[Cronos]

MD: The problem with freshly pressed grape juice is to keep it from fermenting. You don't have to 'pitch' it with yeast (unless, as is wise, you want to make sure that good strains of yeast outnumber the bad.) Wild yeasts will start "working" right away. Unless you pasteurize the cloudy must after filtering, it will ferment, "and that right early."

Interesting, so the fermentation process is the natural outcome while the grape juice in bottles with all chemicals added to PREVENT it from fermenting is actually artificial

This goes against evangs Jesus Christ never created anything tainted, and fermented juice is tainted. statement

[mnehring]

To put it simply- fermentation is a God created process.
Pasteurization is a man created process.

The ‘juice’ crowd is putting their faith in a man created process.

[Mad Dawg]

I am living my life backwards!

First I was an Episcopal priest.

Then we came to Virginia and I worked for two years in a real vineyard (and was told I was persnickety enough to make a good winemaker).

Then I was a shepherd.

Now I'm a Catholic; and I could have saved a lot of sturm und drang if I'd started there. But my work as vineyard laborer and shepherd opened up parts of Scripture as no amount of exegesis could do.

Mind you, the Jews did not realize that the same stuff that made dough rise also made wine ferment. If they did, it would mess up having wine at Passover, when all leaven is to be eschewed. I BELIEVE, but do not know, that to this day instead of pitching must with yeast they pitch with must from a previous vintage.

But it is the ubiquity of wild yeast that made fermented drink available at first, I suppose. I'm guessing mead first -- some guy comes across some honey diluted by rain and then fermented. He's desperate so he drinks some. He notices that suddenly a lot of women look really good, so he tries to repeat the experience.

Or one can imagine how the liquor from accidentally sprouted and rained upon grain might be drunk in similar desperation. And the stuff on the neanderthal big screen TV is suddenly less irritating.

The next day, when he's done with his hangover, he naturally says, "Hey, maybe we can do that again!"

Beer nuts are a later development.