Before I do ANYTHING....advice please

[Polluted]

I'm 26 years old and work in a brewery as a cellerman. Naturally this has prompted me to try home brewing. Before I get started let me tell a story.

As a young 18 year old man I was on a quest to get intoxicated. I decided to make my own wine. I heard it's simple, so here is what I did.

1 bottle Welch's grape juice
1 pack bread yeast
1 milk jug
a baloon

I mixed them all together and sure enough fermentation started. After 2 weeks of this thing sitting in my dirty basement it was ready. It smelled like some type of prison hooch, but being the young man I was I pressed on.

All was well and got drunk playing video gamed. Mission accomplished ! ......or so I thought.

The next morning I woke up sick. I felt aweful. Maybe a hangover? Made sense until I started exploding from both ends. I'm still haunted to this day by the foul smelling rotten yeast that filled my buddies house as he helped take care of me. This lasted all next day, but by night time I was perfectly fine.

What the heck happened? Was I just hung over? Did I poison myself? As my buddy helped flush the hooch down the toilet he couldn't believe that I actually drank that foul smelling crap. Thoughts?

What are the dangers of making beer and mead.

 

[mkyl428]

No dangers at all... you probably consumed a fair amount of yeast that can have that reaction. We bottle our beer and leave much of that yeast behind in the fermenter.

making beer is perfectly safe I suggest picking up a book on the subject before getting started The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by, Charlie Papazian is a good one for a beginner in fact some kits include it

you can also check out http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html

it is John Palmers book posted online & is also a great reference

Cheers and welcome to the hobby you will love it!

 

[Yooper]

You didn't poison yourself, except maybe by drinking too much alcohol. You also probably had a fair amount of fusel alcohols, one of the byproducts of a too-high sugar or too-high temperature fermentation.

You can make a decent (not great) wine from Welch's. I have a grape wine recipe posted and then a simple apple juice wine recipe also in the 'recipes' area of the forum.

A cheap and easy wine is not necessarily a vile concoction- although it sounds like it was in your case!

 

[mrchaos101]

Drank it green..... You made it... allowed it to bubble 5-6 days.... then downed it right?
Drank all that yeast in there. Small amounts wont do much to ya. But a lot of it can... well you seen what it can do.

You needed to let it sit longer.... let yeast fall out to bottom. Rack it to another container and let it finish. Would have been a different story.

Agree on the book. It is a great book! And welcome to brewing! Lots to learn in these threads. Lots of nice folks that will guide you along the way.

 

[Polluted]

Well Im glad I didnt poison myself. Thanks for the replies. Im very excited, working in a brewery is tons of fun (hard complicating work though), like being in a giant meth lab. Every day after spilling top shelf beer on myself I crave a beer everyday after work. However I really cant afford high quality stuff and a man can only drink malt liquor so much before he goes insane.

I cant wait to find out more about this hobby for myself, my wallet, and my job. But like I said, I always wondered what the hell happened. I asked the master brewer at my facility if anything dangerous can grow inside beer or wine. He said nothing thats gonna seriously hurt you....told me wine is even more safe because of how acidic it is.

Thanks yall

 

[agrazela]

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Brew on, dude!

 

[Polluted]

Quick question, what about methanol? How is it made and is it possible that it can be created by the process I described above?

 

[drainbamage]

Bad gas/beer sh!ts are a common side effect of overconsumption of homebrew (especially if you're new to the game), due to the residual yeast left in the bottles. I haven't experienced it--that I know of--but you'll see plenty of stories around here if you read enough.

There is always a token amount of methanol produced by the fermentation process, but it shouldn't be enough to be concerned about unless you're distilling.

 

[Polluted]

Bad gas/beer sh!ts are a common side effect of overconsumption of homebrew (especially if you're new to the game), due to the residual yeast left in the bottles. I haven't experienced it--that I know of--but you'll see plenty of stories around here if you read enough.

There is always a token amount of methanol produced by the fermentation process, but it shouldn't be enough to be concerned about unless you're distilling.

This is what I thought, however the lady on poison control all those years ago, made it sound like I could have very well seriously poisoned myself with methanol. It was grape juice and bread yeast :cross: but I dont know man, regardless it sounded spooky....I didnt distill anything

 

[mgonbrewlab]

Yup, been there. My first "wines" were cloudy, super acidic, and consumed before they properly cleared. Homemade alcohol, in my experience at least, also tends to be consumed much more quickly than commercial beer and wine - Def doesn't help things.

Brew on!