6 ms·

I made cyder at home a couple of years ago (about 8 gallons). I had 2 pints at one sitting, I have no memory of the evening past about 10pm and when I woke up

by sgt101 10y ago

I made cyder at home a couple of years ago (about 8 gallons). I had 2 pints at one sitting, I have no memory of the evening past about 10pm and when I woke up my first thought was that I had had a stroke. The rest of the stuff is still sitting in the shed.

vidanay 10y ago
I'll tell you a story that happened to me One day as I went down to Cork by the sea The sun it was hot and the day it was warm, Says I a quiet pint wouldn't do me no harm I went in and I called for a bottle of stout Says the barman, I'm sorry, all the beer is sold out Try whiskey or paddy, ten years in the wood Says I, I'll try cider, I've heard it was good. Oh never, Oh never, Oh never again If I live to be a hundred or a hundred and ten I fell to the ground and I couldn't get up After drinking a quart of the Johnny Jump Up http://thebards.net/music/lyrics/Johnny_Jump_Up.shtml http://thebards.net/music/lyrics/Johnny_Jump_Up.shtml
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u56R_qHTLVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u56R_qHTLVI
lightedman 10y ago
You might need to distill off the methanol that might be present, if you're blacking out. Had a similar problem with some homebrew wine where a glass tossed me to blacking out (yet I can toss back a half pint of vodka without too much issue.) Turned out there was a good amount of methanol in there.
- civilian 10y ago
  I was going to ask sgt101 to send me a galloon of his cyder before I read your comment, hah. Uh yeah, methanol is scary.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    I've heard third hand rumors of people at fancy parties using sublingual methanol drops recreationally. Sounds insane to me, if true.
- moron4hire 10y ago
  Or you could just sanitize your filthy carboy before brewing.
  - lightedman 10y ago
    Wrong. Natural yeasts produce methanol in fairly sufficient amounts to cause damage even when mixed with ethanol.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - cthalupa 10y ago
      Source? I harvest my own wild yeast, order interesting samples from boutique yeast labs, and am involved in communities dedicated to this sort of thing, and as such, have also read mountains of research. All the research I've read, all of the things I've brewed, and all of the people I've spoken to that do this say quite the opposite. Fruit pectin can be broken down into methanol, but it creates tiny amounts. You're talking like 20 to 200mg per liter.
      - lightedman 10y ago
        I've been brewing for roughly 15 years, and let me tell you, there are more yeasts than you'll suspect in your batch if you're going with the natural yeast present directly on the grape and nothing else. Plenty of them have zero issues making lots of methanol and if they manage to become the dominant culture, well... BTW - prison hooch methanol poisonings would like to have a word with you. Even regular bread yeasts will make enough methanol.
        moron4hire 10y ago
        That's bacteria, dude, not yeast.
        lightedman 10y ago
- somberi 10y ago
  Hooch / Bootleg alcohol are rife with methanol-related deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_inc...
  - bbcbasic 10y ago
    I always thought that was because methylated spirits were used in place of pure alcohol? I.e. not a fermentation issue.
    - lightedman 10y ago
      Nope. In Mississippi prisons (Did some time myself) we just took OJ and yeast-leavened bread from our lunch trays, sealed it in a plastic bag, and had hooch in a couple days.
- mattkrause 10y ago
