Can leaving this mixture fermenting longer cause higher alcohol content?

Question

Look here: http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Cheese/ROOTBEER_Jn0.htm

Thanks.

Answer 1

The quick answer is yes.
How much you get is dependent on how much sugar you have to start with and how long you let it ferment. Bear in mind, the yeast eats the sugar in order to make the alcohol, so the stronger it gets, the less sweet it gets.

Answer 2

If there is free sugar in the rootbeer mixture, it should ferment into alcohol if left longer (the yeast will go dormant after all of the sugar that they can ferment is converted.) Yeast can also be inhibited from the back pressure of carbon dioxide building in the bottle. If you leave it until all of the sugar is converted, the rootbeer will not be sweet.

however - the pressure of the building carbon dioxide could burst the bottle, and you will end up with a bit of a mess. If you are going to leave it longer, you should vent the bottle, or create an airlock. You can buy airlocks fairly cheap at a home brewing or wine supply store. If you just leave the bottle open to oxygen, the yeast will not produce alcohol in the same way. You will want to cap the bottle before the fermentation is complete as well so that the beverage would be carbonated.

You may want to check out http://www.howtobrew.com it is related to home brewing beer but the exact same principles are in play.

Answer 3

If you are making soda, the reason fermentation is used is for force carbonation. The yeast metabolize the sugars the waste produced is ethanol & CO2. of course there is much more to it but all you need to know is that the yeast produce CO2 it is trapped in the closed bottle and it will begin to be absorbed by the liquid, it does not require a great deal of fermentation to achieve the amount of pressure needed for force carbonation & only a tiny bit of alcohol is produced .5% at most. If you were to let it ferment longer in a closed vessel it will lead to extreme over carbonation. Gushing bottles are not much fun & in extreme cases the entire contents will gush out when opened, you also will have the possibility of lids blowing off or in the case of glass bottles, bottles blowing up.
If you were to try first open fermentation, then yes it would be possible but would lead to a undrinkable end product. Soda is a balance (like most drinks) between sweet & bitter/sour Without this balance, Allot of the sugar would be consumed, you would have a nasty sour drink with higher alcohols, produced by the more complex sugars used in making soda.

Answer 4

Yeast is an active culture. Meaning it has live bacteria in it. When yeast/bacteria feed off sugar (Fructose, Corn Sugar, etc...) the by-product or should I say the waste material from the bacteria results in Ethyl Alcohol.

Yes you may be able to ferment longer to increase the alcohol content. I'm not a chemist or brew master. I do know brewing. With the recipe already having a low alcohol % longer fermentation will increase the alcohol maybe to the strength of NyQuil. If you want to make a beverage with more alcohol. Try homebrewing beer. Much higher alcohol, although many more ingredients are needed.

Answer 5

If you follow the recipe in your post, you won't get over one-half percent alcohol, which is the government definition of "non-alcoholic."
The reason is that there is only so much alcohol that can be produced from a given amount of sugar.

To answer your question specifically:
There is a chance, if you let it ferment long enough, that you could get slightly over that level, but there would be two problems. One is that you want a certain amount of residual sugar simply for taste -- if 100% of the sugar were converted by the yeast to alcohol and CO2, it probably would not taste sweet enough to be enjoyable. The other problem is that you would also develop too much carbonation, and there is a slight danger that the bottle could explode.

Answer 6

I don't understand all the science, but I have made a lot of wine. You can never ferment more than a 14% alcohol mixture. Fortified wines, like port actually have grain alcohol added to them. Hard booze is not fermented, it is distilled. Once I put some of my home made wine through a backpackers water filter,,and the red wine came out crystal clear...had about as much alcohol as vodka! You can also raise the alcohol content by freezing...the alcohol wont freeze, and you can remove some of the slush, and have a stronger drink...no guarantees on how it tastes.

Answer 7

It will probably do as fermentation process usually is done by bacteria that eat the sugar and turn it into alcohol. As long as there is glucose in the liquid the bacteria will keep producing alcochol. Of course after some time when the sugar runs out it will not longer become more alcoholic. It will just stay still.

Answer 8

Fermentation in a beer is good I'm sure as a computer chips manufacturer declaring bankruptcy has offered his chips for fermentation's and it was a hit. (Chips that uses small holes to serve as the computer's memory) It is time factor that causes the alcohol content to evolve and fermentation's are clearing up of debris.

Answer 9

Not always.
The biggest problem with most yeasts is that they die from their own byproducts.
Wines and beers are limited by the fraility of the yeast when it comes to alcohol percentages. This is why most wines are similar in alcohol content.
Distilled beverages get around the low alcohol percentage by distilling (evaporating the alcohol and collecting it).
The reason for allowing wines and other beverages to age longer is to increase the taste, especially if they are in oak barrels. This allows the liquid to interact with the container, thus adding more flavor. If you keep it in glass or plastic, you will not see much benefit from this.

Answer 10

I'm not sure what you're fermenting but I have been making wine for years and my family has been making it for generations. The fermentation of must changes sugar to alcohol therefore, by fermenting it longer you should see that the alcohol level will increase.