Vinegar Vampires: B41 vs B42 Pickling Hacks for Zomboid Survivors
Project Zomboid Vinegar in Build 41 and Build 42
Vinegar is a key ingredient for long-term food preservation in Project Zomboid. If you're wondering how vinegar works in Build 41 vs Build 42, you're likely trying to keep your food from rotting. In short: Vinegar is rare but vital โ it spawns in kitchens/grocery stores and lets you pickle (jar) vegetables for ~2-3 months of extra shelf-life. Build 42 finally adds a way to brew vinegar (via the new Brewer skill) so you won't always have to scour town for it. For comprehensive food preservation strategies, check out our complete food freshness guide.
โกQuick-Start: Finding & Using Vinegar
Experienced survivor and just need the high points? Here's a TL;DR checklist and tips to get going fast:
โ Looting Vinegar โ Best Spots: Search restaurants, diners, and grocery stores for vinegar. House kitchens rarely have it, but places like fast-food kitchens or fish-and-chip shops often do. A Spiffo's diner or GigaMart grocery can yield multiple bottles in one go. Use our interactive maps to locate these high-yield spots efficiently.
โ Using Vinegar to Pickle Food: To can vegetables, you'll need an Empty Jar + Jar Lid, 1 bottle of Vinegar, 1 bag of Sugar, and a heat source. Right-click a fresh vegetable and choose "Make Jar of ___". This consumes ~โ bottle of vinegar per jar. Finally, cook the sealed jar in boiling water to sterilize it. Now you've got veggies that last ~90 in-game days!
โ New in Build 42 โ Brewing Vinegar: Tired of looting? Build 42's new Brewer profession lets you ferment alcohol into vinegar. Craft some homemade wine or beer, leave it to ferment longer, and it'll turn into vinegar. This means vinegar becomes renewable in B42 โ a game-changer for long-term bases.
Required Items Checklist:
- Empty Jar (Jar or Jar of โฆ โ must be empty)
- Jar Lid (consumed when sealing jar)
- Vinegar (1 bottle โ 3 jars worth)
- Sugar (a few spoonfuls per jar)
- Cooking Pot + Water (for the boiling water bath)
- Heat Source (lit stove or campfire to boil jars)
Tip: A Box of Jars yields 6 empty jars when opened, and jars are reusable (lids are not). Always grab jars/lids when looting, even if you don't have vinegar yet!
๐Where to Find Vinegar (Loot Locations)
Vinegar is notoriously scarce in Project Zomboid โ many survivors go months without seeing a single bottle. To maximize your chances, focus your looting on specific locations and containers known to spawn vinegar.
Rare Spawn, but Not Random
In Build 41, vinegar spawns in specific "kitchen" type containers. Regular house kitchens have a very low chance (you might clear an entire neighborhood and only find 0โ1 bottle). However, commercial and restaurant kitchens have much higher spawn rates. For example, a diner kitchen or buffet has about a 40% chance to spawn some vinegar, and a seafood restaurant kitchen can practically be a goldmine with up to a dozen bottles! If you're struggling to find enough supplies, consider disabling zombie respawn to keep cleared areas safe for repeated looting.
Best Places to Loot Vinegar
Grocery Stores & Supermarkets
Check shelves and crates in stores like GigaMart or small town markets. Vinegar has ~40% spawn chance in grocery stock crates. If your town has a market, hit it early before it gets overrun.
Restaurants & Diners
Kitchens of restaurants (esp. fast-food like Spiffo's, or diner counters) often contain vinegar. Notably, seafood/fish fry restaurants have the highest chance (they use vinegar for fries in Kentucky!).
General Stores & Warehouses
Some general hardware stores or warehouse storage rooms carry random food supplies. Vinegar can appear on general store shelves or crates (40% chance).
Farms & Rural Houses
Farmhouses sometimes have cellars or pantries with preserved goods. It's rare, but if you're in rural areas, a farmhouse kitchen might yield a jar or two of vinegar.
