So my father just bought 20 liters of grape juice in fermentation which should make wine. But he bought it for the purpose of drinking it before it becomes wine. Because it tastes really good, which it does.
However it does clearly say on the jug ATTENTION: DO NOT DRINK BEFORE FERMENTATION IS COMPLETE - CONTAINS SULFURES (or something like that)
My question is: Is is really that dangerous to drink the stuff?
I did have stomach pains and some terrible diarhea (sp?) after drinking half a liter of the stuff. but could more serious consequences hapen?
Grape juice in fermentation? So he doesn’t have to add yeast to it? How odd. Never heard of such a thing.
The dangers of drinking unpasteurized, unfermented fruit juice (that I can think of):
juice could be contaminated with E.coli bacteria
acetobacter or some other skanky microbe might take over, turning it to vinegar/nasty tasting crud
Shouldn’t otherwise be dangerous, I’d think. And the “sulfures” (sulfites, perhaps?) thing doesn’t make much sense–they’re usually added after fermentation to prevent future fermentation/spoilage.
In Austria, you can buy fermenting grape juice in the fall called “sturm.” It’s delicious, somewhere between wine and cider. Only it can’t be corked, so is often messy to transport.
As a beer homebrewer, I will say that the only side effect I’m aware of regarding drinking still-fermenting homebrewed beer (or the lees at the bottom of the bottle) is digestive upset due to the yeast disrupting your normal digestive processes. My wild guess would be that they are trying to warn you away from the troubles that you’d already mentioned. I have no idea if repeatedly drinking this wine would cause any extended digestive troubles due to an imbalance in your intestines’ natural flora/fauna.
‘must’ is right, Doc. I hadn’t realized you could buy it pre-yeasted. Isn’t the thing sort of exploding? And, good lord, isn’t it covered with a filthy, brown, discgusting scum of frothy yeast? Why drink that?
No its not covered by anything brown, it looks like thick wine… I guess there is no yeast (I said it might already be there because I have no idea what yeast looks like so I figured I might not know)