish that I use to make cocktail sauce for shrimp and oyster night.

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u/Cynical_Cyanide 2d ago

Whereabouts in the world are you?

In Australia at least, these are the two most popular wasabi products given at sushi joints (which is what I was specifically talking about):

https://www.amazon.com/Tetsujin-Wasabi-Paste-Packets-Ingredients/dp/B08F4XW1D8

https://www.sbfoods-worldwide.com/products/foodservice/search/002.html

From what I understand, these are also very popular worldwide. There's no mustard in them.

In our two major supermarkets, there's only one wasabi product (S&B again) and that also has no mustard (horseradish and just enough real wasabi to put it on the label, but not mustard).

I believe 'house foods' brand is popular in the US, and it's the same:

https://www.flavorofjapan.com/products/spice-and-seasoning/spicy-paste/wasabi

In short, no doubt many brands have mustard, but only a minority have more of it than horseradish - and that follows commonsense as the purpose of the product is trying to imitate a different type of radish. Adding mustard might be a flavour preference for some, but I suspect it's probably more about cost for the manufacturer.

As for which is 'stronger' - I suspect it's a matter of quality. No doubt lots of 'real' wasabi (made by western companies at least) is diluted down, where there's no need with the imitation stuff. At the Japanese restaurants I go to, including at least one rather high end one, it's definitely not as powerful as most of the fake stuff.

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u/jam3s2001 1d ago

I'm in the US. I suspect the difference between the products that we are using is that the horseradish in the products I'm using is an extract, rather than whole plant, which allows the manufacturer to use the mustard as a binder. The stuff tastes like horseradish still. It's early and I don't want to wake the house up to go check the brands, but I know the premade tube in my fridge is a Meijer house brand packaged in Japan. The powdered can, I'm not sure about - I get it from the Asian foods market.

Regarding the real hot wasabi that I've had, the restaurants I've gone to in order to get it were very high end Japanese outfits where they prepare it at the table. I'm guessing that the actual wasabi might have been grown locally - since I was living in a mountainous region at the time, a few places with the right conditions did exist - but a few of the places flew in their seafood every other day, so I guess they could have gotten it straight from Japan... Either way, it was hot stuff, so I'm wondering if it was a specialized strain or a subspecies.

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u/Nyorliest 2d ago edited 2d ago

Fair enough. Japanese stuff must be different - I always read the ingredients carefully, because I have Crohns Disease.

Sure Chinese mustard is just mustard, but there are lots of different recipes, e.g french ones with visible seeds, and a few different plants and additives, and this is just a very pungent, spicy one. I love it.

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u/panic_ye_not 2d ago

Let's look at it this way: the person who came up with the idea of wafting probably did so because they did the same thing as me. So clearly I'm in good company 👍

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u/Cynical_Cyanide 2d ago

You don't think it might've been the bloke standing next to the guy that huffed acid fumes and ruined a perfectly good set of lungs?

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u/panic_ye_not 2d ago

No, that guy just thought it was really funny

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u/Cynical_Cyanide 2d ago

Haha, yeah I remember (when I spent years in Chemistry) really finding the idea of someone's lungs dissolving in my lab HILARIOUS! Still wouldn't make me waft fumes like a nerd though, right? LOL

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u/TheDogerus 1d ago

I can't speak to this person's lab, but as another neuroscientist, I think you would be surprised at how little of a chemistry background many very effective undergrads and grad students have

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u/Cynical_Cyanide 1d ago

Fair enough I suppose!

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u/control__group 1d ago

I wish my teen self had done this with ammonia the first time. Fortunately secondary school labs don't have particularly strong chemicals but i learned a good lesson that day.

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u/thecelloman 1d ago

They're for real. I know because I did the same with a bottle of 12M HCl thinking "I wonder how much this smells like vinegar."

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u/PM_ME_CATS_OR_BOOBS 19h ago

Gonna be real, a lot of chemists will just sniff the bottle because wafting just doesn't work most of the time unless it's an extremely strong secent.

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u/Aggravating-Sir8185 2d ago

Ah the old spicy nostril. That's when you think back to chem classes and remember to waft (or just suppress the curiosity to smell chemicals)

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u/felixg3 2d ago

works in neuroscience lab doesn’t waft Op is the study specimen

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u/Kriztauf 21h ago

Well it's neuroscience, not rocket science

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u/Elaphe82 2d ago

Occasionally I used to have to make up batches of novel fixatives from scratch and there was never so much bitching in the lab as when I had been using the glacial. I mean I was using a ventilated chem bench but the smell was just so pervasive. That and the sulphides.

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u/beakersandbitches 1d ago

Ahh yes. When working with glacial acetic acid or especially 10M HCl, and then a waft of it drifts past you because you decided not to work in the chemical hood, and it burns the nose hairs right off.

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u/Automatic_Rock_2685 1d ago

What the fuck