BAD BEER KILLS 69 AT MOZAMBIQUE FUNERAL

Unfortunately this happens all the time in Mozambique, banana beer is a bad one too. The problem is, like and14363 said, these guys are making it out of anything in anything. If you brew yours out of grains, in clean vats, with added yeast there is no risk.

a reply to: Hefficide

As James1982 said above, no known pathogens can survive in beer. You can have bacteria infected batches, but they are just foul tasting and couldn't hurt you even if you drank them. I've been brewing beer since the 1980s and have had only one infected batch. Tasted like vomit. Needless to say I didn't drink that.

The only way to brew beer that could kill you would be to add something toxic or accidentally introduce something to it via the vessel it is stored in as it sounds like was done here. As long as you are using good ingredients to brew you won't be in any danger. And yes, in many places in the world it is safer to drink beer than the available water.

I'm gonna say it was Natty Ice from previous experience in my foolish and unsophisticated youth.

It's a little suspicious, my dad and brother have been home brewing for years, here in Canada booze isn't cheap, unlike the rest of the world. So home brewing makes sense. My dad made a batch once that went bad, first off it smelled sour, it looked gross, tasted like it smelled and we knew to stay away from it.

Beer is pretty much all natural, and humans can easily detect if it's gone bad.

So who knows, it may have been poisoned.
Or just some nasty bacteria got in there, but again it would smell and taste awful.

Fun fact: you're more likely to get a hang over drinking beer from a tap than out of bottles. Bars and restaurants generally don't clean their lines properly or regularly and the bacteria inside will give you 'gut rot'.

a reply to: strongfp

In most pubs in England a peculiar thing happens when drinking hand pulled ale: four or five pints in a cloudy pint comes a long. It may taste normal, it may be full bodied and not flat (in the north we leave the diffuser on the hand pull as you are supposed to) but it looks cloudy.

This pint will definitely give you the s***s the next day.

I think this has something to do with contamination in the barrel or dirty lines.

a reply to: Cinrad

A friend of my brother once made himself beer, can't remember which flavor, but he took one sip and fell into a coma for a few days. And that was not his first batch he made.

I've brewed up tons of beer, wine, and honey mead. Only ever had one batch go bad.
It was easy enough to tell by the smell, sulfur and vinegar, that you wouldn't want to drink it.
This case sounds more like a poisoning, maybe intentional.

a reply to: skunkape23

That is a popular view. Maybe it was, but I will have to check for updates on the story.

a reply to: wtbengineer

In the mid eighties I came across a sale on Grolsh ( Imported, flip top and everything ) at an insanely low price per case. So I bought several cases.

That night I drank a few ( in those days a "few" might well have been 20-40 ) and woke up sick as a dog. Like a hangover only many times worse.

Being that I was young and male, I got better a couple of days later and did it again. Same result. And once more with the same outcome.

Finally I read an article in the local paper that the grocery chain had allowed an entire truck filled with the Grolsh to sit unrefrigerated for weeks. Grolsh ( at least then ) was not pastuerized and the bacterial ickies flourished.

That beer did not taste or smell skunky at all. But that is also my only known experience with bad beer.

a reply to: Hefficide
I got into a bad keg of Budweiser once. It tasted a little funky, but I still drank a belly full it.
Big mistake. It was undoubtedly the worst hangover I have ever had in my life. I had to literally crawl on my knees to the
shower the next morning.

a reply to: Hefficide
Fun fact: beer was the staple drink of the Sumerians and the primary currency of the Egyptians. Down the road it was also the primary currency of the British Empire. India Pale Ale was invented solely because it wouldnt denature in the heat. Both there and in Egypt soldiers were paid in beer. The word cash actually comes from the Egyptian word Kash, which means 'payment in beer'.

I had to go to beer school for work.

a reply to: Hefficide

Yeah, there are things that can live in beer that can give you digestive system distress, especially if you indulge in so many (as I am also guilty, even now). But that's about as bad as it gets. Nothing living in beer will kill you. Well, maybe if you drink enough but that might have something to do with the alcohol.

After talking to a few people about brewing beer, I can safely say that it is very easy to create poison instead of beer, without wrong ingredients or toxic containers.

I have to disagree with you here, It is not easy to accidently make poison instead of beer.

I would be interested to hear what people are suggesting can be done as alcohol has been made for several hundred years from many different products under very different conditions.

The alcohol content and ph levels actually make it harder for pathogens to survive which is precisely the reason beer and wine was drunk because it was safer than the water it was made from.

a reply to: IndependentOpinion

a reply to: nonspecific
Exactly, like distillation. The Tigris and Euphrates and Nile caused diarrhea, beer didnt!

a reply to: nonspecific

If you get just one of many things wrong, you can create a lot of Methanol instead of Ethanol.

As I said earlier you may have some confusing information.

Without going to deeply into it "beer" is only a lov volume product even if you managed to create a beer with a higher than usual methanol content the ethanol actually prevents the methanol from being absorbed by the body.

Unless I am incorrect on this but after brewing for around 20 years I'm pretty sure I'm right on this.

a reply to: IndependentOpinion

a reply to: nonspecific

Did you start off with a detailed recipe?

a reply to: IndependentOpinion

Doesn't matter what you use as far as malted barley, wheat, rye, etc. and hops as well as a multitude of other spices and adjuncts. You'll never produce anything that'll kill you by fermenting it. At least as long as the ingredients are quality such as what is available here and in most of the world. And even in 3rd world countries as long as you start out with something that contains a lot of fermentable sugars you'll be okay, it just might not taste much like 'beer'.

If criminals in prison aren't dropping dead by the hundreds each and every day from their homemade shenanigans of using fruit/candy/ketchup, sugar, and bread slices to brew up a concoction in plastic baggies, and kept hidden in their toilets once fully fermented...

Then I think it's safe to say that it's extremely difficult to create a batch of deadly poison without using a distillation process (which is not used in making any kind of fermented beverage).

The deadly pathogen needs to be from the container itself, otherwise it's just a bad case of the trots.

A batch can go 'bad'... but one that kills instantly ? Not so much.