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Couple dies after drinking home-brew beer


Still Waters

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A couple who made a batch of home-brew beer have died during lockdown after drinking just one bottle each.

Tony Hilliar, 54, and Alida Fouche, 42, had run out of their own supplies of alcohol and decided to make their own brew with no end of South Africa’s tough alcohol restrictions on the horizon.

South Africa has banned the sale during the pandemic’s lockdown period.

It’s understood that the couple collapsed at their home in the Northern Cape province after consuming the homebrew and that real estate agent Tony made a desperate call for help.

https://7news.com.au/travel/coronavirus/couple-dies-after-drinking-homebrew-beer-to-get-around-tough-coronavirus-restrictions-c-1027341

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I never heard of homemade beer or wine being toxic. The Mexicans around here make tiswin ( corn beer) all the time.

I wonder what they accidentally spiked it with? :huh:

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19 hours ago, Piney said:

I never heard of homemade beer or wine being toxic. The Mexicans around here make tiswin ( corn beer) all the time.

I wonder what they accidentally spiked it with? :huh:

Toxic bacteria? 

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my mate made some rhubarb wine once that smelt and tasted toxic it was really bitter it certainly wasn't drinkable and it was flammable god knows what he'd done to it.....having said all that it looked tasty

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Likely added ethanol to make it stronger. 

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4 hours ago, Golden Duck said:

Toxic bacteria? 

Unlikely. Prison wine was never toxic and made with bread yeast too. 

I think @freetoroam nailed it. 

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2 minutes ago, Piney said:

Unlikely. Prison wine was never toxic and made with bread yeast too. 

I think @freetoroam nailed it. 

Makes sense as ethanol is used to make bio fuels and south Africa has lots of it

Quote

Most ethanol produced in South Africa has very high associated emissions. The largest producer is currently Sasol, with 285-million litres of non-renewable ethanol per year resulting from their coal to liquid process via Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis.

By contrast, most renewable (first generation) ethanol produced around the world today is based on fermentation of sugars derived from food crops such as corn and sugar cane. South Africa currently produces 120-million litres of such ethanol per year, mostly for the liquor industry.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-10-16-future-fuels-and-the-coming-ethanol-revolution-is-sasol-facing-technological-redundancy/amp/

 

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Have just checked a MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) for Ethanol. The LD50 value on rats is 7060mg/kg body weight so a human of 75kg wght have to consume (oral) approximately 0,5 litres Ethanol to get into the LD50 area and 0,5l of Ethanol, even diluted with whatever, is a lot of stuff to drink. 

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they must have added something to die that quickly. maybe they added some other type of alcohol like methanol. I am sure the autopsy will figure it out.

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6 hours ago, Piney said:

Unlikely. Prison wine was never toxic and made with bread yeast too. 

I think @freetoroam nailed it. 

There was an incident in Mozambique a few years back.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozambique_funeral_beer_poisoning

But, most home brewers are saying bacteria can only survive in the early stages of brewing. 

There's a lot of warnings about methanol, but how could they even produce enough to be toxic?

If you're adding ethanol, IMO, it's no longer beer.

 

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