where to get food grade/human grade ethanol and muriatic acid?

Is ethanol actually in alcoholic drinks? I'm naive, but that's what I read. Is it the same ethanol as gasoline but more human grade? Where can I get these?

 

Like moonshine? Ethanol is used in gas because it's very flammable it's the chemical found in all alcoholic beverages.

 

Ethanol is the type of alcohol in alcoholic drinks. Your purest food grade forms will most likely be neutral-grain spirits like Vodka and grain alcohol.

Muriatic Acid is hydrochloric acid; not sure if there is food grade version or why you want to use it as such in the first place.

 

Muriatic acid is a historical name for hydrochloric acid. It's a very strong acid used in a variety of industrial processes. Since you say you're "naive" I would recommend staying away from it since it can be quite dangerous in concentrated form. I doubt there is anything marketed as "food grade" and anything you might buy without a chemist's license is going to be diluted or perhaps not pure. From what I gather you need a license to get pure forms of many chemicals these days, it's not like it was.

From your post history it looks like you are interested in using it for mash acidification? In that case you'll probably be better suited using more traditional acidification methods (acid malt, lactic acid, minerals). While there's nothing inherently wrong with using it if it's pure (it's just hydrogen and chloride) you are going to need miniscule amounts and you really have to understand chemistry safety procedures so you don't cause serious injury.

Similarly, for every day people the best source of ethanol is neutral spirits. Unless you have a chemist's license and can get the pure lab grade stuff, all other sources have things added to prevent consumption (other alcohols, bittering agents, etc).

 

Yes - if you want acid to do mash acidification, the 88% lactic acid you get at the LHBS is your best bet. Sometimes you might need something a little stronger and, in that case, phosphoric acid from the LHBS is what you need.

 

You can make your own food-grade ethanol. Just mix yeast and sugar Or buy some vodka. The alcohol that is created during fermentation is ethanol. It's really the essence of this entire forum.

Muriatic acid is hydrochloric acid (HCl). You can also make this at home with salt and baking soda, but you would need a flask and some tubing for essentially distilling the HCl gas that will be created. The whole thing is pretty hazardous and you just might burn the nosehairs out of your face, so you shouldn't do it until you have the right equipment and some PPE.

 

Amazing, the things you learn on here. I might still have some chemistry books that told how to make nitro. Mix that with some ethanol & some high test....

 

The ethanol at your local gas station (E85, for example) has been denatured to keep people from drinking it. Not sure how it's denatured. Don't use it for anything but fuel.

 

Precisely. Mixed with a lil "pop" as we used to call it & suck it into the intake to clean that out. A little in the tank...

 

While FCC is the official level of purity you should seek for food-grade materials, regarding acids, you can use Reagent-grade acid and be reasonably sure that the acid would not contain many impurities. Do not use any other grades of acid in brewing or food preparation other than FCC or Reagent grade. Lab grade and any other grade could have impurities that you don't want to ingest, like lead and other heavy metals.

 

Oh, regarding denaturing. At the ethanol plants that supply alcohol for blending with gasoline, they add just a little gasoline to the ethanol to make it undrinkable. The Feds just don't want untaxed alcohol getting out of those plants and into the drinking public's possession.

 

You perform any of the following at your own risk:
Can you purchase 151 proof Bacardi Rum? Your state may or may not allow it, or, you may be able to buy grain neutral spirits(95% or 190 proof) special order from state booze store. Or a neighboring state?
Remember that every percent is equal to 2 proof degrees.
For mash acidification I use tartaric acid: a solid, cheap, available from LHBS, non-hazardous, and is a strong organic acid, so you need less. Then, I neutralize with food-grade potassium carbonate. Good Luck.

 

Adulterating the alcohol hasn't stopped people in the past It just makes them walk weird later. Look up Jake leg, or

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_ginger

 

Yes, there is. It is in common use as a pH adjuster in the food (FCC grade), pharmaceutical (USP grade) and other industries. It is widely used in brewing (by both home brewers and commercial operators) in the UK for pH adjustment where and equimolar mix of it and sulfuric acid as sold for this purpose.

 

From Latin muria meaning brine from which it is made (or rather salt).

And in a lot of other applications as well including removing laitance from concrete, cleaning brickwork, adjusting swimming pool pH. It is sold at every hardware store in industrial strength (23 Be').

I would advise staying away from it too but it is one of the cheap chemicals that you can still buy (OK, I haven't bought any in quite a few years) AFAIK. Take that back - I bought some in Canada 2 summers ago (used it to adjust the pH of my well).

Alas, 'tis true.

 

The lactic acid sold at the LHBS (88% w/w) is about 11.8 N whereas the phosphoric is typically 10% and only about 1 N. The lactic is thus almost 12 times stronger.

 

You can make it at home but not with salt and baking soda. It is made with salt and sulphuric acid:

H2SO4 + 2NaCl --> 2HCl(gas) + Na2SO4.

The gas driven off is bubbled through water to form the liquid acid.

I definitely do not recommend that you do this at home even if you could.

 

Here's your "food grade" alcohol:

 

The 85% means it is 85% ethanol and the rest gasoline. That should denature it sufficiently to deter most. TTB has elaborate requirements for the denaturing formula to be used in making 'denatured alcohol' and these insure that one cannot separate the alcohol from the denaturant. They may well have some similar requirement for E85.

