Dangerous alcopops (mixing, fermenting)

[uair01]

This evening at dinner my son told the following FOAF story:

Some teenagers had mixed alcopops and drank some. Then the mixture started to ferment (!) in one boy's stomach and he had to be taken to hospital urgently. All this happened during the summer holidays on a French camping.

Sounds like an interesting mix-up of vague notions and misconceptions, nice stuff for an UL.

 

[GNC]

Aren't alcopops by their nature fermented long before they reach your stomach? Wouldn't drinking too many of them result in an upset anyway?

 

[eyepod]

Wouldn't drinking too many of them result in an upset anyway?

Yes. Frequently.

 

[RealPaZZa]

i thought the fizz in alcopops is caused by carbon dioxide injected into the liquid, rather than fremented (created by yeast), so it cant happen surely? no yeast = no fermentation, also alcohol does kill brewers yeast, so the higher the alcohol content, the harder it is to ferment it (try making a 50% alcohol beer, you cant, hence the existance of distilling). its definatly a very poor UL spoken by kids who dont understand the brewing process

 

[OldTimeRadio]

I'm certain we all remember the "Pop Rocks" ULs:

"My best friend's cousin's minister's barber's neighbor's accountant's lawyer's gardener's girlfriend heard of a boy named Billy who ate an entire box of Pop Rocks and EXPLODED." (Yes, that was Billy all over.)

I knew these yarns were ULs the first time I heard them, for the simple reason that when I was 11 or 12 years old I liked to chew the juice out of a fresh orange and then swallow a teaspoonful or two of bicarbonate of soda just to feel the "roiling sea" inside my stomach.

And yet I turned out to be the same loveable and normal OTR as you see before you today.

 

[Anonymous]

Wasn't there a UL about a dog (a dachshund I think - a small dog anyway) who 'wolfed' down a load of bread doe and then lay down in front of a blazingly hot fire? D'Oh! :shock:

I've 'seen' (via TV) sheeps and cows who have expanding gases in their stomachs and need to be 'stabbed' to release the pressure. Isn't there a bit of this in Hardy's "Far From The Madding Crowd"?

 

[stu neville]

Yep, because the sheep ate clover. Apparently their digestive tract can actually explode.

Could this be to do with eating certain types of sweetie and drinking cola at the same time, which produces a volcano effect?

 

[OldTimeRadio]

There are accounts from early-to-mid 19th Century British morgues of mortuary workers poking glass pipettes through the bloated abdomens of dead alcoholics and then using this to burn off the gas.

And British churchyard sextons from the same years are said to have thrust pipettes through the lead seals of above-ground coffins to similarly burn off the gases of decay.