Is Home Depot 30% acetic acid vinegar at $20 a gallon ok to use for food (2025 Update) FAQ

You could cut it to food grade which is 5%. You might save a few dollars but is it worth the effort and who uses that much vinegar.

Most household vinegar is 5%. You can reduce it with water.

If you scroll through the "Questions and Answers" section on the Home Depot web page for this product you'll see that the manufacturer explicitly says that this product is NOT food grade. Food grade acetic acid is only produced by fermentation. This product is produced by methanol carbonylation. Methanol is wood alcohol and is highly toxic causing blindness and severe liver failure. I suspect that there may be traces of residual methanol in this product which are entirely absent from the fermentation-produced, food grade acetic acid. In short - don't even think about consuming this product in any dilution.

The local CostCo warehouse lists the Four Monks at $6.69 / 2 gallons

you get more flies with s*it than with honey

that was my boyfriend

why would you need so much vinegar?

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Thanks for posting the reason behind it. John T.

Methanol is not as toxic as many think. Drinking it in place of ethanol has lead to poisonings and given it the bad reputation but in fact it is present in small quantities in many foods and has EPA approval for food contact. That said, it is better to use something that is made for food use.

Harry S Robins wrote on 9/22/2024 1:49 PM:

Apparently chemicals sold in Home Depot are not meant for food. It is industrial grade acetic acid meant to kill weed when sprayed directly to the leaf and root area.

By the way, food grade acetic acid 4% is normal kitchen vinegar, and 7% is pickling vinegar.

I'm going to return the bottle I bought today back to Home Depot because of things I didn't know until people like Retirednoguilt explained the 30% is made by 'methanol carbonylation' (which doesn't sound good) and not by fermentation, and Mighty Wannabe explained food grade acetic acid 4% is normal kitchen vinegar while 7% is pickling vinegar.

Using the numbers provided by rbowman of 4% for the Costco food-grade vinegar at $6.69 / 2 gallons the Harris $20 acetic acid concentrate ends up being $2.67/gallon when diluted to 7/5 gallons making it the level of the Costco Two Monks 4% vinegar concentration, which itself is $3.35/gallon.

I scrolled through all the questions, and almost every answer was that it's no good for food but also, surprisingly, it's no good for cleaning either.

It's not even good for pools (to lower the pH, for example) so I wonder now, with a new question, of what good it is as it's sold as a cleaner?

Most of the hundreds of answers to queries were that it's no good for cleaning what people want to clean (floors, windows, tile, etc.) but even for the things it's good for cleaning (like coffee pots) it has to be diluted, so you're back to the lower percentages anyway.

So what good is 30% industrial acetic acid sold at Home Depot for $20/gal? Or should I return it and give up?

Killing weeds. Some people will use it rather than RoundUp or other chemicals that are potentially harmful. Raccoons don't like the smell so it may help to deter the,

I use vinegar on the windshield in the summer. The water here is very hard and the spray from the lawn sprinkler dries to water spots that regular washer fluid or Windex won't touch. Regular 5% or 7% is fine for that. I also run it through the coffee maker.

I forget what I paid for the last gallon at the grocery store but it wasn't much considering how long it lasts. Like a lot of CostCo things 2 gallons would last for a couple of years. For cooking I use Bragg.

I only use white (i.e. distilled malt) vinegar to descale my electric steamer. I suppose there must be culinary uses as well, as it's shelved with the malt vinegar.

In the UK there is (or was) a thing called "non brewed condiment" which is acetic acid flavoured and coloured with caramel.

I've used the Costco 4% vinegar + a few drops of dish detergent + a spoon of salt in a Home Depot spray bottle to brown weeds which it does in a day.

But it doesn't kill them (and the salt may or may not turn the soil into that of Carthage - but it doesn't seem to be salting the land in my tests).

I noticed that some said in the Home Depot questions and answer section that the 'acid' destroyed the rubber gaskets in typical spray bottles.

I do run the 4% Costco through the coffee maker, which I reuse as I keep a well-labeled jug of previously-used 4% vinegar for descaling pots & pans.

But, after reading a few hundred questions on the Home Depot site for the

When you use an ingredient straight up, then it matters a LOT the "taste" of that ingredient but when you mix it with a hundreds things, maybe not.

There is the classic example of real vanilla versus the fake stuff, where if you use a drop in a bowl containing many other ingredients, it doesn't matter nearly as much (according to Consumer Reports anyway) than if you are using it with extremely few other ingredients.

In the case of salad oil, the vinegar is a small portion of the taste, which is why the $3.35/gallon Costco Two Monks 4% vinegar fits in.

It's hard to justify the cost of the $10/gallon 30% Harris vinegar, simply because it is used only for cleaning - but I can't find what it cleans.

What do most people us the undiluted 30% concentration to clean anyway?

Any strong acid is useful for removing calcium deposits from hard water.

I used to read Consumer Reports for items I knew nothing about like digital cameras. In the process I noticed that their choices in areas that I was familiar with were mediocre, safe choices, plain vanilla if you will. In particular no matter what cars they were reviewing the Honda Civic was the best choice. For less expensive models they would recommend a used Civic. For an equivalent price range, the best buy was a Civic. For high end cars you could buy two Civics for the money.

Historically, fake vanilla was favored in lumber camps since the workers tended to drink the real stuff. I suppose it was easier to get down than lemon extract.

Brilliant. Chips and ersatz vinegar.

Acetic acid is a weak acid. Muriatic acid costs less per gallon at Home Depot and is much stronger.

Do you make your own salad dressing?

It's one third vinegar.