Add Acid to etoh

It is truly a delight to see so many brilliant chemists chatting here! And yes, @Vegeta , you ARE a chemist! You have some very keen insights that take you out of the category of “layman” when it comes to chemistry, so I believe you have the soul of a chemist, even without institutional education in the subject.

To answer your question, there should NOT be anything hazardous in the product after having done what you described. Therefore, I would recommend to taste the product, about which I believe @mitokid asked you. In this case, “TASTING” means licking the solid product with your moist tongue… not necessarily vaporizing and inhaling it to “taste” the vapor.
To determine whether or not it contains any residual ascorbic acid (which I believe it may), you “will do some tasty test” :yum: with just a tiny chunk (maybe the size of 1-4 crystals/grains of table salt or sugar) to look for SOUR FLAVOR. Sour flavor means there is something acidic present. To be more certain the sourness you may taste in your product is actually the ascorbic acid you added, you may also taste an equally tiny amount of the pure ascorbic acid.

If your product DOES contain (tastably “too much”) ascorbic acid, you will need a few supplies to clean it up, properly. Here is the procedure I ALWAYS recommend to achieve the perfect pH for cannabinoid products that have been treated with acid or base at some point in processing…

MATERIALS:
• product dissolved in alkane or similarly hydrophobic, aprotic solvent
• pure distilled water… Fyi, Reverse Osmosis [RO] filtered water is usually not good enough, so purchase jugs of distilled water or just make your own in a clean rotovap!
• pH litmus paper, full range or designed for pH 5-9
Or
• calibrated digital pH meter

PROCEDURE:
1. Measure & record pH of pure distilled water (straight out of the jug). It should be 6.2-6.8 pH at typical room temperatures.
2. Wash the non-polar solution of cannabinoid with 1/3rd its volume of that pure water… mix the liquids to emulsion perhaps 7 minutes.
3. Allow complete partitioning of the liquid layers. If the lower layer is the aqueous, drain a decent sample of it into a clean & dry glass vessel, without any emulsion (mid-layer “scum”) on its surface. If the upper layer is aqueous, it may be sampled as-is, without separation draining.
4. Now, measure & record the pH of this water again.
The difference between the pure water pH (step 1) and the post-wash water pH (step 4) tells you how close you are to the equilibrium pH…:arrow_heading_down:
(A)cid ~ If the previous wash used acid (e.g. citric or ascorbic), and wash pH is at or further than -0.3 BELOW (i.e: more acidic than) the pure pH, simply wash again with another 1/3rd volume of pure water, and measure post-wash pH again.:arrows_clockwise:Repeat until wash pH is within -0.2 of or at pure water pH.:white_check_mark:
(B)ase ~ If the previous wash used alkali (i.e. a base like sodium bicarbonate), and wash pH is at or more than +0.3 ABOVE (i.e: more alkaline than) pure pH, simply wash again with another 1/3rd volume of pure water, and measure post-wash pH again.:arrows_clockwise:Repeat until wash pH is within +0.2 of or at pure water pH.:white_check_mark:
(C)orrect ~ If wash pH is within +/-0.2 of pure pH, it is acceptable. Ideally, the post-wash pH should be EQUAL to the pure water pH.:white_check_mark:

It is better to reach a “water equilibrium pH” this way than it is to bounce back and forth between washes with acid & base (aka: “titration”). Perfect titration of acid with base or vice-versa is nearly impossible without some means of continuously monitoring the pH, such as a colored indicator or a benchtop digital pH probe in the solution.

Best of luck, and thanks for sharing this! :wink:

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