Am I brewing hard cider, and is it safe to drink.

[Danny_S]

Hello everyone.
I am new to the forum and don't really have any brewing experience, but it is definitely something I would like to get into. Recently I purchased some fresh cider from a apple farm, but didn't refrigerate it because mine was broken at the time. Today I notice that bubbles were forming at the top of the container and I was curious if it is fermenting and what I should do with it? here is a Picture.

 

[dramirezpa]

you are probably making hard cider with wild yeast found on the apples. It could explode if you leave it in there. You could put a stopper with an airlock on it or even a sterilized balloon. If the yeast does it's work before bacteria, it will be safe to drink. Whether it tastes good or not will be pretty random depending on what yeast colony does most of the work. If it does taste good, you may have found a new cider yeast!

when I was a teenager we used to make hard cider like this, it usually wasn't very good but we drank it anyway.

 

[Shooter]

Take the lid off and put a piece of sanitized foil or something over the top. Heck, even setting the lid back on and not tightening it down would work. If you don't, it might build up a a fair amount of pressure.

 

[Danny_S]

Thanks everyone, I guess my main concern was going blind if I drank it or something.

 

[EFaden]

Thanks everyone, I guess my main concern was going blind if I drank it or something.

Not from yeast. Blindness, at least in this context, is from methanol. Not a problem at the level from brewing, but if you do a bad job distilling and concentrate it you could go blind from that.... That's why in distilling it is important to watch temperatures and discard the heads and trails.... That said distilling is illegal. But with yeast they won't make enough methanol per unit without distillation to be a problem

 

[dinnerstick]

a potential problem is that it probably won't taste great for a while, when you ferment it fresh juice like yours goes from tasting great to tasting really weird, as fermentation is finishing, to tasting great again after it's really done fermenting and everything settles out. if you just loosen the cap you can get through the first phase but you might struggle to keep it sanitary long enough to give it time to clear and age, say a month. and then you're going to need to either bottle it or drink the whole thing pretty quickly.
you could try this: let it ferment for a while, taste it occasionally and when it's still got a hint of sweetness to it, stick it in the fridge (get/repair/steal/borrow one) for a few days, it should start to clear up. pour the clear upper part off the sediment below (don't be too fussy), and drink up! with a bit of sugar left unfermented the young cider will be more palatable and possibly delicious.