[Avodah] Chamets - Whiskey & Vinegar

[Rabbi Meir G. Rabi]

Chamets and Vinegar - What's the Story?

Question
May we use vinegar made from Chamets derived alcohol during Pesach? It's a
bit of a long story.

Introduction
Yeast is a tiny living organism that is literally everywhere other than in
‘clean rooms’ for manufacturing microscopic integrated circuits, and
specialised medical laboratories. Yeast organisms are microscopic and float
invisibly in the air we breathe and water we drink. In tinned foods they
and other pathogens are destroyed by heating after the tin is sealed.

Without yeast we would have no wine, liqueur, beer, whiskey, vinegar, bread
or penicillin.

Yeast organisms live, eat and reproduce and are often noticed as ‘bloom’ a
whitish powder at the stem of plums and grapes, where nectar seeps from the
fruit. It is actually a yeast colony which grew from a single random yeast.

Yeast consumes sugar and produces alcohol. This is known as fermentation.
The sugar is either from sugary foods such as apples, grapes, plums etc. or
converted from starch found in potatoes, wheat, rice, corn etc. Yeast in
the right circumstances, also makes Chamets but only when acting upon these
5 grains; wheat, barely, rye, spelt or oats. Wine and apple cider which are
also fermented with yeast are not Chamets because they are free of the five
grains.
The Chamets Prohibition

The Torah prohibits eating and/or owning Chamets during Pesach which can be
made only from the five aforementioned grains. Bread, the most famous
Chamets, is made from a dough of such flour which, being sticky and
elastic, captures the carbon dioxide gas produced by the yeast and inflates
many thousands of tiny ‘pockets’ which in turn ‘inflates’ the dough causing
it to ‘rise’. This gives bread its soft, spongy, chewy texture. It is also
the metric by which Halachah determines that dough has become Chamets.

What is the law when a little bit of Chamets is diluted in non-Chamets?
Let’s say we have a mixture of potato and Chamets in which the Chamets is
not discernible.
One violates the prohibition of consuming Chamets if a Kezayis of Chamets
is consumed within the time an average person takes to eat an average
textured bread of a given mass; known as a Peras [between 2 - 9 minutes;
see
https://www.star-k.org/articles/kashrus-kurrents/425/the-guide-to-halachic-food-measurements/]
- לענין אכילה אינו חייב כרת לכולי עלמא אלא אם כן יש בו כזית בכדי אכילת פרס
ויש דסבירא ליה דאפילו לאו אין בו [Mishneh Berurah 442:1]

However, the prohibition of owning Chamets depends on how it is packaged.
One may own hundreds of small containers, in total, many hundreds of
Kezaysim of Chamets, without transgressing the prohibition if there is less
than a Kezayis in each container -  לענין בל יראה ובל ימצא עובר עליו כיון
שכל חלקיו מונחין בכלי אחד הרי הן מצטרפין זה עם זה כיון שיש שם ביחד כזית חמץ

In beer production it is not the gas produced by the yeast we are
interested in but the alcohol it produces [which actually kills it;
depending on the type of yeast, between 12 and 17% - yes, alcohol is toxic]
Beer, fermented from wheat and or barley, is Chamets even though the gas is
not captured and nothing gets inflated. These beverages as well as wine,
use sulphites, chilling or heating to kill the yeast and halt fermentation.
The taste of the fermented wheat and or barley is an intrinsic element of
beer, making it Chamets even though there is no wheat or barley present.

Although the Torah prohibits even less than a Kezayis of a prohibited food,
that is inapplicable where the prohibited food is not discernible and
Battel in a mixture.

Whiskey and Bourbon - Chamets?

Bourbon and whiskey begin their life pretty much the same as beer,
fermentation of wheat and or barley. However, the initial product is
fermented to its maximum alcoholic value and then distilled which separates
and concentrates the alcohol. After a couple of distillations, it is almost
100% pure, colourless and purified to the point that there is no
discernible difference between alcohol derived from wine, potato or wheat.
Colour is often added to whiskey [E150a, spirit caramel and need not be
disclosed] but not to bourbon. [bourbon must be aged in new wooden oak
casks whilst whiskey must be aged in used wooden casks] Both gain colour
and flavour balance from ageing in charred wooden barrels which are
regularly recharred. Alcohol percentage is achieved by diluting with water.

Since halacha permits hanging meat to dry in the warm zone above a stove
even when it is enveloped by steam of milk cooking on the stove [YD 92:8 -
תּוֹלִין בָּשָׂר לְיַבֵּשׁ עַל קְדֵרוֹת שֶׁל חָלָב, וְלֹא חַיְישִׁינָן
לַזֵּעָה שֶׁעוֹלָה (פִּסְקֵי מהרא״י סִימָן ק״ג). וְכֵן אִם הַמַּחֲבַת
מְכֻסֶּה - the only restriction being that the steam be less that Yad
Soledes when it contacts the meat] it is reasonable to assert that alcohol
distilled from Chamets is not Chamets just as the steam is not dairy. The
Poskim however maintain that it is Chamets.

It seems that the ruling that distilled alcohol, is Chamets [Mishneh
Berurah [442:4] - ויין שרף הנעשה מחמשה מיני דגן הסכימו האחרונים דהוי חמץ
גמור וגרע מתערובות חמץ - “the consensus of the Poskim is that ‘Yayin Saraf’
- ‘wine’ meaning beer, that burns or perhaps that is processed with heat
i.e. distillation - when produced from one of the 5 grains is more
intensely Chamets than diluted Chamets”] is predicated upon the fact that
in years gone-by it was a crude process [between 40% and 50% alcohol]
resulting in a finished product that still retained the taste and flavour
of the Chamets it was distilled from.

We are now ready to address our opening question: if the alcohol from which
vinegar is processed is Chamets, is the vinegar also Chamets?
The OU advises that it is. Therefore, only KLP vinegar and foods containing
KLP vinegar may be consumed during Pesach. As we learned, it may also not
be owned during Pesach. Furthermore, a penalty prohibits benefiting from
any Chamets owned by a Yid during Pesach.

However, the OU argues this penalty is not applied to USA produced vinegar
because: A] in the USA vinegar is not usually made from wheat alcohol; B]
even if wheat alcohol is used it is most likely diluted with other
non-Chamets alcohols to the point of being Halachically Battel -
insignificant and inconsequential; C] domestic table vinegar (50 grain) is
further diluted, approx 95% water; D] as an ingredient in pickles, mustard,
salad dressing, horseradish etc. it is further diluted.

The leniency however, extends only to permitting their use after Pesach in
spite of it being owned by a Jew during Pesach.

However, this calculation works only for vinegar packaged for domestic
purposes. The prohibition of owning Chamets applies if within any container
there is a Kezayis of Chamets. In the case of a dilution of 95%, there will
be a Kezayis [let’s say 200ml] of vinegar in a container larger than
2,600ml. If only half of the Kezayis of vinegar is Chamets, there will be a
Kezayis in a container of more than 5,200ml. In the industrial and
commercial domains, vinegar is stored in containers of many hundreds if not
thousands of litres and contains many Kezaysim of Chamets.
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