Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Accidental Carbonation

Just before Christmas Gail and I picked up a gallon of cider at the Somerville winter market. We drank a little more then half of it before we left for Maine for New Years, but haven't really drank any since. A few days ago I noticed the gallon jug of cider was bulging and started to carbonate!!!
When I popped the top the jug let out a little hiss and had a faintly alcoholic odor. A quick search led me to conclude that the cider was entirely safe to drink, it merely had began to carbonate and start the fermentation process. We were on our way to (accidentally) making hard cider.
Unfortunately that won't be happening now as I transferred the cider to a pair of smaller containers and they will be drank relatively soon, but the carbonation and fermentation process for something like apple cider is incredibly simple and I look forward to reproducing these results again in the future, but on purpose this time!!

Have you accidentally carbonated or fermented a beverage?? If so, how did it taste?

3 comments:

CallieK said...

I accidently fermented grape juice last year, then purposely made red wine vinegar out of it. It turned out to be a good mistake!

http://backyardfarmsto.blogspot.com/2011/01/probiotics-part-3-making-vinegar.html

This year I made cider and deliberately let it ferment so I could make cider vinegar and it is fantastic! If you are interested you could let one of your small containers finish fermenting and try to make it.

Fred said...

Thanks for the tip!! We ended up drinking what we had but I am going to replicate this on purpose in the near future!!

Bobby Fontaine said...

How did it taste?