Vinegar Spawn Rates by Location (Build 41)
" So far I found 3 boxes of jars/lids, 4 packs of sugar and 1.5 bottles of vinegarโฆ 1 full bottle of vinegar can make 3 jars of vegetables, I could only make 4 jars before I ran out. The majority of my harvest will rot away. "
โ Player in Riverside
Tools & Tips for Scavenging Vinegar
๐บ๏ธ Use the PZ Map Project
Leverage the Project Zomboid online map to locate relevant businesses. Filter for "restaurant" or find the Gigamart in West Point or Riverside. Plan a loot run to these high-yield spots specifically for vinegar.
๐ Bring a Vehicle & Loot Big
Vinegar bottles aren't heavy (weight 0.3 each), so when you hit a good location, loot everything. Fill your car trunk โ you might not get a second chance if the area gets swarmed later.
๐งฉ Mods to Help
Consider mods like "Expanded Helicopter Events" which can trigger supply drops that sometimes include vinegar, or "CanningBoxes" which spawns random boxes of canning supplies. For server management tips, check our admin guide.
๐ฅซUsing Vinegar to Preserve Food (Pickling Guide)
Once you do have vinegar, you've unlocked one of Project Zomboid's only methods of non-electric food preservation: pickling vegetables. This process, often just called "jarring" or "canning" in-game, is labor-intensive but can greatly extend your fresh produce's lifespan when the power's out.
Why Pickle?
Jarring vegetables in vinegar brine will make them last about 3 months (90 days) instead of a few days/weeks. It's especially useful for winter survival in long games โ you can harvest your farm in late summer, pickle the haul, and (hopefully) still be eating vegetables deep into winter.
How to Pickle Vegetables (Step-by-Step)
- Gather Supplies: Empty Jar + Jar Lid, Vinegar, Sugar, a Cooking Pot, Water, and heat source.
- Prepare Veggies: Harvest or gather fresh vegetables (e.g. Cabbage, Tomato, Carrots). You can jar multiple of the same kind together.
- Combine Ingredients: Keep the veggies, a jar (empty), a lid, vinegar bottle, and sugar in your inventory. Right-click the vegetable -> "Make Jar of [Vegetable]".
- Seal the Jar: The result is an "Uncooked Jar of [Vegetable]". Place the filled jar into a Cooking Pot with water and put it on a heat source.
- Boil (Cook) the Jar: Turn on the heat and wait. The jarred vegetables item will change from "Uncooked" to just "Jar of [Vegetable]" when ready.
- Store Safely: Remove the jar from heat. Now you have a shelf-stable jarred veggie that stays Fresh for ~60 days, then becomes Stale (but still edible) for another 30 days.
โ ๏ธ Important:
Don't eat uncooked jarred food and don't skip the boiling step. Always ensure the jar says just "Jar of ___" (not "Uncooked") before storing it.
Yields & Usage Efficiency
One vinegar bottle (standard size) has 10 units (uses) of vinegar. Each jar recipe uses 3 units (0.3) โ allowing 3 jars per bottle (with a tiny bit left over). If you've lucked into, say, 5 bottles of vinegar, you can theoretically pickle ~15 jars of food.
Plan accordingly: prioritize high-value crops (Cabbages, Tomatoes) that you can't otherwise preserve. Potatoes and some fruits last long even raw, but things like cucumbers, broccoli, or watermelon will rot quickly if not pickled or cooked. For comprehensive farming strategies, see our complete farming guide for Build 42.
Which Foods Can Be Jarred?
Not every food item can be pickled โ mainly vegetables and some fruits. Valid examples include:
- Cabbage
- Tomato
- Carrots
- Broccoli
- Leek
- Eggplant
- Watermelon (chunks)
- Bell Pepper
You cannot jar meat (no meat pickling in vanilla) and you can't jar prepared dishes.
