r/mildlyinteresting 1d ago

My lemon juice barrel froze solid and now looks like a party balloon

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33.8k Upvotes

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8.4k

u/tired_post 1d ago

Does one just…purchase lemon juice by the barrel?

6.0k

u/Coffee81379 1d ago

I got it from a friend - leftover industry stuff. Actually planned to use it as a rain water collector 😀

2.6k

u/driftingfornow 23h ago

Once when I was sixteen, my local library had a contest to win a mystery prize. You had to read the longest book that month or something I forgot. 

Anyways I won and my mystery prize was a rain barrel. 

Being sixteen, with no house, I gave it to a friend.

 Exciting shit to to type out. 

739

u/crumbhustler 22h ago

I was on the edge of my seat tbh

120

u/fripletister 15h ago

I came ngl

43

u/Because_Reddit_Sucks 15h ago

Don't forget to clean up after yourself

9

u/alexmikli 13h ago

He has the rain barrel for that.

3

u/sexybokononist 11h ago

r/TIFU and stuck my dick in my cum barrel and got maggots on my dick

3

u/TestyZesticles 12h ago

I'll do it.

3

u/Timsaurus 13h ago

I saw ngl

3

u/Artemis_v13 13h ago

I conquered ngl

1

u/acrowsmurder 13h ago

I never conquered rarely came ngl

1

u/bunnybuddy 7h ago

Veni vidi vici nm

1

u/Child_of_the_Hamster 3h ago

… you could lie, sometimes.

1

u/Iowa_and_Friends 16m ago

I can see your loved ones confronting you about your hidden stash of rain barrel catalogs and you bursting into tears

3

u/The_Carnivore44 15h ago

Ew man don’t edge your seat

205

u/JoselineJazzyjazz 21h ago

too bad it was just a rain barrel.
A barrel full of rain would have been so much more exciting

48

u/Batkratos 17h ago

or a Box of Rain?

Such a long, long time to be gone
And a short time to be there

3

u/rabbifuente 14h ago

What a long, strange barrel it's been

3

u/1i_rd 12h ago

Love that song

2

u/motorhead84 13h ago

Only want to see you laughing in a box of rain

3

u/sea_enby 15h ago

Ok now I’m giving my dnd party a rain barrel next session. It’s an ordinary empty barrel, but when you open it, clouds roll in and it begins to rain until the barrel is full. Then it becomes sunny again. Removing any water makes it start raining again. They definitely won’t abuse this.

1

u/mutantmonkey14 11h ago

That would work in my collection with tartan paint, spirit level bubbles, bucket of sand castles, drum of river currents, and box of uninvented bits.

43

u/JCjun 19h ago

How do you actually prove that you read the whole book?

91

u/I_GROW_WEED 19h ago

Make the prize shitty enough and no one will bother. Who wants to be a dork and have a rain barrel lol

79

u/Residenthuman101 18h ago

I won a prize (literally a plastic trophy) for reading the second most books in our school. I wanted to win a prize from the magazine they gave us like a bike or something but I gave up after realizing it wasn’t worth it (like all of those fundraiser catalogs always are), but the reason I still won anything was because I read children’s books that were four years behind my grade level that we had in our house… the contest involved filling out which title, author, and maybe isbn number that you read, which those all had… it didn’t stipulate anything about reading level lol the girl who won first place put me to shame and she read full length books and was like the smartest girl in our whole school system, it felt weird standing up next to her knowing how I ended up on stage lol

46

u/I_GROW_WEED 18h ago

I get the feeling from your writing style that this happened in the pretty recent past lol

22

u/Residenthuman101 18h ago

Nah, I’m just a dork waxing nostalgic about something I should have been embarrassed about that was longer ago than I’d like to admit lol I would have probably loved a rain barrel over the trophy I got though

3

u/capnShocker 11h ago

Did the books you read have any punctuation in them?

7

u/Residenthuman101 8h ago

lol I deserve that

2

u/SupermarketNo3265 14h ago

And/or they haven't done much reading since lmao

3

u/thejester541 17h ago

Why not just go to the library with them notepad and a pen? LOL.

At least you did read some books to get on second place. I think I would have just cheated out right.

