Fermented Fruit -- Photo Essay: The Process of Fermentation

In this case I used a old sun tea jar with a loose fitting pour spout.

Keep the lid or cap closed throughout the process, if it is loosely seated it will let the CO2 gas leak out as needed.

It was still sitting on the heating pad, and we turned that on to medium. The heating pad only runs for an hour before auto-shutoff, but that at least gets some heat into the towel and hopefully it will stay at a decent temperature until morning.

LOTS of bubble foam at the top, not so tiny bubbles throughout the liquid, and you can see streams of bubbles making their way up to the surface.

Things will progress the same from here on. For the next several days try to stir the fruit once or twice a day to keep the fruit on top from drying out. As the fruit ages in the alcohol it will be soaked enough that you don't need to worry about it drying out.

You can start eating the fruit now, but as it ages the alcohol "edge" will mellow out and the taste gets better. It all depends on what you prefer tastewise and how long you can stand to wait.

As you use the fruit you can add more canned fruit to the jar; as you run out of sauce, add more sugar. When you add sugar it will kick off fermentation again, but it won't be the full blown fermentation we saw at the start of the project. Just know that the yeast are living things that are sleeping in the sauce waiting for more sugar to turn into alcohol and CO2.

ENJOY!