lye turned water into gold colour

[lewinii]

Hello again nexus

I am currently doing nomans tek with MHRB, but yesterday when I added 100g of Lye to distilled water, it became a goldish colour, almost like a rum colour. I never seen this before.

The only difference in this extraction and the last, is that I added all the lye to the cold water at once, and shook it periodically until it was all dissolved. the reason for this, is that I like to get this stage over with fast because lye makes me a little paranoid about safety.

Here is a picture:

 

[TreehouseChemist]

Looks like something got dissolved in your solution. It could be rust or part of the lid dissolving. Could be an impurity from the lye, jar, lid, or even your hands that got in the water and changed color when the lye was added. If I had to take a wild guess, I would say you shook that jar up after adding the lye, and that's when the color change happened. Those lids dissolve pretty readily, and have dyes and an outer protective layer and rubber in addition to the metal. I've watched those lids slowly dissolve in to rust and plastic with just heat and time under neutral water. Try a clear glass stir rod or just carefully swirling it by hand without a lid and see if it happens again.

 

[lewinii]

Thanks for your help TreehouseChemist

I have come back to say that I believe that the rubber lining on the jar lid must have been effected by the solution and caused it to turn the colour it did. I want to note that I believed this happened because I added all the lye to the water at once (100g lye)

I proceeded to shake it over the course of a few hours, but I guess the intense heat caused it to melt the rubber lining