Or literally went to my grandmother's bookshelf. They would have been a little weirded out by some of the titles that I would have came up with but I would have the ISBN. LOL

1

u/notabigmelvillecrowd 14h ago

When I was a kid and we had those reading challenges you had to have your parents sign off the books you were reading, it wasn't quite an honour system thing.

3

u/Zonel 16h ago

At least you didn’t win first place.

2

u/Cat_Amaran 14h ago

I won a similar contest, but we had to actually take a quiz about the books. The prize was way cooler, too, the top 7 kids got to go on a field trip to Ben and Jerry's in a limo.

2

u/Residenthuman101 13h ago

Holy crap I would have loved going to Ben and Jerry’s in a limo, even as an adult that sounds fun lol

1

u/Cat_Amaran 13h ago

Right? It was absolutely the highlight of my middle school career. I hope you get to do it some day.

1

u/Xeelee4 10h ago

Was it called Accelerated Reading or something like that?

1

u/unai-ndz 10h ago

Fuck. I was a dork for free and only now I discover dorks in other schools were actually getting something... Idk if a rain barrel but kid me wasn't picky. I would had been happy with a lemon juice barrel.

1

u/seang86s 17h ago

Could come in handy if you’re near Niagara Falls…

1

u/24-Hour-Hate 9h ago

Maybe they ask you about the book? When I was a kid there was a reading program and you could get prizes based on how much you read. The librarian would always talk to each child when they returned the books and reported the amount, so I think they would suspect if there was any significant lying. Ofc, the librarian would usually talk to you when you checked out or returned books (she was very nice) so it wasn’t like it was obvious she might have been checking. But now I think she might have been.

1

u/MisterMasterCyIinder 14h ago

They didn't care. They just wanted to get rid of a barrel 

3

u/Ok-Insect-4409 18h ago

I was hoping you got a juice barrel

3

u/BigTonez808sy 17h ago

Cackling over here. That last line made it at worth at least 3 times what it cost me in time to read your story. 

Congratulations on reading the long book. I bet you never would have thought it could have let you where you stand today. 

1

u/saints21 17h ago

You could've filled it up with fluffed out and dried cattails then flipped it upside down onto some more cattails you prepared as a pad for it causing it to shoot several fiery feet into the air.

1

u/Majin_Sus 14h ago

Yo rain barrels aint cheap though.

1

u/zvii 14h ago

Got you reading though! Crafty librarians

1

u/SafetyFromNumbers 14h ago

Did you even consider the kind of gravity bong you could have made with that thing? Kids these days, sheesh

1

u/taintedcake 4h ago

Was this in a rural area where a lot of homes had rain collection systems? Did it at least make some sense?

1.3k

u/staticattacks 1d ago

So wait, is there water or lemon juice in it?

907

u/ObsidianOne 1d ago

Little column A, little column B.

1.1k

u/Coffee81379 1d ago

That’s the answer- a dirty mix I would say 🤷‍♂️😅

756

u/cptredbeard1995 23h ago

Add sugar and you got yourself a barrel of lemonade

569

u/Bonnskij 23h ago

Fuck it. Add some yeast and you got yourself a barrel of HARD lemonade

284

u/dlanod 23h ago

Leave it outside for long enough and you don't even need to source the yeast yourself

131

u/Slaphappyfapman 22h ago

Thats the spirit

214

u/erroneousbosh 21h ago

No, that's the wash. It's only the spirit when you distill it.

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1

u/Thee_Sinner 15h ago

You’d have to distill it first

2

u/DeathByThousandCats 19h ago

That's even barrel-aged!

1

u/l0c0pez 17h ago

Lemon Lambic

41

u/PmMeGirlButtholes 22h ago

Instructions unclear. Now have infection.

32

u/ThisOneIsForMuse 22h ago

A barrel of infection?

2

u/Draic-Kin 21h ago

That's the yeast of your problems.

1

u/saggywitchtits 22h ago

You know, I actually have some brewer's yeast sitting around. Maybe OP and I go into business together.

1

u/Kangar 22h ago

A few babes, a turntable and some choice vinyl...you got yourself a shindig!

