# Aged Garlic



## Rocklobster (Jan 18, 2012)

I think I am going to give this a try. Apparently there are major health benefits and sounds like it will taste good, to boot!
Aged Garlic | Culinary Inspiration with Chef Frank Giglio


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## jennyema (Jan 18, 2012)

Yum!


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## CWS4322 (Jan 18, 2012)

That sounds worth a try. I'll have to wait until I can get some decent heads of garlic (either from CA or Argentina). That will have to wait until I'm back from TX--my two trips into Ottawa between now and when I leave are going to be daytrips already. And, note to self--get Apple Cider vinegar at the same time that has mother in it. I haven't been to Rainbow Foods for a long time...might get organic horseradish root there too!


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## Steve Kroll (Jan 18, 2012)

There is a booth at our local Renaissance Fair that sells garlic aged in vinegar with various herbs. I think they use Champagne vinegar, though. It's pretty good and a lot mellower in flavor than you might think.


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## GLC (Jan 18, 2012)

Since we had a recent long discussion of garlic kept in oil, it should be noted that apple cider vinegar typically ranges from 4.5 to 5.00 pH. The botulism organism grows in a pH environment of 4.8 or higher. Apple cider vinegar begins close to or within that range, and when you pack a jar with garlic or any other plant product, you raise the pH from dilution. Garlic itself is 7.00 pH and higher. Garlic was the most common offender in oil, due to the frequency with which it is preserved and because it grows under the soil. It will therefore be a higher risk than above ground products preserved at room temperature in vinegar. Obviously, the number of botulism cases from garlic in oil is very small, compared to the number of people who keep it in oil. And garlic in vinegar is probably a lesser risk, but apple cider vinegar cannot be counted on to maintain a safely hostile environment for botulism. There have been botulism cases from home-canned pickles, although I suspect some of these were from recipes that mixed vinegar and water. If you want to be especially safe, garlic also cures in vinegar when refrigerated, and that keeps the temperature below the critical 40F. It should also be noted that keeping garlic in alcohol causes the same conversion to water solubles that is the beneficial effect in vinegar. I think alcohol is the method used to produce no-odor garlic supplement products, and alcohol would seem the more safe method, although you obviously don't get the garlic flavored vinegar as a byproduct.


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## Steve Kroll (Jan 18, 2012)

GLC said:


> ...it should be noted that apple cider vinegar typically ranges from 4.5 to 5.00 pH.


Are you sure about that? That sounds more like the percentage of acetic acid. I don't know about cider vinegar specifically, but I do know that wine vinegar is typically in the 3.0-3.5 pH range.

I have a pH meter. I guess I can check it tonight when I get home.

EDIT: this link I found says that raw apple cider vinegar has a pH in the 2.8-3.0 range.

Is Vinegar Acid or Alkaline?


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## GLC (Jan 18, 2012)

I was a little surprised, too, and it's by no means clear. Bragg's ACV is said to be much lower in pH. But multiple other references claim ACV is typically lower in acidity than white vinegar. Maybe the difference is between "raw," meaning as it was fermented, and a diluted form sold as ACV.


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## taxlady (Jan 18, 2012)

My wine vinegar, unpasteurized organic apple cider vinegar, and the white vinegar I use for cleaning all say that they have 5% acetic acid by volume. I don't know what that works out to in pH.


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## Andy M. (Jan 18, 2012)

Commercial vinegars are often adjusted to a set percentage such as 5%.  If you start with raw ACV, I don't know if it's naturally more or less acidic and whether it has to be adjusted up or down to 5%.  If the raw is more acidic, and therefore lower in pH, you'd be all set.


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## Addie (Jan 18, 2012)

I would like to add a note of caution here for diabetics. The OTC garlic products promoting health benefits contain a warning that it is not to be used by diabetics as it can cause a dangerous and dramatic rise in sugar levels. I am talking about the garlic pills. 

Now I don't know if this would apply to the aged garlic in vinegar or not. But it seems like it would be worth lookiing into. I use garlic in all my cooking. So far, no health problems. But I use it in moderation. And I doubt if anyone here is going to sit down and ingest a whole jar of aged garlic in one sitting. Happy eating.


