The brown stuff is malt vinegar which is made from gone off beer, and the clear stuff is distilled vinegar which is um, distilled to remove the crap. Traditionally, malt vinegar is used on chips of the fish and chip variety. The clear stuff is mostly used for pickled eggs and other horrible things. No idea why they’d have that on the counter really, unless they expect you to throw something in there for pickling perhaps? An eye maybe?

The brown stuff is concentrated hydrochloric acid. The clear stuff is concentrated sulphuric acid. Both will burn and disfigure you horribly should you get any on your skin. And cause gangrene.

Generally the brown stuff is malt vinegar and used for chips. Stu can’t have it as the malt comes from Barley which has gluten in it.

The clear one is usually acetic acid which is fine from gluten intolerant people, and is usually used for pickling.

There is also a vinegar which can be brown or clear which is called “non-brewed condiment” which is used for chips or pickling. This is gluten free too.

Non-brewed condiment is horrible, vinegar is nice :-)

The bestest, bestest vinegar for chip sprinkling is the leftover vinegar from a jar of Garner’s pickled onions (which in turn are the nicest pickled onions you can buy, bettered only by home-made). We’ve an old Sarson’s vinegar bottle which was bought about 6 years ago, and which has been constantly replenished from exhausted Garner’s jars.

Use the pink one. :)

White vinegar is great for removing limescale & cleaning windows - so is pretty potent. Just stinks alot!
Wouldn’t want to put it on my chips!

If you put a coin into Coke, it comes out all shiny. The same happens if you put a coin in white vinegar. Therefore, they must be the same. Put Coke on your chips. Problem Solved.
A

I will probably ask next time I’m in a suitably friendly-seeming chippy what the white vinegar on the counter is for. If pickling, you’d have to be awffy patient to sit there for 2 weeks to allow it to suffuse.

The brown vinegar is for chips and stuff. The white vinegar is for roe. The maltodextrin in brown vinegar reacts with the amino-nucleotides in the roe, imparing the flavour.*

Handy tip, that one about cleaning glass!
I like the brown vinegar on my chips.

Malt vinegar stinks and I hate the taste of it. You can’t buy non-brewed vinegar in supermarkets, only from the fish & chip shop at nearly a £1 per bottle for inexpensive not real vinegar. The clear vinegar is onion vinegar that is used when the pickled onions are no longer in the big jars the come in, this is usually because people have eaten them.

April 3, 2005

hey i came on your site to see why vinegar is used to pickle onions for some coursework at skl you dint help but u cheered me up!!! yea and i dunt think ill comment in the malt vinegar lolz feel free to contact me

Guys you all crazy bu i like it!! All this talk about vinegar! Anyway i got here coz i can’t type properly, got me thinking though. How can i get hold of a bottle of onion vinegar without the whole onions in?? Bye all.
Jas

buy a bottle of onions in vinegar and take the onions out?

Up here in Sheffield, they tend to put Henderson’s Relish on their chips, not vinegar.

Stop it ! i`m supposed to be working

We do not all put relish on our chips in Sheffield, we also use non brewed condiment which I find most civilised and should be sold in supermarkets!

omg i need un brewd vinigar i cant get it anywhere..i dont like any other vinigar

I’m from Sheffield and our local Macro has stopped selling Non Brewed Condiment. Any one any ideas where I can get some. The sold them in big 5 litre bottles.

i’ve recently emigrated to New Zealand and miss my Non Brewed Condiment, back in the UK our local supermarkets had started selling the non brewed stuff in bottles cleverly named “Chip Shop Vinegar”

Non-Brewed Condiment (acetic acid) is cunningly sold as vinegar in chip shops, which is grossly misleading and sure to be breaking a few trade description laws. The Food & Drugs Administration in America, states that: “…diluted acetic acid is not a vinegar of any kind and has advised against its use in food products customarily expected to contain vinegar.” As you can see, we’re all being conned here in Britain. Non-Brewed Condiment is a substance that’s corrosive and harmful to health when undiluted and just doesn’t taste very good. To all of the ‘condiment’ fans out there, wake up! It’s a bit like comparing wine to methylated spirits. Unfortunately, we’re living in a world where chip shops have forgotten how to cook proper chips, pizza chains don’t know how to cook real pizza and people just don’t care. In this regard, I utterly respect the Italians and the French for being passionate about their food and defending it to the point where they’d protest about it. We’re just a bunch of robots over here!

Non-brewed condiment is so called because it has, erm, not been brewed. It is produced from oil in a refinery.
All vinegars contain acetic acid aka ethanoic acid. What they then contain is other stuff in varying amounts to change the flavour. They are either chemicals that are added or are part of the brewing process from whatever they were brewed from. This is what gives the difference between white wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, cider vinegar, malt vinegar, sherry vinegar.
Balsamic vinegar takes life to the extreme.
Would champagne vinegar be fizzy?

Yank here… Vinegar on fries (Chips) is good.. but so is a tomato/ketchup blend or brown beef gravy. ^_^ Must be the wide fries(Chips) tho, since the skinny one’s are too thin to even out the taste….

I just love non brewed condiment so much so that when going out to eat I always take my hip flask filled with my favorite acid. It has been the cause of many funny looks and wispered comments as I have removed the flask from my inner pocket an proceeded to sprinkle the contents onto my chips.Once I was approched by a Pub Landlord who tried to expel me from the premises for bringing my own booze into the pub it was only when I poured some into a glass and asked him to nock it back in one if he beleived it was a smuggled in spirit ti nearly choked the bliter but he still threw me out for being a prangster

Does any one know where I can buy non brewed condiment PLEASE DESPERATE

valda - you can buy non brewed condiment at tesco
labelled vinegar - cosy 17p

Can we buy non brewed condiment in Oz.Anybody know ? I am an oldie and as a child in England ( pre 1939) this was the only kind of vinegar we had. Used to take a bottle out to the man with a horse and cart and he filled it up ftom a BIG keg. The only kind for pickling in my opinion. All the pickles in Oz are too sweet and I love my “fish and chip” stuff when I’m back in the U.K. on holiday

Reply to: buy a bottle of onions in vinegar and take the onions out?
Comment by Chillywilly — June 21, 2005 at 4:55 PM

LOL, you are funny :)

chip shop vinagar is watered down nom brewed vinagar supermarket vinagar is rubbish unless it has non brewed onlabel dont have it the weigh shops sell non brewed but they are all closing down and there is no contact address vonthe bottle