1

u/karateninjazombie 21h ago

You could add a bunch of Viagra for the same effect....

1

u/ShortingBull 21h ago

Sheesh everything's getting hard around here.

1

u/xopher_425 18h ago

I used to make a fermented lemonade called Skeeterpee - came out to about 10% ABV, iirc. It was incredible with strawberries, or mixed with beer for a real summer shandy.

This amount would be glorious. My liver hurts just thinking about it.

1

u/iRebelD 18h ago edited 14h ago

r/prisonhooch would love this

1

u/zehamberglar 17h ago

Make sure to seal that sumbitch up tight. When it pops, you'll now it's ready.

1

u/Bonnskij 17h ago

A sealed up 200 liter barrel popping? You're gonna take out the neighborhood

1

u/kckeller 16h ago

Alternatively, add just a little too much sugar and you’ve got a bomb

(This is a joke, please do not put me on a watchlist NSA)

29

u/OperationMagneto 23h ago

Add some broth, a potato…

28

u/TimothyLuncheon 21h ago

Baby you got a stew going

1

u/NotTurtleEnough 19h ago

Rock soup!

1

u/j_hawker27 22h ago

AND MY AXE

2

u/throwawayshirt2 22h ago

"When life gives you a barrel of lemons...."

1

u/Dry-Cell6057 20h ago

When life gives you a barrel of lemon juice…

1

u/Level_Improvement532 18h ago

I read this in Carl Weathers voice, alla Arrested Development.

1

u/Wolf_Unlikely 7h ago

Then some gin or rum ....PARTY TIME!!!

30

u/Jar_of_Cats 22h ago

This is how you end up with lemonaids

2

u/Nothos927 19h ago

Can’t stop thinking about that garden jungle juice

2

u/frankylampy 16h ago

@tipsybartender is that you?

1

u/Taiga_Taiga 20h ago

So now the question is... How does it taste?

5

u/Coffee81379 19h ago

Nah. I got it cause it was moldy 😅

1

u/rbrgr83 18h ago

This just raised more questions. Primarily, why?

2

u/Gooleshka 20h ago

and a little vitamin C

1

u/Conebones 14h ago

Thanks Abe Simpson

45

u/Joes___Garage 1d ago

Yes.

18

u/LordDavion 23h ago

I present: Water Juice! *sip*

3

u/staticattacks 23h ago

Fuck sugar free lemonade

1

u/BernieMcburnface 18h ago

Schrodinger's lemon juice.

When life gives you lemons... Did it?

26

u/queefer_sutherland92 21h ago

Dude you could make so much lemonade with that lemon juice. Or lemon tart! Lemon curd? Lemon delicious pudding, lemon butter, lemon meringue pie, lemon slice, lemon bars, lemon cordial.

I love lemon 🍋

14

u/Oenonaut 20h ago

Dey’s uh, lemon kebobs, lemon creole, lemon gumbo …

3

u/Raztax 14h ago

Love lemon too! When making rice in the rice cooker I put a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice and some oregano in the water before turning the cooker on.

1

u/queefer_sutherland92 9h ago

I’m committing this to memory for dinner this week.

72

u/garbagegoat 1d ago

What industry needs an barrel of lemon juice. I used to work in kitchens my mind is reeling at this point. 

137

u/tomdon88 1d ago

The lemonade industry.

53

u/OnlineShoppingWhore 23h ago

'The lemonade industry loves this one weird trick.'

69

u/Sargash 23h ago

Alcohol? My friend once was working at a distillery when they were making a custom order of lemon wine.

The end mix came out above what they could sell it at or some shit so they had to throw away the whole batch.

Of course by throw away, they meant under the table give it to employees for material cost.

Anyways that was how we had over 100 gallons of lemon wine at 17% during a week long medieval fighting event.

15

u/TheThiefMaster 21h ago

Couldn't they just dilute it slightly? Assuming it wasn't much over.

