In my quest to find new ways to brew cheap & tasty fruit wines, I chanced across a bottle of Slovenian pomegranate concentrate that claims to be nothing but pomegranate juice, sugar and ascorbic acid, and it's a steal. My intention was to make the whole batch in one go, but I already had plenty in the pipeline, and I got thirsty, so I drank some of it.
After leaving it on the counter (in pretty cool weather) for perhaps two days, I was surprised to see that it asked to be refrigerated after opening - I'd assumed the massive amounts of sugar in there would make it pretty sterile. So when it comes time to brew my trial batch I dilute it with water to an OG of 1.086 and then boil it for maybe 10 minutes to make sure I kill anything it might have picked up from its time on the counter before cooling and pitching.
I did a batch of grape/apple at the same time, and in contrast the pom wine took a lot longer to start blowing bubbles. But the next morning it looked fine and was blorping away. Then when I walked by a half hour later I saw THIS!!! (and here I hope my picture will show up):
So I entertain two possibilities: either it did become infected with some mutant lifeform that sprung into being in half an hour starting with the brain, or I set the pectin by boiling so that the rising CO2 filled it from underneath like a hot air balloon.
I'm leaning heavily towards the latter because it slowly kept growing until it exploded (the gf called and I missed the grand finale), then it kinda blew back up in several smaller portions, and then it disappeared entirely and has not reappeared in the several days since. It now looks completely normal, and smells great.
Still, dear reader - would you drink it?
After leaving it on the counter (in pretty cool weather) for perhaps two days, I was surprised to see that it asked to be refrigerated after opening - I'd assumed the massive amounts of sugar in there would make it pretty sterile. So when it comes time to brew my trial batch I dilute it with water to an OG of 1.086 and then boil it for maybe 10 minutes to make sure I kill anything it might have picked up from its time on the counter before cooling and pitching.
I did a batch of grape/apple at the same time, and in contrast the pom wine took a lot longer to start blowing bubbles. But the next morning it looked fine and was blorping away. Then when I walked by a half hour later I saw THIS!!! (and here I hope my picture will show up):
So I entertain two possibilities: either it did become infected with some mutant lifeform that sprung into being in half an hour starting with the brain, or I set the pectin by boiling so that the rising CO2 filled it from underneath like a hot air balloon.
I'm leaning heavily towards the latter because it slowly kept growing until it exploded (the gf called and I missed the grand finale), then it kinda blew back up in several smaller portions, and then it disappeared entirely and has not reappeared in the several days since. It now looks completely normal, and smells great.
Still, dear reader - would you drink it?
