Learn how a single copper penny can breathe new life your semi-spoiled wine bottle. This neat little hack is chemist-approved!
Even the most passionate of wine drinkers sometimes let a bottle go unfinished. Especially during the holiday season, when bottles of vino are free-flowing and there’s enough to go around, every so often a bottle of really good (or even just okay) wine falls by the wayside and doesn’t get used to completion. The worst is when you decide to go back a day later and finish that last glass, only to realize that something’s off. The wine has started to spoil.
Of course, there are some ways to salvage wine that is no longer good for drinking but isn’t yet rancid. You can repurpose it by using it to deglaze a pan, for instance—but sometimes that’s a lot of work when all you really wanted to do was enjoy a glass of wine without having to buy an entirely new bottle and restart the wine-wasting cycle.
Luckily, there exists an extremely simple, and super cheap hack to help extend the drinkable life of your bottle for up to a week. All you’ll need is a single copper penny and a glass in which to pour your semi-spoiled wine. The best part? It’s all chemistry-approved.
The American Chemical Society (ACS) explains in a life-changing video that when your wine goes bad (which you’ll know by its mildly-sulfuric odor or funky taste), the copper in your penny interacts with the sulfuric compounds, called thiols, in your wine and produces a new, odorless compound called copper sulfide. The copper sulfide crystals that are produced will then override the stinky thiols with an odorless and tasteless compound, thus revamping your wine and restoring it (temporarily) to its drinkable glory.
We recommend thoroughly cleaning your penny before dropping it into a glass of wine, swirling it around several times, and then taking it out to enjoy the fruit of your labors.
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Image Credits: Featured image via Unsplash, graphic image via Getty
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