  How sure are you about this? From what I've read, it is very hard to generate methanol via fermentation alone[0] and home-brew usually has 2-3 ppm, versus a LD_{50} in the tens of thousands of ppm. Obviously, there might be problems well before the LD_{50}, but that's a lot of wiggle room (and methanol would be out-competed by the ethanol which is presumably also in the booze). [0] Concentrating the wine via freezing (as in some ice wines or applejack) might be an exception to this, but I'm not sure.
  - lightedman 10y ago
    Very sure as I was using naturally-present yeast instead of any brewer's yeast or bread yeast. Methanol content is something to look out for when you use natural yeasts. Source: 15 years brewing/distilling. Just got lazy/too self-assured one day.
    - mattkrause 10y ago
      Hmmm.... It does look pectin can be degraded into methanol by some microbes. I'm surprised there was enough feedstock to generate a problematic amount of methanol, but I'm glad you're ok.
teddyknox 10y ago
Lucky you didn't go blind
a_t48 10y ago
I'm sure you can find someone to take it off your hands (possible methanol aside...)
- sgt101 10y ago
  I'm going to use it as weedkiller.
dsfyu404ed 10y ago
If you need someone to get rid of it I'll take it off your hands.
david-given 10y ago
Friend of mine's family made something which they called 'apple wine': an open bucket with sugar, apple juice, some citrus (lemon juice, I believe) and then left for about a week. (With muslin over the top to keep the flies off!) Wild yeast causes it to start fermenting. Once it begins to froth, you bottle. After another week or so it's lightly carbonated and very slightly alcoholic. The thing is, it continues to ferment in the bottles. So as time passes, it gets more and more alcoholic and less and less sweet, as the yeast consumes the sugar. So while the children were allowed to drink it for the first few weeks after bottling, after a certain point it was distinctly adults-only. So it's quite possible that the parent simply left theirs to ferment too long. ...I used to make ginger beer, which is a variation on the same thing; you cultivate a yeast/bacteria/ginger culture used for the fermentation rather than relying on wild yeast, but the process is the same. Thing about ginger beer, though, is that it's heavily flavoured with ginger, and you need the sugar to make it drinkable. So if you left it for too long it ended up both extremely alcoholic and mouth-puckeringly bitter. (I can strongly recommend giving ginger beer a try, actually. It's dead easy to make, exceedingly nice, you can pick any alcohol level you like including almost none, and is a continuation of a thoroughly ancient tradition. Be warned, though: (a) it's packed full of sugar, (b) it's quite hard to make in small quantities, and (c) if you get the bug you may find yourself surreptitiously exchanging jam-jars full of biological slime at pubs with total strangers...)
- sgt101 10y ago
  I think my issue was/is two fold. 1) I think that the wild yeast in my orchard is a bit "oomphy" 2) I put 8 grams of sugar a pint in for the brew. Which was far too much. Next year I should have a decent harvest to go at (I've changed out my apple trees and the new ones put in five years ago are fruiting nicely now) so I'm going to have another go... at 4 grams a pint.
3chelon 10y ago
I make cider every year and I've never had any problems - I think it's the easiest form of alcohol to make. On the question of methanol, it is my understanding it comes from the high pectin content. I always use a pectic enzyme to break down the pectin, mainly because that releases more sugars and makes the cider clearer, but possibly it helps stop methanol formation? I know it can be an issue if you distill cider into apple brandy (calvados) - but that's illegal in the UK anyway without a license, so has never been an issue.