Advanced Tips: Maximizing Your Vinegar & Jars
Stockpiling Lids & Jars
Vinegar might be your bottleneck, but jars and lids can be just as limiting. A box of jars yields 6 jars, and each needs a lid. Lids often run out first. Always pick up boxes of jars and any loose lids you see.
Reusing Jars
Empty jars are reusable infinitely, which is great. After you eat a jar's contents, you get the empty jar back (it will say "Jar (Empty)"). You'll need a new lid to can again. Don't throw jars away โ keep a storage box for empties.
No Power? No Problem
You might wonder, "How do I boil jars if electricity is out?" You have two options: use a Campfire kit to create a fire, or use a Propane BBQ which can still be lit without electricity.
Alternate Preservation Methods (if Vinegar Fails You)
๐ฅฉ Drying & Smoking
Drying meats or smoking fish can preserve protein without jars. In vanilla B41, you can dry rabbit meat or make jerky with the right skills. Build 42 introduces food drying racks for fruits and meat.
โ๏ธ Freezing
If you managed a generator and fuel, keeping a freezer running is an alternative to jarring. It's noisy and fuel-dependent, but a generator with a few gas cans can preserve many more vegetables (frozen) than you could ever jar with limited vinegar. Learn more about finding and using generators.
๐ฑ Eat Seasonal & Forage
You might simply plan to eat crops when they're in season and rely on foraging in off-season. For example, cabbages grow fast; you could continuously plant them in summer and always eat them fresh.
๐ถRenewable Vinegar in Build 42 (The Brewing Revolution)
One of the headline features of Build 42's crafting overhaul is brewing โ and by extension, the ability to make vinegar. In Build 41 and earlier, no matter how skilled you were, vinegar was a finite resource you could only scavenge. B42 changes that by empowering players to produce their own liquids through fermentation.
Brewing 101: From Alcohol to Vinegar
Project Zomboid's Build 42 introduces a slew of new crafting stations and recipes for beverages. The Brewer profession (and associated Brewing skill) is at the center of this. Initially, brewing lets you create alcoholic drinks: beer, wine, etc., from ingredients like grains or fruits. But the devs didn't stop at "hooch" โ they recognized the survival utility of fermentation.
If you let alcohol sit exposed to air, it naturally turns into vinegar (thanks to Acetobacter bacteria). The game now simulates this process:
- You'll craft a brew (for example, make Wine from grapes or Berry Wine from berries + sugar + yeast). New equipment like Fermentation Barrel or carboys are used to ferment alcohol.
- Once you have an alcoholic liquid, you can continue fermenting it beyond the alcohol stage. Essentially, in-game you will have a recipe or action to "Let Wine Turn to Vinegar" by leaving it in a barrel or special container for a time.
- After the required time (could be days or weeks in-game), the result is Vinegar. You might see it as a "Vinegar (Fermented)" item or simply a Jug of Vinegar produced from the barrel.
According to the developers, "the Brewer profession also allows for the creation of a rather vital way of preserving food." โ a direct nod to vinegar. So if you invest in this skill, you're effectively future-proofing your food supplies.
Getting Started with Brewing (B42)
Step-by-Step Guide to Brewing Vinegar
- Pick the Brewer Occupation (or learn via recipe magazines, if available). Brewer gives you starting skill and maybe a brewing kit.
- Gather ingredients for alcohol: e.g. lots of berries or fruit for wine, or potatoes for vodka, etc. (Exact recipes vary; a "Fruit Wine" might need 10 berries + 1 yeast + 1 sugar + water.)
- Craft a Fermenting Barrel (or find one). B42 added crafting stations like makeshift stills, barrels, etc. Place your mash or must into the container.
- Ferment Alcohol: Wait until you have an alcoholic product (wine/beer). You can bottle some if you like booze, but leave at least one batch to turn.
- Secondary Fermentation (Vinegar): Expose the alcohol to open air in a vessel. This might be a crafted step like "Add mother of vinegar" or simply leaving it "aging" beyond a certain time. After the wait, you'll get vinegar.
