silly questions about making your own cheese and alcohol?

Question

I had a small bottle with a little bit of leftover grape juice in it that I completely forgot about for a very long time (2 months.) When I took off the cap to dump the excess liquid, I noticed that it smelled a lot like alchohol. I just want to know if you can actually make your own alcohol with store bought grape juice?

Can you also make cheese with store bought milk?

Just curious. =P

Answer 1

The quick answer, yes...to both.

More complex...for wine, there needs to be grape juice with fermentable sugars and yeast. There's a chance your grape juice picked up a small amount of airborne yeast (it's everywhere) and got a small fermentation going. However, there's no control over what happened, so it's totally to chance as to what the final result really was. However, wine as you know it is simply grape juice that's pressed in controlled conditions, with yeast added in controlled conditions, and allowed to ferment in controlled conditions. All of which, you can do in your own home...perfectly legally.
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/
http://morewinemaking.com
http://www.homewinemaking.co.uk/

Cheese making I'm not as familiar with, so I'd go for a google search for home cheese making and see what turns up. Ultimately, with the exception of a few specialized ingredients, the bulk of any commercially available food can be made at home with mostly store bought ingredients, wine and cheese included.

Answer 2

Store bought milk is pasteurized, which means all the bacteria, even the beneficial ones, were killed. In order to make cheese, you need some beneficial bacteria.
You can still make cheese with it, but you need to introduce a culture of bacteria that will break down the lactose.
Same thing with grape juice. Sometimes it will pick up yeast from the air and turn into an alcoholic beverage, but it might not be very good.

Answer 3

Actually, yes.

Fermented grape juice is what you call wine.

However, to be absolutely safe, it needs to be done in a rather complex process. This is not advisable for people making it at home as there are laws against that.

Cheese, however, is a different story, because that's legal.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/DIY/1994_October_November/A_Homemade_Cheese_Press will tell you how a $15 cheese press can have you making your own cheese at home.

All the best.

Cheers

Answer 4

My dad does! He buys Welch's grape juice concentrate and makes DELICIOUS homemade wine.

My parent's alsomake cheese, but they have Jersey cows, so I don't know about store bought milk.