 

USP and NF or USP-NF grade would be fine.

 

Sulfuric Acid?

Anyway,

NaCl + NaHCO3 + heat --> HCl + Na2CO3?

 

Why when phosphoric and lactic are available at most LHBS.

Why not just add potassium tartrate?

 

Yep. Takes place at room temperature though if you want it to go to completion you need to heat the mixture.

I won't say no, but I'm skeptical. The reason that the acid reaction goes is becuse there are, in the first stage, protons all over the place. Those have affinity for negatively charged chloride and the gas forms. Even in the second phase, if you will, of the reaction

NaCl + NaHSO4 --> HCl + Na2SO4

your are dealing with an acid whose pK is 1.9. Conversely, in NaHCO3 the pK is 6.38. Chloride is a very weak base. It's a lot to ask a rather weak acid, HCO3- to protonate it.

 

I was correcting your typo above.

My son and I might do the salt/baking soda experiment tonight. He's skeptical too. We'll just use a pH meter to measure success.

 

Doh!

I'm guessing you are going to get sodium carbonate, salt, water (which will evaporate) and CO2 (which will fly off) but if any HCl is emitted you should be able to smell it. I assume I don't have to tell you to be careful! Waft air from over the container towards you - don't stick your nose down there.

Actually, you would be much better off, from the safety POV, if you bubble the gas through water and check pH but don't forget that the CO2 evolved will drop it a bit. HCl gas will drop it a lot.

 

Yep, we already have it set up. Flask, stopper, tubing, cold water, pH meter. I'm not even attempting to smell it. I recently had a stovetop episode with ethyl acetate that I'm still recovering from

 

I'm thinking that 'ethyl acetate' and 'stovetop' are words that don't belong in the same sentence.

 

Haha, you should have been there - I was trying to extract the color from annatto seeds into an aqueous solution. It's a little hairy when you're boiling a solvent out. I'll do it outside next time. There was also sodium hydroxide involved. BTW, the experiment was a moderate failure, but I got it finished and removed the fumes before the wife got home from church, so there was that.

 

We got the smell. And the pH drop.

Equal amts of kosher salt and baking soda were heated and the gas was bubbled into a beaker of cold water.

pH intitial: 8.18
pH final: 5.88

 

So there aren't any non concentrated forms of HCL acids for sale? I thought I may have seen one. Not sure exactly what its use for in an alcoholic beverage nor what ethanol is for exactly. Is it an extractor? What is it extracting? Hops?

OK I try to stay away from the dangerous stuff so help me out here, would neutral spirits be the option? Would that be the name of the product I should be looking for? Is ethanol safe for human consumption depending on purity? Who would sell these in human grade form?

 

is there a book that shows you what turns into what if you mix what with what?

on Amazon, there are ethanol for sale 200 proof on the industrial and scientific section, here's one:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004M7YFRQ/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

Interesting. from the numbers (pK's) I didn't think you'd get enough HCl to detect but I guess the sniffer is pretty sensitive. The modest final pH indicates that the yield of the reaction is small - in fact if you hadn't mentioned the smell I'd suggest that the drop was entirely caused by the CO2.

Anyway, if you want to make HCl at home sulphuric acid is the way to go. That's how all the meth labs do it...

 

Given that you don't know what these substances are nor what they are for, even though their use in brewing has been explained several times here and that you don't even understand the relationship of ethanol to alcoholic beverages I have to conclude that either you definitely should not be playing with chemicals of any kind or that your motivation is not what it ostensibly seems.

 

Maybe the smell came from the hot PVC tubing and I was fooling myself. Pretty inconclusive test really, but my boy and I had fun.

 

Someone earlier said it was used for adjusting pH in English breweries. I've never used it myself. I would not be surprised if it is sold under some other common name -- some cleaner, perhaps.

The option for WHAT? I don't think I caught what you're trying to accomplish.

Vodka or Everclear comes to mind.

Ethanol is safe so long as its not mixed with something unsafe and you don't consume too much. I will be producing some this afternoon in fact. Mine will be about 6% and mixed with various organic matter (and probably acetaldehyde, if BJCP judges are to be believed).

Virtually every liquor store.

What, specifically, are you trying to accomplish? You're on the troll watch list at this point, coming into a homebrew forum and asking if anyone know anything about Ethanol

 

That is denatured with methanol which is toxic. Blindness and insanity are the side effects of drinking it.

 

Wow, for something that screams troll posting this thread got wonderfully derailed, abounding in mods and water experts!

So I'm still unsure, have we established yet what the purpose of ethanol is in alcoholic beverages?

 

Well, you like getting buzzed on your beer, don't you? Thank ethanol produced as yeast peeing in your wort... ...Sorta like us, they drink the wort, then pee & fart...

 

So when you say 6 percent, how pure was your ethanol? If it's 100%, how do you get down to 6% of your final product, do you dilute it with what?

 

Not very pure. It's 94% other stuff. Water, barley, yeast, hops, etc. I don't dilute. It's building up from zero.

You need to tell us why you're asking these questions. If you're really creating some sort of food or legal drink, we might actually help you out. But right now based on this and other posts, its coming across as you're looking for chemicals for a meth lab or other illegal activity and HBT isn't the place for that.