So its my understand that if you drink 80 proof liquors like whiskey or vodka that were opened and then resealed, they are still safe to drink decades later. The taste may not be as good due to things like oxidation, but they’re still safe. You won’t get food poisoning from them.
So is there a minimum proof a beverage has to be before it never spoils due to bacterial infection? I thought in the American colonial times, they were drinking beer that was only 2% ABV. Apparently if they left this beverage out, it would become safe to drink because even at that low ABV, it killed off the bacteria in the beverage over time.
What about other additives? Like if you mix sugar and whiskey together, is it still safe to drink 20 years later?
Well, for starters, non-distilled beverages top out at somewhere around 20%, because that’s where the yeast that are producing the alcohol themselves die out. I doubt there are many bacteria that are more tolerant than they are.
It might not be true. It was from a documentary I saw years ago, I don’t remember the name of it.
EDIT: hahahahaha. It is true
What does the early American beer scene look like? Who’s making it? Who’s drinking it? How much are they drinking?
In colonial America and until the mid-19th century, Americans drank prolifically. They drank a variety of things. Most popular was hard cider — typically around 10 percent alcohol — as well as imported wine and rum, which became especially popular beginning in the early 1700s. They brewed what was called “small beer” in the home, which had a very low alcohol content — about 1 percent.
I have no idea if 1-2% beer killed all the microbes or not.
Looking online, supposedly the antiseptic effects of isopropyl alcohol drops when concentration drops to lower than 50%.
However I don’t know if that applies to ethanol.
Also isopropyl alcohol is used to sterilize things in a short time period like a few seconds/minutes. A bottle of a lower concentration of isopropyl alcohol may be free of internal pathogens for years.
As for drinking hydrating fluids - beer was household easy to make and provided some nutrients and vitamins. It was not necessarily drank because of microbiomes - although drinking water downstream of sewage and not at least boiling your water would either boost your immunity or kill you.
Depending on the kind of yeast and amount of sugar you can brew beer from 1% to as much as 9% (I have using wine yeast).
If these are times where bottling or canning is available, you’ve got some months. Refrigeration (if available) will prolong that.
Yet if you’ve got a pot of beer you’d only have some days. Think of it like fresh bread - it’s only a bit mouldy so it’s still good, right?
ETA: 40% ABV should be good indefinitely. Sherry or even Porto at lower levels… dunno if anyone has ever tested “safe for how long on them” and since it’s FQ I won’t WAG.
The quick and easy answer is that you should store all unopened alcoholic drinks in a cool, dark place. Open bottles with an alcohol content above 30% are quite shelf-stable and can stay put indefinitely, but they’ll start to undergo qualitative changes as the years progress, often becoming harsher with a more pronounced burn.
Grog was watered down rum served on British sailing vessels. They needed to keep the water “clean.” IIRC it was used in London too since clean water was not a guarantee.
Not enough to get someone drunk but enough to keep the water clean.
That said, I am having a hard time finding exact info on this. More than a few sites mention it but none are very clear about the ratios and final alcohol content.
Out on the ocean, water is a precious commodity. Despite being surrounded by water, it isn’t drinkable, and honestly, the freshwater kept on most ships… wasn’t much better. The water could be unclean, stale, and lead to illness if consumed. Unless, alcohol was added.
There is no question grog was served on ships during the age of sail.
The question is why? Was it to give the crew a light buzz? Was it to keep the water free from pathogens? A bit of both? They definitely did not want a drunken crew.
They were not great at scientific research back then so I am not sure we can know for sure. But, I would think, the British navy learned that grog was better on a ship than a barrel of water.
“In 1740, to minimise the subsequent illness, drunkenness, and disciplinary problems, British Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon ordered that the daily rum issue of one-half imperial pint (284 ml) of rum be mixed with one imperial quart (1,100 ml) of water, a water-to-rum ratio of 4:1, with half issued before noon and the remainder after the end of the working day. This both diluted its effects and accelerated its spoilage, preventing hoarding of the allowance.”
The rum itself would be stable, but adding water may have done nothing more than make it harder to get the sailors drunk. I don’t know if there might be some short-term antiseptic qualities to adding a strong rum to water and letting it sit for some minutes/hours, but even if there were, the solution may very well be more hospitable to microorganisms over a longer timeframe (many hours/days).
Alcohol is a pretty poor antiseptic overall, at least in the quantities we usually encounter it. 70% isopropyl seems to be about the minimum to sterilize anything effectively. The alcohol in mouthwash isn’t doing much real work either, it’s just a better solvent for the chemicals that actually do clean your mouth. Similar to the alcohol in old-style ales, it’s not the alcohol that matters, but the boiling.
Several decades ago, you could buy cases of beer in deposit bottles. These bottles were intended to be returned to the store after you drank the beer, and eventually went back to the brewer to be washed/sanitized and reused.
When I was in college in the early '90s I had bought such a case of beer. Cheap stuff, maybe 4-5% ABV. Unbeknownst to me, one of these reused bottles had a substantial chip of glass missing from the opening, so after refilling at the brewery, the cap never made a complete seal. When I opened it, I kind of noticed that the cap didn’t make the usual “psssst” sound you get when you uncap a bottle, but I didn’t really think anything of it.
That is, until I took my first sip, straight from the bottle. I’m pretty sure that was the worst taste I’ve ever had in my mouth.
After rinsing my mouth out for five minutes, I poured the rest of the bottle and observed a large mass of…growth. Bacterial, fungal, I have no idea was, except to say that it’s proof that nasty things can grow in beer containing several percent alcohol.
Knowing that, It seems unlikely that the 1-2% alcohol in colonial brewskies provided any meaningful sanitizing function.
When in college my roommates and I had a party at our place. Someone put a half-finished beer behind a potted plant in the corner (dunno why). We did not find it on our cleaning the next day.
Might’ve been two weeks before we found it. I certainly did not taste it but when I poured it out a substantial lump of grossness came out. Certainly 4.5% ABV was not enough to inhibit growth. In fact, something seemed to really like it (was disgusting…the kind of thing sci-fi horror is made about).