Oy vey...it's been one big experiment. So in my last blog post we saw what happens when the fruit in the extract begins to ferment. But what happens when you finish an extract and it looks and smells exactly like it should and tastes amazing. How do you KNOW it is safe? You buy a hydrometer. There's no way around it. You need it and you will thank me later for it. Here is the hydrometer I purchased on Amazon, it's not an affiliate link, I don't make anything off of it, it's just an honest review of a product I've used that worked for me. The hydrometer will measure 0-200 proof alcohol which is exactly what you need for extract. So now, let me give you the back story.
Earlier this year I started my extracts with fresh fruits. Blueberries, blackberries, strawberries...the problem with fresh fruits is that the water that is naturally in the fruit will be released in to your alcohol and results in lowering the proof of the alcohol. Why is this important? Because when you lower the proof enough, the natural sugars from the fruit feeds the yeast and starts the fermentation process. Sometimes you will see it happening during the actual extraction as the concoction starts bubbling and creating a nasty mess which is what happened in the last blog post with the strawberry extract.
However sometimes, you can finish an extract and do all the proper straining and you THINK you have an amazing extract. But if you don't test the proof of the extract you could be in for a big surprise. A CO2 "bomb". My strawberry extract fermented right in the jar so it never made it to the bottling stage. At the time, my blueberry extract and blackberry extract seemed to be perfect. It tasted heavenly. So I strained it multiple times with different strainers and bottled it up.
Placed it in the back of my cupboard to be gifted at Christmas time. Until tonight...I decided I was going to spin my extracts in my centrifuge to make sure there are no microscopic particles left behind (which there will be in extracts). I opened up a blackberry bottle to prepare it for the centrifuge and POW!
liquid shot out so violently that it reached clear in to my living room, breakfast room and all over my kitchen. Up my nose, in my eyes, covering my clothes....one HUGE sticky mess. I was dumbfounded. What in the world happened???? This extract had tasted amazing. Then it hit me. I had already bottled these extracts before I purchased my hydrometer. Other batches had read a 5% alcohol content from fresh fruit so these must have been super low too from all the water released from the fruit. So when I bottled them, the yeast(which could now grow because of the low alcohol content) was fed off the sugars in the extract and started fermenting in the bottle and there was no way for the gases to get out. Left long enough, the bottle could have exploded. The liquid was so volatile that I couldn't even tilt the bottle without more extract spewing all over the kitchen like a middle school homemade volcano science experiment.
By dehydrating the fruit you are removing the water that would have lowered the proof of your alcohol. Second, purchase a hydrometer to test the extract before bottling. It should be a BARE minimum of 20% alcohol to keep fermentation from occurring. Yeast typically will be killed off at around 15% alcohol or 30 proof. My dehydrated batches are currently brewing and as of right now after a few months they are reading 35% or 70 proof on my last test which is completely safe and right where it should be.
When using fresh fruit you can see the the alcohol proof(photo below) is unbelievably low which will cause fermentation and a potential explosion in your cabinet.
So learn from my mistakes. Just because a youtube video tells you "this is how you make extract" doesn't mean it's actually safe. I once saw a video say that you could put 2 vanilla beans in to a quart of vodka and leave it for a few weeks and have vanilla extract (blatant lie). So do your own research. Err on the side of actual science. BEWARE of fermentation and fresh fruit.
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