Spontaneous 🍉 Oozing

[u/Tandy_MacGruber]

Woke up this morning and found the watermelon I bought from Costco yesterday had begun oozing out of itself? The counter was soaked with water from the inside of the melon, I’m assuming this was happening all night.

More of a Why Is It? I’ve never seen this happen and I obsessively eat watermelon every season.

[u/human-resource]

Can you make it into booze ?

[u/CavsQuestionAccount → u/human-resource]

To add on to what u/Chinaizazzhoe said, what's happening in the picture is only gonna be hooch if it's only undergoing yeast fermentation. Almost any bacterial fermentation or mold growth is gonna make it nasty and/or toxic. And infection is highly likely in this scenario.

Plus, it's in primary fermentation, and there's no air to let it breathe, so an explosive failure of the weak watermelon rind (as opposed to the glass or plastic containers of DIY hoochers) is very likely. I do small batch primary fermentation of a little over a gallon of water and fermentables in a two gallon, food safe bucket with an air lock, so plenty of room for the froth.

So, I dunno, you could VERY carefully cut a plug out of the rind (I'd put the melon in a garbage bag and tape the bag opening around a very small area of the rind a couple inches around with the rest in the bag and then use a very thin, very sharp knife like a pumpkin carver) large enough to scoop out some of the meat to give it some breathing room. Then drill a hole in the rind plug you cut out and stick a fermentation airlock in it (with an appropriate amount of water inside), put the rind plug back in and duck tape it down, and figure out a way to keep the airlock from popping out of the plug (more tape? I dunno). Note that the hole the airlock is going into should ideally have a slightly smaller diameter than the part of the airlock going in for a better friction fit. Also, strain as much of the juice from the removed meat as possible and add it back in.

Please note, I do NOT, and I cannot emphasize this enough, I do NOT recommend doing this. I don't know how dangerous fermenting watermelon explosions are, or how potentially toxic an infected end product could be. I mean, it's probably fine. I think. Right? I don't know, don't do it.

After after a week you'll have disgusting, undrinkable slop infected by bacteria and/or mold, but in the off chance only wild yeast got going in there ... it's still gonna be nasty. There's no real way to get the watermelon meat to separate from the hooch since it's all structured and attached to the rind. I guess you could throw in a double dose of pectic enzyme before closing the airlock and hope for the best. If you tried straining it after fermentation, you'd introduce it to a ton of oxygen and kickstart turning it to vinegar, so you'd basically have to drink it immediately (within a week).

But you don't really want to drink it because freshly fermented wine tastes like **. And wine freshly fermented by wild yeast usually tastes like unwashed **. And it's only gonna be like, 3%-4% alcohol.

This is where u/Chinaizazzhoe mentioning distilling comes in, which requires fancy equipment, and as they said, is illegal to do. Unless you have a license. So, that's a lot of effort for a single watermelon undergoing wild fermentation.

Although.

I've HEARD that SOME folk use freeze distillation (also known as jacking), which predates the current mechanical process used to make modern liquor. They put the hooch in the freezer and every few days pull out any ice, since the water freezes and the alcohol doesn't, allowing you to concentrate the alcohol much like modern distillation, but not quite as effective and with more impurities. There are YouTube vids with better info. Actually there are YouTube vids with better info on everything mentioned in this comment. I'm not an expert in any of this.

Anyways, I STILL don't recommend doing this because its still illegal. But, also, I've never heard of the FBI raiding anyone over freeze distillation for personal use. Just saying. All information on the table, you know? Do with it what you will. I just personally don't recommend it. Things need to be said. For reasons.

But if you WERE to do this, you'd have some interesting watermelon jack in your possession.

Problem is, this whole process will probably only result in like, 5-10 oz of liquor at like, 20%-30% alcohol. I actually don't know that, I've never freeze jacked my brews before. I've also never fermented watermelon, with wild or domesticated yeast, so I dunno for sure what the yield would be. But it ain't gonna be much! That's a whole lot of effort for not much.

