Vinegar Woes? Fix Your Food Crisis in PZ B41/B42
Vinegar is a key ingredient for long-term food preservation in Project Zomboid. If you're wondering how "Project Zomboid 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 detailed pickling techniques, see our comprehensive vinegar guide.
๐ Quick-Start: Finding & Using Vinegar in PZ
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.
- 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 (so one vinegar lets you pickle ~3 jars). Finally, cook the sealed jar in boiling water to sterilize it.
- 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.
Canning Supplies Checklist:
- โก Empty Jar (Jar or Jar of โฆ โ must be empty)
- โก Jar Lid (consumed when sealing jar)
- โก Vinegar (1 bottle โ 3 jars worth)
- โก Sugar (a few spoonfuls per jar)
- โก Cooking Pot + Water (for the boiling water bath)
- โก 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!
๐ Where to Find Vinegar (Loot Locations in Knox Country)
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.
"Yeah, vinegar and all the stuff to make canned food is rare โ Too rare to be of any practical use."
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.
Best Places to Loot Vinegar:
๐ Grocery Stores & Supermarkets
Check shelves and crates in stores like GigaMart or small town markets. Vinegar has ~40% spawn chance in grocery stock crates. Use our interactive maps to locate these stores efficiently.
๐ Restaurants & Diners
Kitchens of restaurants (esp. fast-food like Spiffo's) often contain vinegar. Seafood restaurants have the highest chance (480% spawn weight).
๐ช General Stores & Warehouses
Some general hardware stores or warehouse storage rooms carry random food supplies. Check storage units or warehouses for boxes with jars and vinegar. Find hardware store locations in our hardware store guide.
๐ก Farms & Rural Houses
Farmhouses sometimes have cellars or pantries with preserved goods. It's rare, but if you're in rural areas, a farmhouse might yield a jar or two.
Vinegar Spawn Rates by Location (Build 41):
| Location / Container | Vinegar Spawn Chance | Typical Quantity |
|---|---|---|
| House kitchen (cupboard) | ~1% per cupboard | 0โ1 bottles |
| Restaurant/Diner kitchen (counter) | 40% per counter | 0โ4 bottles |
| Seafood restaurant kitchen | 480% (very high) | 0โ12 bottles |
| Fast Food kitchen (deep fry area) | ~160% per counter | 0โ8 bottles |
| Grocery store (shelves/crates) | 40% per container | 0โ4 bottles |
| General store (crates/shelves) | 40% per container | 0โ4 bottles |
| Storage unit / Warehouse (crate) | 40% per crate | 0โ4 bottles |
Why are some percentages above 100%? The game's loot system uses weighted distribution. 100% would mean a guarantee of at least one; values like 480% mean the container often has multiple vinegar spawns (e.g. 4.8 times the base chance).
๐งฐ Tools & Tips for Scavenging Vinegar
- 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.
- 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 with as many bottles as you can find.
- Expanded Helicopter Event Drops (mod): This mod can trigger supply drops that sometimes include boxes with jars, vinegar, and sugar.
- Canning Supply Boxes (mod): The CanningBoxes mod spawns random "Box of Canning Supplies" loot in the world, containing salt, vinegar, sugar, jars, etc.
๐ฅซ Using 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 still be eating vegetables deep into winter.
How to Pickle Vegetables (Step-by-Step)
In-game, the UI doesn't tutorialize the canning process clearly. Follow these steps to safely can (pickle) your veggies:
- 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]". This will consume one lid, some sugar, and 30% of a vinegar bottle.
- 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 will stay Fresh for ~60 days, then become Stale (but still edible) for another 30 days.
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). So if you've lucked into, say, 5 bottles of vinegar, you can theoretically pickle ~15 jars of food.
Which Foods Can Be Jarred?
Advanced Tips: Maximizing Your Vinegar & Jars
- Stockpiling Lids & Jars: Vinegar might be your bottleneck, but jars and lids can be just as limiting. Always pick up boxes of jars and any loose lids you see.
- Reusing Jars: Empty jars are reusable infinitely. After you eat a jar's contents, you get the empty jar back. You'll need a new lid to can again.
- No Power? No Problem: Use a Campfire kit or Propane BBQ to boil your jars if electricity is out.
- Extending Shelf Life (Mods): Mods like "Turk's Lasting Jarred Foodstuffs" make jarred food last 240 days or more.
Alternate Preservation Methods (if Vinegar Fails You)
๐ฅ Drying & Smoking
Drying meats or smoking fish can preserve protein without jars. 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 but effective.
๐ฅฆ Eat Seasonal
Plan to eat crops when they're in season and rely on foraging in off-season. Cabbage grows fast; you could continuously plant them in summer with our farming guide.
๐ท Renewable 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. If you let alcohol sit exposed to air, it naturally turns into vinegar.
The Brewing Process:
- 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.
- Continue fermenting beyond the alcohol stage. In-game you will have a recipe or action to "Let Wine Turn to Vinegar" by leaving it in a barrel or special container.
- 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.
Getting Started with Brewing (B42):
- 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.
- Craft a Fermenting Barrel (or find one). B42 added crafting stations like makeshift stills, barrels, etc.
- Ferment Alcohol: Wait until you have an alcoholic product (wine/beer).
- Secondary Fermentation (Vinegar): Expose the alcohol to open air in a vessel. After the wait, you'll get vinegar.
"The Brewer profession also allows for the creation of a rather vital way of preserving food."
Mod Corner: Vinegar Crafting in B41
If you're sticking to Build 41 for now, 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.
Simple Fermenting (Vinegar from Potatoes)
The Simple Ferment Vinegar mod gives a recipe to turn potatoes + yeast + sugar -> vinegar with a week of fermentation.
Expanded Canning Mods
Some larger modpacks (Hydrocraft, and newer ones in B42) include vinegar crafting as part of broader food preservation systems.
๐ Build 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:
| Aspect | Build 41 (stable) | Build 42 (unstable) |
|---|---|---|
| Source of Vinegar | Loot only (fixed spawn locations). | Loot + Craftable (brewing). |
| Renewable? | No โ finite supply in world. | Yes โ infinite via fermentation. |
| Container Types | Small Bottle (0.3 weight, 10 uses). | Bottle + Jug (large volume) introduced. |
| Uses in Game | Food preservation (jarred veg). Minor spice usage. | Same preservation use. Spice usage improved. Brewing ingredient. |
| Associated Skills | None (just looting). | Brewing skill (new profession). |
| Item ID | Base.Vinegar | Base.Vinegar2 (technical change). |
| Salt Requirement | Yes (for jars, need vinegar + salt + sugar). | Yes, still need salt (salt still non-renewable). |
Adapting Your Strategy in B42
๐งช Embrace Brewing
Consider taking the Brewer occupation for your survivor, especially in MP or longer games. It gives you a head start with making vinegar and alcohol.
๐ Base Location
If you plan on brewing, having a safe house near a source of fermentables (fruit orchard, berry zones) will save you travel.
๐ข๏ธ Stockpile Barrels
In B42, keep an eye out for oak barrels, large containers, or even wooden kegs in the world. These could be repurposed for fermenting vinegar.
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
Patch History (Click to Expand)
- 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). It set vinegar as non-craftable and fairly rare in distribution.
- 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).
- 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.
- 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.