Vinegar + water as a stop bath?

Photo Engineer said:

There are two grades of vinegar. One is brown undistilled apple cider or wine vinegar and the other is white distilled vinegar which costs more.

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Yes; BOTH would be "Food Grade Vinegars".

Expensive? Somewhere I chanced upon a century-old (100 years) Modena Balsamic Vinegar for $250 / 500ml. A "wine" vinegar, at that.

You cannot use the undistilled version, only the white (clear) distilled version. Please don't mistake these two versions.

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Being inherently **CHEAP** the chance of a mistake from me as far as this is concerned would be remote. I *do*wonder what it would taste like in a salald.

[QUOTES=Photo Engineer;610140]
"Well Dan, I was taught to use it in the late 40s and early 50s
when I was learning. Then in the USAF and at Kodak later, they
taught us "use a stop"."

I used the usual stop for years. I though was not taught but
told or perhaps read the instructions. So what does Kodak have
for us to learn about rotary or single tray processing, one-shot
chemistry, water stop, lith printing, etc. We've gone beyond.

"I posted the URL for the current Kodak recommendation ..."

Likely very similar to the recommendation made perhaps
seventy years ago. Another one-size-fits-all instructions.
OC for AZO? Dan

My wife used to b**ch when I made vinegar from glacial acetic acid that I bought by the case from Kodak.

In the 19th century, there were three very good reasons to use a stop bath:

1: Developing by inspection in very strong developers, it really makes a difference whether the film gets 90 seconds or 95 of development.

2: Emulsions were soft, and hardener was necessary. So the fixer was sometimes at least as acidic as the stop bath.

3: An acid stop bath removes the "unsightly brown stain caused by certain popular developers" - like pyrogallol, pyrocatechin and hydroquinone...

They were right when they said stop helps extend the fixer. I've tried Vinegar but was not REALLY inpressed. The fixer is the most expensive chemical I use so what ever it takes to save money (money to buy more film) I'll do it. I still have 1.5 liters of stop so I'll be OK