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## Steve Kroll (Jan 19, 2012)

As promised, I took some pH readings on various vinegars tonight. The vinegars I checked were as follows:



Apple cider vinegar. Inexpensive store brand, pasteurized.
Distilled white vinegar. Again, this was an inexpensive store brand.
18 year old balsamic vinegar. The good stuff. About $120/gallon from a specialty store.
Red wine vinegar from Trader Joe's.
Rice vinegar from Trader Joe's.

All except the balsamic indicated 5% acidity on the label.

Here are the results, from most acidic to least acidic (remember the lower the pH, the higher the acidity):


Rice vinegar - 2.19
Distilled white vinegar - 2.34
Apple cider vinegar - 2.57
Red wine vinegar - 3.02
Balsamic vinegar - 3.15
What was kind of interesting (to me anyway) is that rice vinegar was the most acidic. I really find it to have a mild flavor. Apple cider vinegar fell right into the middle of the pack. 

Anyway, I found it to be a fun test, in a geeky sort of way.


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## PrincessFiona60 (Jan 19, 2012)

Steve Kroll said:


> As promised, I took some pH readings on various vinegars tonight. The vinegars I checked were as follows:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I love your pH meter!!!!  Bring on the geeky stuff.  Where did you get it, Steve?


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## Steve Kroll (Jan 19, 2012)

PrincessFiona60 said:


> I love your pH meter!!!!  Bring on the geeky stuff.  Where did you get it, Steve?


It was something I picked up at a place called Valley Vintner in San Francisco a few years ago. I originally bought it for testing wine grapes, but discovered it has a lot of other uses as well. It's a handy item to have in the kitchen at times.


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## PrincessFiona60 (Jan 19, 2012)

Steve Kroll said:


> It was something I picked up at a place called Valley Vintner in San Francisco a few years ago. I originally bought it for testing wine grapes, but discovered it has a lot of other uses as well. It's a handy item to have in the kitchen at times.



I'll have to check around here...or just Edmund Scientifics.  I'll be checking pH on everything  Don't mind her, she's just weird that way...


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## GLC (Jan 19, 2012)

Have you explored acitity enough to help answer something? Am I right that titration percentage expresses the amount of glacial acetic acid in the solution and that pH expresses the overall acidity of the solution. So since with vinegar, we're always talking about acetic acid, is there a simple table of equivalent between percentage and pH for vinegar (and presumably for any acetic acid solution), ignoring the effects of other components in some vinegars. But I don't find such a table. Am I missing something? 

I, too, was surprised by the rice vinegar. It just doesn't seem that strong from casual experience using it, and it's significantly stronger, considering the exponential definition of pH. I wonder how much effect on our perception of acidity is from other components. I would guess red wine vinegar would have its share of tannins, just as the wine does. Tannin's astringent, sourness, pucker factor, or whatever isn't too far from the sensation of acidity. Rice wine won't have any, of course. 

Most references talk about rice vinegar as being milder and less acetic, but that generalization seems to be made from taste experience. It seems there are different acidities among rice vinegars (and among all vinegars that aren't shooting for a standard, like common white vinegar), which makes sense, as makers will dilute to the taste they want, and that taste may depend on other things than percentage or acid.


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## Steve Kroll (Jan 19, 2012)

GLC said:


> Have you explored acitity enough to help answer something? Am I right that titration percentage expresses the amount of glacial acetic acid in the solution and that pH expresses the overall acidity of the solution. So since with vinegar, we're always talking about acetic acid, is there a simple table of equivalent between percentage and pH for vinegar (and presumably for any acetic acid solution), ignoring the effects of other components in some vinegars. But I don't find such a table. Am I missing something?


You're actually very close. The problem lies in assuming that the titration percentage on the label reflects only acetic acid. It doesn't. It's simply a way of expressing the total titratable acidity as if the only acid were acetic.

I'm by no means a chemist, though I've taken a couple of rudimentary wine chemistry classes at the university extension here. Most of my understanding therefore comes from that topic, so I'm going to use wine as an example.

When performing a simple titration, the results are always expressed as a single type of acid, even though there may be other acids present. For example, wine contains tartaric, malic, citric, acetic, succinic, lactic, carbonic, and a handful of other acids. Tartaric is the predominant acid, usually making up more than half of all the acids present. So when we titrate wine, we express the results of the titration as if all of the acid is tartaric (except in parts of Europe where, inexplicably, sulfuric is the standard). The result is calculated by plugging numbers into a formula. One constant in the formula is called the Acid Dissociation Constant (ADC), and it's different for each type of weak acid. For wine, we plug in the ADC value for tartaric acid.

