Home brew has made me ill.

[Globalti]

Was given a DIY brew kit thingy for Christmas so made the stuff about 3 weeks ago meaning to drink it at Easter. Drank a wine glass full on Friday to test it, it tasted a bit fruity and it was cloudy but otherwise seemed okay so I decided it needed another week to settle. However I had diarrhoea all through the weekend.

Any biologists on here? I was careful about hygiene but if I contaminated the beer with some bacterium when I made it, would that affect the guts while still allowing the beer to taste okay or would the beer be completely undrinkable?

 

[Saddle bum]

Bugs in beer, better than that super laxative, Picolax.

 

[vernon]

Was given a DIY brew kit thingy for Christmas so made the stuff about 3 weeks ago meaning to drink it at Easter. Drank a wine glass full on Friday to test it, it tasted a bit fruity and it was cloudy but otherwise seemed okay so I decided it needed another week to settle. However I had diarrhoea all through the weekend.

Any biologists on here? I was careful about hygiene but if I contaminated the beer with some bacterium when I made it, would that affect the guts while still allowing the beer to taste okay or would the beer be completely undrinkable?

From my extensive experience as a member of a five student brewing consortium in my undergraduate days - if it tasted OK it probably was OK.

Bowel cleansing brews generally tasted like 5h1te...a major clue to the probable outcome of drinking it.

Just this week I've sampled some 25 year old Elderberry wine from the very last home brewing session that I ever did. It's amazingly like a dry sherry. Shame I've only go six bottles' worth.

 

[User169]

Was given a DIY brew kit thingy for Christmas so made the stuff about 3 weeks ago meaning to drink it at Easter. Drank a wine glass full on Friday to test it, it tasted a bit fruity and it was cloudy but otherwise seemed okay so I decided it needed another week to settle. However I had diarrhoea all through the weekend.

Any biologists on here? I was careful about hygiene but if I contaminated the beer with some bacterium when I made it, would that affect the guts while still allowing the beer to taste okay or would the beer be completely undrinkable?

It's my understanding that it's nigh on impossible to grow anything seriously pathogenic in beer. The problem with bacterial contaminations is that they lead to strange fermentations giving rise to off-flavour compounds and fusel alcohols. It's the latter that probably gave you the runs.

It's generally quite important to be extremely clean when making beer, unless you're trying to go for some kind of spontaneous brett fermentation (which probably only works if you live near to Brussels).

 

[fossyant]

Try some more, if it happens again then it's the brew. If not, happy days...hic.

 

[Sittingduck]

Made my first batch of homebrew a few weeks ago. Tried it 4 weeks after bottling and it tasted a little "winey" but was ok. Seemed to improve over the following 3 or 4 weeks it too us to consume the rest

I presume you steralised the equipment well before the brew?