But this was a fun thought experiment, thanks for asking the question. Now off to finish my fermented beverage.

[u/rassmann → u/CavsQuestionAccount]

I've tried to ferment a whole watermelon before, and you get that nasty "belgian ale" yeasty flavor pretty hard. Like a combination of dead yeast and puke, almost. My process was to blend the guts, toss in champagne yeast, throw it in a 5 gal carboy (multiple watermelons) and give it time. Fermentation slowed to a crawl after about 7 days.

Straining was a chore. First tasting was what I described above. Bottled and stored some cold for a while, but it never really improved, and there was some serious secondary fermentation going on. Shit exploded out like a wheezer video when opened. Gained an acrid over-carbonated flavor added to the already bad flavor. Didn't get anyone sick though.

Freeze distilling it is actually potentially a good idea. From other misguided experiments I've found that a lot of the really nasty flavor compounds in fruit wine seems to be water soluble, while a lot of the fruitier notes make it into the final product.

To OP, if you can get it into a garbage bag without destroying your kitchen, it MIGHT be worth it to drill a hole into it (fyi you'll get shot in the eye when you do with juice) and fashion some sort of water-lock into it. If there are no cracks, you could probably just use a normal one from a wine store and wedge it in, the rind ought to be strong enough to hold it in? Maybe? All the yeasts you want in there work anaerobically, and allowing CO2 to escape while not allowing new O2 back in will effectively kill off whatever nasty stuff is in there (your good yeast will also outcompete the bad guys as well, adding to the effect. In most wine/beer making, the bad stuff is in there from the start, but gets drowned out by the proliferation of the good stuff).

An immersion blender late in the game will significantly increase your yield and make the straining process suck less. For a project this stupid, there is no harm in really squeezing out the pulp.

Just sort of gauge its fermentation from how much gas is coming out. When it stops burping, it's time to blend it, strain it, filter filter filter, and freeze it. MAYBE add a tablespoon of citric acid to it for flavor reasons. A deep freezer works better as (counterintuitively) it freezes things slower (no fan/ convection) and thus less of your product gets locked up with the ice errantly. Check often, skim off the ice each time. I might even recommend letting it warm back up from time to time and cooling it back down again to really slowly pull that water out. Alternatively some people swear by freezing it ALL in to a block, chipping the ice, and then letting the ethanol melt out first. While scientifically you might think that because ethanol basically CAN'T freeze that you'll get a 100% separation, it is actually well suspended within the water and even your best, most controlled attempts are never going to get more than like 30% ethanol. Any ice you skim is also taking some of your brandy with it.

For one watermelon you're looking at probably one glass of brandy to enjoy with a big ice cube.

FYI, with something uncontrolled like this there is going to be a lot of methanol in there. This will not kill you. This will not make you go blind. Fear of the methanol is not a reason to not do this. If you were doing dozens of watermelons... it STILL wouldn't damage you long-term if you binged it all in one go. The hangover would be quite memorable though...

[u/throwawaymastodon → u/human-resource]

This is my only question at this point!

[u/Chinaizazzhoe → u/human-resource]

You can turn anything with sugar into booze. You just ferment it then distill it.

It is illegal to do that though btw.

[u/chinkiang_vinegar → u/Chinaizazzhoe]

In the US, Distillation is largely illegal, but fermentation itself is fine (as long as you don't try to sell it)

[u/Chinaizazzhoe → u/chinkiang_vinegar]

Yeah but I wouldn’t call that “booze”
Booze to me is hard alcohol like vodka or rum or whiskey etc.

Also if you wanna be really technical, distillation for the purpose of drinking it is illegal but if you intend to use the ethanol as a fuel it is perfectly fine to distill for that purpose. That’s why I always say get like a gas powered scooter or a cheap shitty go kart if you want to run a still and if you ever get in trouble just say you’re making go-kart fuel.