by sgt101 10y ago

vidanay 10y ago

I'll tell you a story that happened to me One day as I went down to Cork by the sea The sun it was hot and the day it was warm, Says I a quiet pint wouldn't do me no harm I went in and I called for a bottle of stout Says the barman, I'm sorry, all the beer is sold out Try whiskey or paddy, ten years in the wood Says I, I'll try cider, I've heard it was good. Oh never, Oh never, Oh never again If I live to be a hundred or a hundred and ten I fell to the ground and I couldn't get up After drinking a quart of the Johnny Jump Up http://thebards.net/music/lyrics/Johnny_Jump_Up.shtml http://thebards.net/music/lyrics/Johnny_Jump_Up.shtml

pavel_lishin 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u56R_qHTLVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u56R_qHTLVI

lightedman 10y ago

You might need to distill off the methanol that might be present, if you're blacking out. Had a similar problem with some homebrew wine where a glass tossed me to blacking out (yet I can toss back a half pint of vodka without too much issue.) Turned out there was a good amount of methanol in there.

civilian 10y ago
I was going to ask sgt101 to send me a galloon of his cyder before I read your comment, hah. Uh yeah, methanol is scary.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  I've heard third hand rumors of people at fancy parties using sublingual methanol drops recreationally. Sounds insane to me, if true.
moron4hire 10y ago
Or you could just sanitize your filthy carboy before brewing.
- lightedman 10y ago
  Wrong. Natural yeasts produce methanol in fairly sufficient amounts to cause damage even when mixed with ethanol.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - cthalupa 10y ago
    Source? I harvest my own wild yeast, order interesting samples from boutique yeast labs, and am involved in communities dedicated to this sort of thing, and as such, have also read mountains of research. All the research I've read, all of the things I've brewed, and all of the people I've spoken to that do this say quite the opposite. Fruit pectin can be broken down into methanol, but it creates tiny amounts. You're talking like 20 to 200mg per liter.
    - lightedman 10y ago
      I've been brewing for roughly 15 years, and let me tell you, there are more yeasts than you'll suspect in your batch if you're going with the natural yeast present directly on the grape and nothing else. Plenty of them have zero issues making lots of methanol and if they manage to become the dominant culture, well... BTW - prison hooch methanol poisonings would like to have a word with you. Even regular bread yeasts will make enough methanol.
      - moron4hire 10y ago
        That's bacteria, dude, not yeast.
        lightedman 10y ago
somberi 10y ago
Hooch / Bootleg alcohol are rife with methanol-related deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_inc...
- bbcbasic 10y ago
  I always thought that was because methylated spirits were used in place of pure alcohol? I.e. not a fermentation issue.
  - lightedman 10y ago
    Nope. In Mississippi prisons (Did some time myself) we just took OJ and yeast-leavened bread from our lunch trays, sealed it in a plastic bag, and had hooch in a couple days.
mattkrause 10y ago
How sure are you about this? From what I've read, it is very hard to generate methanol via fermentation alone[0] and home-brew usually has 2-3 ppm, versus a LD_{50} in the tens of thousands of ppm. Obviously, there might be problems well before the LD_{50}, but that's a lot of wiggle room (and methanol would be out-competed by the ethanol which is presumably also in the booze). [0] Concentrating the wine via freezing (as in some ice wines or applejack) might be an exception to this, but I'm not sure.
- lightedman 10y ago
  Very sure as I was using naturally-present yeast instead of any brewer's yeast or bread yeast. Methanol content is something to look out for when you use natural yeasts. Source: 15 years brewing/distilling. Just got lazy/too self-assured one day.
  - mattkrause 10y ago
    Hmmm.... It does look pectin can be degraded into methanol by some microbes. I'm surprised there was enough feedstock to generate a problematic amount of methanol, but I'm glad you're ok.

teddyknox 10y ago

Lucky you didn't go blind

a_t48 10y ago

I'm sure you can find someone to take it off your hands (possible methanol aside...)

sgt101 10y ago
I'm going to use it as weedkiller.

dsfyu404ed 10y ago

If you need someone to get rid of it I'll take it off your hands.

david-given 10y ago

Friend of mine's family made something which they called 'apple wine': an open bucket with sugar, apple juice, some citrus (lemon juice, I believe) and then left for about a week. (With muslin over the top to keep the flies off!) Wild yeast causes it to start fermenting. Once it begins to froth, you bottle. After another week or so it's lightly carbonated and very slightly alcoholic. The thing is, it continues to ferment in the bottles. So as time passes, it gets more and more alcoholic and less and less sweet, as the yeast consumes the sugar. So while the children were allowed to drink it for the first few weeks after bottling, after a certain point it was distinctly adults-only. So it's quite possible that the parent simply left theirs to ferment too long. ...I used to make ginger beer, which is a variation on the same thing; you cultivate a yeast/bacteria/ginger culture used for the fermentation rather than relying on wild yeast, but the process is the same. Thing about ginger beer, though, is that it's heavily flavoured with ginger, and you need the sugar to make it drinkable. So if you left it for too long it ended up both extremely alcoholic and mouth-puckeringly bitter. (I can strongly recommend giving ginger beer a try, actually. It's dead easy to make, exceedingly nice, you can pick any alcohol level you like including almost none, and is a continuation of a thoroughly ancient tradition. Be warned, though: (a) it's packed full of sugar, (b) it's quite hard to make in small quantities, and (c) if you get the bug you may find yourself surreptitiously exchanging jam-jars full of biological slime at pubs with total strangers...)

sgt101 10y ago
I think my issue was/is two fold. 1) I think that the wild yeast in my orchard is a bit "oomphy" 2) I put 8 grams of sugar a pint in for the brew. Which was far too much. Next year I should have a decent harvest to go at (I've changed out my apple trees and the new ones put in five years ago are fruiting nicely now) so I'm going to have another go... at 4 grams a pint.

3chelon 10y ago

I make cider every year and I've never had any problems - I think it's the easiest form of alcohol to make. On the question of methanol, it is my understanding it comes from the high pectin content. I always use a pectic enzyme to break down the pectin, mainly because that releases more sugars and makes the cider clearer, but possibly it helps stop methanol formation? I know it can be an issue if you distill cider into apple brandy (calvados) - but that's illegal in the UK anyway without a license, so has never been an issue.