Shalom, and thank you for all your wonderful work!
About ten days ago, you posted:
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Plain “vinegar” is fine. Apple cider vinegar is fine.
Distilled vinegar may be an issue, but if listed as a third ingredient or afterwards, it’s fine too.
Why is this? Can it be assumed that the third ingredient is battel b’shishim? Is this a special rule for vinegar, or can it be applied across the board? Can we apply this to kashrut issues beyond hametz?
It’s a special unique concept for specifically distilled vinegar on Pesach.
Not everyone will necessarily understand this and that’s ok. I know that you will, so I’ll explain.
Ingredients are in order of largest ingredient first and then each ingredient thereafter is less than the one before it. Except for what’s listed after the words “less than 2%…”
Therefore, any ingredient that is listed third must be less than 1/3rd of the product.
The vinegar is not straight wheat. If it contains wheat, our research shows that the wheat is less than 5% of the vinegar. Because 95% of it is water.
So now comes the math.
5% of less than 1/3 is batel beshishim.
The math is 1/3 which in decimals is .3333
.3333 X .05 = 0.016665
0.016665 X 60 = 0.9999
WOW! Brilliant! Thank you so much!!!
Would another side l’hakel be that pure vinegar, before it is diluted, is caustic? Is not using hametz derived vinegar only a humra?
That’s certainly something to look into. Yes, we talked about that, but never had the time to really delve into it.