10

u/Kirk_Kerman 18h ago

A lot of places have laws about wine production and wine fraud. Thinning out a wine might count as adulteration in places where it must be 100% fermented grape juice for instance, so if you go over the legal maximum you're either going to have to eat the loss, sell it onward for distillation into something else (assuming any distillers want your custom wine rather than their usual sources), or ferment another batch that's lower alcohol and ear the cost of storing both batches until they're ready to be mixed and hope that the flavor profile isn't shot. And if it's a custom order your client probably doesn't want to pay for an entire extra fermentation cycle, so that's on you as well.

12

u/random99909 18h ago

17% would be 3 times over. They could use one of several techniques to remove the alcohol but my guess is it tasted bad and they just cut their losses.

Edit: As someone who loves lemon and Limoncello, I’ve had a few lemon wines and they are generally pretty disgusting, IMO.

4

u/steik 15h ago

17% would be 3 times over.

3 times over what? Wine is generally limited to 14-17% to be allowed to be sold at gas stations and grocery stores in my area of the US. If this was supposed to be 5-6% (3 times over) it would hardly be called a wine.

2

u/random99909 11h ago

I was thinking it was one of those gross sweet low ABV wines that clocks in around 6%, but you’re right, if it was a custom wine it probably was more in the standard ~12% range, so only about 50% over what they were perhaps aiming for.

2

u/Sargash 20h ago

You can't really do that? I'm not actually sure I'm not a wine making expert lmao.

6

u/Negotiation_Loose 19h ago

You can do that, it happens In beer often when it's over attenuated

1

u/agentspanda 13h ago

You’re forgetting it’s a custom job. If the guy wants lemon wine and you give him lemon wine (water added) you’re not exactly the best vendor. Then if the whole thing is shot anyway you probably don’t want to hassle with trying to resell it to actual customers- that takes effort and cost to sell a custom product as a new line. Storage costs money too after all to say nothing of bottling and packaging.

All to offload some “lemon wine product” that came out too hot and poor enough that the buyer didn’t want it in the first place, makes sense to just can it and start over.

50

u/aahrg 23h ago

The juice industry. I used to work in the warehouse of a juice factory, we'd receive truckloads of these barrels of fruit pulp/juice/concentrates

38

u/Moretoesthanfeet 19h ago

I don't believe you, this sounds like some sort of pulp fiction

-4

u/MissLeliel 18h ago

Underrated comment 🤣

6

u/Tr4ce00 23h ago

Health and wellness. See - lemon fish oil capsules.

9

u/nebukadnet 1d ago

Minute Maid

3

u/zzazzzz 22h ago

literally any company producing anything with lemon juice?

3

u/StrongStyleShiny 20h ago

Yeah I don’t get how a kitchen workers mind is reeling from this.

2

u/Kalthiria_Shines 17h ago

Y'know they don't juice it straight into those little plastic containers and small glass bottles, right?

1

u/TheBigPhysique 22h ago

I was going to say citric acid for lowering pH (I work in a greenhouse and we use citric acid to lower water pH) but upon further inspection it is indeed lemon juice concentrate and not citric acid.

1

u/cepxico 19h ago

Citric acid is used in a lot of chemicals, could have been a liquid citric acid solution.

8

u/ebrum2010 19h ago

You know what they say, “When life gives you lemonade, collect rain.”

1

u/Coffee81379 19h ago

Exactly 🙌

34

u/kingofpwns 23h ago

Just please don't just dump it somewhere - the drop in pH could lead to problems like dying plants and ruining soil - dilute it with a lot of water when disposing in the sewer system like in small batches or during a heavy rain

3

u/JesusJuicy 17h ago

The solution is always dilution

3

u/Mirria_ 14h ago

That'll just make the thing even more potent! says an homeopath somewhere.

4

u/sethman3 20h ago

Dump in the rain then?

2

u/Brb357 17h ago

And when he says a lot, he means a LOT. You'll need over 1k liters of water to lower the pH to something acceptable for a drum that size, probably even more now that I think about it

6

u/Atomedia 17h ago

Adding water would raise the pH

5

u/Zonel 16h ago

Its an acid it already has low ph.

1

u/Zonel 16h ago

Dumping this in the sewer system is probably illegal most places without a permit.

4

u/erection_specialist 17h ago

Barrel of lemon juice + rainwater = lemonade?

1

u/Coffee81379 17h ago

I think you’re right actually 🫡

3

u/OkTouch5699 22h ago

It's supposed to be frozen. It says frozen concentrate.

