Yep, but wine and beer would have been safer to drink than many water sources. The yeast growth suppresses bacterial activity by competition and antimicrobial compounds. When that is not sufficient, the beer/wine spoils and sours, and is not consumed.
However, watering beer and wine is not going to make water safe.
Si
yeasts are sensitive to contamination. the fermentation won’t go forward if other microbes have out competed the yeast which are slower growing. if you have fermentation of a good product then it is likely it hasn’t been contaminated, food useful to other microbes has been used by the yeast, a toxic environment to some microbes has been created. fermented product can still spoil depending on sugar content and later contamination but it does offer significant protection.
If you leave it for a while, all bacteria inside should be dead. It would not necessarily inactivate any toxins the bacteria produced in the meantime, so it could theoretically still be dangerous. Tough I’m not sure how big the danger realistically would be.
[quote=“si_blakely, post:8, topic:551276”]
This is pretty much untrue. “Grain alcohol” brands like Everclear can be as high as 192 (96%) proof, which is as concentrated as ethanol can get via distillation.
Laboratory/denatured stuff is expensive because it’s hard to get that extra 4%, and they need to certify that it’s free of all sorts of other impurities like trace metals etc.
“Pure” ethanol is readily available and in fact quite cheap. But I’m at a loss to know why anybody would want to drink it - it’s like shooting a nuclear bomb.
also is not good for soft tissue, sucks the water out of soft tissue on the way down.