Sodium Benzoate

I've never tried it myself, but I'd bet that you'd have trouble getting a fermentation to go smoothly - if at all - in its presence. Buy some flash pasteurized or fresh juice instead.

Tom S

interested in

I'm guessing it won't ferment at all, and here's how I figure it. In my college days, you could buy unpasturized, preservative free apple cider. The stuff would ferment in the fridge after only a couple of days. The store-bought stuff that contains a trace of preservatives doesn't do that.

Now, maybe grape juice is different from fresh squeezed apple cider. And maybe modern wine yeast strains are more immune to benzoate than wild apple skin yeasts. But I'm betting the main reason the preservative is there in the first place is to prevent fruit juice from becoming wine before you serve it to the kids. Probably carefully dosed to insure fermentation doesn't happen.

After all, an acid juice, stored in the fridge, should be safe from bacterial spoilage for a short period of time before you finish the container. Even an infant would reject spoiled juice at the first sip, but a 1-2% alcohol juice wouldn't be noticeable -- until they started demanding more, tipping over more often, getting into fights, and tried to pick up loose women arond the sandbox.

If they are going to the trouble and expense of adding a preservative to a juice, they are going to pick one that inhibits yeast which would be one of the prime things that would make a juice go bad (good?).

Ray