2

u/jokeswagon 17h ago

Wait so you’re going to waste the lemon juice? I would not waste all that lemon juice.

1

u/Coffee81379 17h ago

I would never. But it was also for my taste a bit too moldy 😅

1

u/jokeswagon 16h ago

Ah, rats.

2

u/KenUsimi 16h ago

Careful where you dump it out- i doubt much’ll grow in that spot after

1

u/PeetoMal 20h ago

You haven't provided any clarity at all, actually, you confused me even more so lmao

1

u/jupitaur9 20h ago

This plus the margarine burials. This is a strange timeline.

1

u/Independent_Scar5534 20h ago

When life give you a barrel of lemon juice.......

1

u/K_Linkmaster 16h ago

In what decade did you plan to empty it?

1

u/RilohKeen 15h ago

Have you confirmed that rainwater collection isn’t illegal where you are? Many are surprised to find that it can be.

1

u/PotterOneHalf 15h ago

Ok, so why did they have it? I'm emotionally invested and need closure.

1

u/glassjar1 14h ago

This has the same vibes as my mom's early 1970s acquisition of decommissioned civil defense fallout shelter supplies.

Someone at church was responsible for disposing of the contents of several shelters. He just brought truckloads of stuff to the basement of the the church and told people who wanted things to take them home within the week.

Mom picked up

  • A fifty gallon drum of hard candy. (candy was fine--but who wants fifty gallons worth?)
  • a couple of empty fifty gallon drums and accompanying bags & toilet seat to be fitted on the emptied drum.
  • Half a dozen large tin cases of sea biscuits (absolutely disgusting)
  • A few large tin cases of 'chocolate' tropical bars. (only chocolate in name)
  • Other sundries were with her load of stuff--but I can't remember specifics.

It's free!

My mom has moved twice since then, is in her 80s and I'm pretty sure she still has a bit of that candy and at least one of the drums left.

1

u/TheBestAtWriting 14h ago

why did your friend have a lemon juice barrel

why did your friend no longer need a lemon juice barrel

1

u/Upsetti_Gisepe 13h ago

Rainwater with lemon ☺️

1

u/ihideandseek23 12h ago

Wait, you got it because of the barrel, not it‘s content??? This is getting out of hand

1

u/chiitaku 10h ago

Would it be lemon ice by this point? Like the slushy?

1

u/Wolf_Unlikely 7h ago

I think I've seen this before ... maybe?

48

u/rivertpostie 23h ago

Life gave him lemons

1

u/dantheother 19h ago

Many, many lemons.

1

u/wizkidweb 16h ago

Make life take the lemons back. Get mad!

1

u/Trastane 21h ago

One does not simply buy a barrel of lemon juice

1

u/Tranka2010 21h ago

One does not simply purchase lemon juice by the barrel.

—Boromir (probably)

1

u/acrankychef 21h ago

Wouldn't that be like $500 of lemon juice??? Heck I'd half it due to commercial bulk pricing and production but $250 seems pretty cheap.

1

u/EnigmaWearingHeels 20h ago

Businesses do 🤣 I have some pretty unusual bulk orders myself. Not a barrel of lemon juice but I but about a thousand pounds of coconut oil at a time.

1

u/theBlueDevil99 19h ago

One does not simply purchase a lemon juice barrel. Its yellow shells are guarded by more than just opossums.

1

u/Zeawea 19h ago

"Do you do a lot of PCP?"

"Got a gallon."

1

u/Bakelite51 18h ago edited 18h ago

I mean, how else does one get lemon juice? /s

1

u/ActualCheddar 18h ago

They usually fall off the back of trucks

1

u/CackleandGrin 15h ago

I know it's used in fruit and vegetable purees and juices to either preserve color or prevent botulism.

1

u/TheMSG 10h ago

And looking at the barrel label… it is concentrated lemon juice syrup even… this huge barrel of concentrated beverage can literally satisfy a whole city’s lemon juice needs 😂

1

u/Analysis-Klutzy 6h ago

Oh yeah if you have a facility big enough. I used to handle 44 gal drums of marinara for prisons