These canned, additive-free cherries are packed in their own juice, watered down. I previously left this juice in a plastic water bottle while drinking it, for only three days, and it became pleasantly bubbly - carbonated juice. A honey and water mix used for eye medicine turned into a strong alcohol over just 1-2 weeks (it was only one ounce of mixture). This time, I used the extra, way-too-high amount of yeast to put in the juice, but after two months, it is still just sour juice, and no tasteable bubbles. So I added a very small piece of kombucha SCOBY - maybe it will become kombucha-like or become fizzy juice. One week later, it tastes exactly the same. Two weeks after that, it is vinegar. It was never wine and it was never kombucha. Why?
1 Answer
It's difficult to answer why fermentation did not complete without further information.
It's quite possible the sugar content was too high and pH to low for whatever yeast was added to survive and begin fermentation.
Vinegar however is created when bacteria that produce acetic acid are present in an environment with a sugar source and oxygen. They will thrive off of the sugar just like brewer's yeast, but will also produce acetic acid as a byproduct of their life processes.
If you wish to make cherry wine, I would suggest diluting the juice down to somewhere in the range of a sugar concentration of 10 percent, measuring with a hydrometer or refractometer, and using a yeast, possibly a dry wine yeast, that can withstand alcohol in ranges of 10-14 percent abv.
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As you can see by reading the post, the sugar content is exactly the same in both cases because both came from the canned cherries. In addition, as you can see by reading the post, the juice is already very highly watered down. Complete and 100% information was already given so it obviously is not possible to give "more". The yeast, as mentioned in the post, came from when there is too-high amounts of yeast, which means that the only possibility of a place it can come from is the kombucha.– RavenJan 1, 2018 at 14:34
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Becoming a millionaire as well as spending literal tens of dollars for an ounce or two at a time of some kind of valid fermented drink (yes preferably wine but once again the first bottle of juice also just became carbonated) is obviously not a valid or reasonable thing to do, and of course anyone who has such a huge amount of money at one time could also simply buy alcohol, even if they wanted healthy/non-toxic alcohol. The "juice" cab be drank on it's own though tastes much better when fermented as in the first bottle, and presumably as wine as well.– RavenJan 1, 2018 at 14:34
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If the problem would be allegedly merely that "the yeast did not survive", then this should result in the same result as happened the first time.– RavenJan 1, 2018 at 14:36