When we say that a vinegar is 5% acidity, that's actually the total of all acids present in the vinegar, but it's calculated using acetic acid's ADC value. If you were to perform an analysis of apple cider vinegar, you would find it also contains a great deal of malic acid. Wine vinegar, being made from wine, contains mostly tartaric. Since distilled vinegar is manufactured using only water and grain alcohol, it's really the only vinegar where the acid profile is mostly acetic acid.

While it stands to reason that if you add acid to a solution the pH will drop, one of the things that I learned in wine chemistry class is that pH and the titratable acidity don't have any direct correlation. To illustrate, let's say that you have two containers of water. If you were to add 5 gm of phosphoric acid to one and 5 gm of lactic acid to the other, each container would contain 5 gm of acid, but the pH of the container with the phosphoric acid would have a lower pH value because phosphoric is a much stronger acid. When you start factoring in other variables like buffering capacity, it becomes a big cloudy mess.

I guess that was kind of a long answer, but I hope it helps explain why there isn't a table that says x% titratable acidity = y pH.

By the way, I think your absolutely correct about the interaction of tannin and acidity in wine vinegar. One of the things we're taught in winemaking is that a wine that's both tannic and acidic is not a pleasant wine to drink. That's why you'll find that tannic red wines have a relatively high pH as opposed to crisp white wines that have little tannin.


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## buckytom (Jan 19, 2012)

i feel smart because i understood that...


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## Steve Kroll (Jan 19, 2012)

I hate trying to explain smart things, because I'm really not all that smart. I have to dumb things down to my level just to understand it myself.


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## Rocklobster (Jan 19, 2012)

I just wanted to soak a bit of garlic

Seriously though, interesting stuff.....


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## GLC (Jan 19, 2012)

Okay. So the titration percentage is the percentage of acid the vinegar would be if all the acid was whatever standard acid was assumed. Kind of like knowing how much wood a wood chuck chucks based on the assumption that it's indeed a wood chuck chucking wood. A reasonable measure, if you know what its limitations. 

(Or the version I would sometimes insert in a math test:

If a chicken and a half lays an egg and a half in a day and a half, how long would it take a three-legged grasshopper to kick all the seeds out of a watermelon?)


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## PrincessFiona60 (Jan 19, 2012)

GLC said:


> Okay. So the titration percentage is the percentage of acid the vinegar would be if all the acid was whatever standard acid was assumed. Kind of like knowing how much wood a wood chuck chucks based on the assumption that it's indeed a wood chuck chucking wood. A reasonable measure, if you know what its limitations.
> 
> (Or the version I would sometimes insert in a math test:
> 
> If a chicken and a half lays an egg and a half in a day and a half, how long would it take a three-legged grasshopper to kick all the seeds out of a watermelon?)



I really hate story problems....


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## taxlady (Jan 19, 2012)

Assuming a spherical cow of uniform density...


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## Andy M. (Jan 19, 2012)

GLC said:


> ...If a chicken and a half lays an egg and a half in a day and a half, how long would it take a three-legged grasshopper to kick all the seeds out of a watermelon?)




Ooo, Oooo!  I know this one!!

The answer is Wednesday!


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## PrincessFiona60 (Jan 19, 2012)

Andy M. said:


> Ooo, Oooo!  I know this one!!
> 
> The answer is Wednesday!



Dang, I was sure it was Nevada...


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## Addie (Jan 20, 2012)

GLC said:


> Have you explored acitity enough to help answer something? Am I right that titration percentage expresses the amount of glacial acetic acid in the solution and that pH expresses the overall acidity of the solution. So since with vinegar, we're always talking about acetic acid, is there a simple table of equivalent between percentage and pH for vinegar (and presumably for any acetic acid solution), ignoring the effects of other components in some vinegars. But I don't find such a table. Am I missing something?
> 
> *Huh? for us regular folks.*
> 
> ...


 
*But then I am not a fan of vinegar either*


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## Addie (Jan 20, 2012)

buckytom said:


> i feel smart because i understood that...


 
So are you saying that you are taking the work of a 'wino'?


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