Hello - hope someone can help me with this puzzle! Yesterday I thawed out a small bowlful of blackcurrants and redcurrants with some sugar, to use on top of a cheesecake. Today I thought there might not be enough so I added a bit more frozen fruit, together with some more sugar and a couple of teaspoons of home-made redcurrant jelly. I now find the mixture is covered in froth and appears to be fermenting! :drunken_smilie: Eek. I can't imagine what's caused such a reaction and I'm a bit scared to eat it, though the tiny bit I sampled tastes just fine and it would be a waste to throw it all away. If anyone with expert knowledge of food toxicology (or any ideas at all really) could suggest what might have happened I'd be extremely grateful! Don't want to take any risks... :angel11:
Wild yeasts on the fruits and the sugar are producing alcohol - would be the most likely explanation. Mixture gets more potent and eventually turns into vinegar. I would use the berries. However when I am in the same situation, I put the berries in the fridge and have never actually seen fermentation start this quickly.
Thanks galina, that's brilliant - wild yeast may well be the culprit as the fruit was organically grown and dry when picked therefore not washed before freezing. It did happen rather quickly though. Maybe I've hit on a new way to speed up fermentation... :occasion16:
In any case it's a good excuse to eat up the fruit quickly!
Thanks very much again for your help.
Hi, slightly different, but....I make masses of elderflower cordial (as a syrup) and freeze it in bottles, taking one out every now and then to thaw. When I dilute it, if I don't drink it within a few days, it also starts to ferment, some of the sweetness goes, for obvious reasons, and it gets a bit fizzy. I rather like it, though I have not bothered yet to try it on a larger scale.
Also when we make sour dough, the initial mixture of flour and water is trying to invite these wild yeasts in to ferment it, and the more yeasts the better.
I have no idea whether or not we could accidentally make methyl alcohol and poison ourselves, though. From a quick look at the internet, the danger comes in trying to process home made alcohol into spirits using heat and adding particular ingredients to raise the alcohol level. Our cold berries and lightly fermenting cordials look completely safe.
With my first husband I made gallons and gallons of cider by fermenting apple juice in wooden barrels. It was delicious, and no-one ever became ill over about 20 years, unless they really over-dosed on it and got hung over.