Pro Tip: Build 42 also adds grape vines and wineries in certain maps, plus the ability to make wine from wild grapes or berry wine. These are prime sources for vinegar conversion.
๐งฉMod Corner: Vinegar Crafting in B41
If you're sticking to Build 41 for now (or playing with mods), you don't have to miss out on homemade vinegar entirely. Modders have created several solutions:
Craftable Vinegar (Updated for 41)
This mod by RaathTuxicator allows brewing wine from grapes and then fermenting it into vinegar. It introduced a "Mother of Vinegar" item and took ~7 days for the process, very similar to what B42 later did.
Simple Fermenting (Vinegar from Potatoes)
The Simple Ferment Vinegar mod gives a recipe to turn potatoes + yeast + sugar -> vinegar with a week of fermentation. It even added ways to create yeast and refine sugar, addressing all aspects of making vinegar from scratch.
Expanded Canning Mods
Some larger modpacks (Hydrocraft, and newer ones in B42) include vinegar crafting as part of broader food preservation systems. For example, Hydrocraft allowed making vinegar from wine and had many pickling recipes.
โ ๏ธ Using mods in B41 means you can essentially get the B42 feature early. Just be sure to check mod compatibility when you do move to B42 โ the devs have warned that major changes (like item ID updates) could break old mods.
โ๏ธBuild 41 vs Build 42: Vinegar Mechanics Comparison
Finally, let's summarize the differences between Build 41 and Build 42 regarding our favorite pickling potion. Many players returning to Zomboid after updates ask, "What's new in Build 42?" โ here's a quick rundown specifically for vinegar:
Adapting Your Strategy in B42
If you're coming into Build 42, how should you change your approach regarding vinegar?
Embrace Brewing
Consider taking the Brewer occupation for your survivor, especially in MP or longer games. It gives you a head start with making not just vinegar but also alcohol (useful for trading or fortifying mood).
Base Location Consideration
If you plan on brewing, having a safe house near a source of fermentables (fruit orchard, berry zones, or farming space for potatoes/wheat) will save you travel.
Stockpile Post-Apoc Barrels
In B42, keep an eye out for oak barrels, large containers, or even wooden kegs in the world. You might find some in wineries or bars. These could be repurposed for fermenting vinegar.
Mod Updates
Many preservation mods have B42 versions or updates. For example, a mod that provided renewable salt can complement the now-renewable vinegar to completely free you from reliance on looted ingredients.
Patch History (Click to Expand)
- โข Build 34 (2016) โ Preserving food introduced: added jars, lids, vinegar, sugar, and the basic pickling/jarring system to the game. This is when vinegar first became an item (required for the new jarred food recipes).
- โข Build 41.50 (Dec 2021) โ Nutrition Update: Tweaked food decay times. Jarred vegetables standardized to 60 days fresh, 30 stale (90 total). Vinegar's role unchanged (still loot-only).
- โข Build 42.1 (Unstable, Jan 21, 2025) โ Crafting Overhaul: Introduced Brewing โ allowing vinegar production via fermentation. Added Jug of Vinegar item and changed vinegar's internal ID to Base.Vinegar2.
- โข Build 42.x (Unstable, FebโApr 2025) โ Ongoing balance: feedback about non-renewable salt and lid scarcity acknowledged. Mods addressing these issues popular. No official fix yet, but devs hinted at future food preservation methods.
Related Survival Guides
๐ฝ๏ธ Food & Preservation
๐ง Server & Admin
In Summary
Build 42 tilts the balance in favor of the determined homesteader: if you put in the effort to brew, you can have endless vinegar and truly enjoy a cellar full of pickled produce. No more cross-country roadtrips just to raid a grocery store for a single bottle of vinegar โ unless you enjoy that thrill, of course!
Happy pickling, survivors! May your jars stay sealed and your vinegar runneth over. ๐ฅ๐ง