Alcohol Fermentation

Overripe Fruit – Alcohol Fermentation – The Elixer/Destroyer of Lives

Alcohol fermentation is natures way of producing alcohol. By itself, nature cannot produce alcohol stronger than 14 percent. Fermentation is a natural process that occurs when yeast combines with the sugar in plants and produces an enzyme that then produces alcohol. So it is possible to say that alcohol is yeast excrement.
This yeast can be gotten naturally from the air, like Stone Age people got it, or purchased in a store the way we get it. Of course the higher the sugar content of the plant the easier it is to produce alcohol. We have many fruit and grain alcohols because of their starch or sugar content.

Most historians believe alcohol was discovered by accident. That somebody in the Stone Age left berries or grain in a stone pot and it combined with yeast from the air and water and they had alcohol. No one seems to know if wine or beer came first but it didn’t take long for it to be available everywhere. People loved it.

Curious information:

I once worked with a guy who had spent 3 years in prison for selling methamphetamine. In prison he would buy orange juice from the prison commissary. He would then put bread dough from the kitchen in it and let nature do it’s work. He had to use bread dough because the yeast was guarded to closely for him to get any.

He would hide his concoction in a common area so if a guard found it the alcohol wouldn’t be immediately traceable to him. He would then sell it to buy other things that he wanted. So alcohol fermentation is very easy. Of course prison brew doesn’t taste very good but, it does the job.

Alchol Fermentation is pursued by men from as diverse places as monasteries and prisons.

How Stuff Works on alcohol fermentation.

NPR on alcohol fermentation in a man’s own belly.

Google it, but I have found research that says humans probably make as much as 2 ounces of ETOH per day inside of their own bodies.  How does that affect abstinence?