Do fruit flies prefere homebrew ??

Dudes, I just noticed the weirdest thing.

I get home from work today and pour myself 2 beers. First one is Flying Dog "Dogtoberfest", Second one is homebrew my Octoberfest Frankenbeer.

So I sit down in front of my computer with a couple of beers, just thinking I would kind of enjoy them both and compare how they taste and read the forum for a bit - you know sort of do a side by side comparison - ??

Well now we also have a peach tree in our backyard, and the other day I went out and picked a big basket of fresh peaches and brought them into our house and set them on the table in the other room - maybe 10-15 feet away from where I'm sitting and using the computer. Well it appears that I brought some fruit flies into the house with me when I brought the peaches in.

Now check this out - this is where it gets really weird. I've been sitting here drinking beer and reading this forum for maybe 15-20 minutes now, my two beer glasses sitting side by side, marveling at how the color of the beer, the taste, the smell of the two beers is so similar, only one difference - these little fruit flies that are coming from the peaches in the other room seem to prefer the home brew!!

No kidding, I can sit here for 10-20 seconds, and a little fruit fly will come and land on one of the glasses before I shoo it away or smash it - its a struggle to keep the little buggers out of the homebrew, yet the commercial brew that I can't tell the difference in really thats sitting mere inches away - they aren't interested !!

Isn't that the weirdest thing you ever heard of ? Since I've been sitting here posting this, I've probably killed 20-30 little flies trying to get in my homebrew, but the beer I bought at the store - well they just not interested, even though the glasses are sitting side by side.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to get rid of some over ripe peaches and find some fly spray.

haha...homebrew is always a good choice.

If I was a fruit fly, I would.........................

Fruit flies are apparently attracted to carbon dioxide. I've had then hang out around my airlock when I'm fermenting stuff.

Yeah anything that resembles ripening fruit is going to attract them .

they don't drink much, let em be.

zoebisch01 said:

Yeah anything that resembles ripening fruit is going to attract them .

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So maybe it's because the homebrew is still live while the commercial is pasturised?

we have them here at work... they are annoying.

I suspect it may be due to the presence of unfermented sugars still remaining in homebrew. The commercial brews are more than likely not under attenuated, therefore there are no unfermented sugars present to attract the fruit flies.

Hehe:

http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2006/Projects/J1920.pdf

I do notice they especially love my Hefe's.

One of the little buggers got under the foil and into my yeast starter. Hopefully it had enough alcohol in it to prevent any problems. I siphoned it out with a sanitized racking cane.

I don't even know where he came from--I haven't seen any of them buzzing around.

johnsma22 said:

I suspect it may be due to the presence of unfermented sugars still remaining in homebrew. The commercial brews are more than likely not under attenuated, therefore there are no unfermented sugars present to attract the fruit flies.

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+1, it smells sweeter to them.

had this happen the other day myself...left a glass out for 3 minutes and came back to find two drowned fruit flies.

btw, throwing malt out into a pile in the backyard will also attract and breed fruit flies. millions of them...