Underage college students have always found creative ways to drink, but that usually just involves befriending upperclassmen or obtaining fake IDs. Now, students are making their own alcohol out of juice and showing others how to do the same through TikTok.
Dubbing their drinks “prison wine,” TikTok teens are showing others how to ferment alcohol with simple ingredients like juice, fruit, and active yeast, all from the comfort of a dorm room.
Most videos show teens adding active yeast and sugar to a bottle of juice and letting the bottle sit for a week with the cap slightly loosened or covered with a balloon.
After the juice ferments, the results look intense. Videos show teens stumbling around dorms and falling over from the alcohol.
TikTok may make homemade brewing seem easy enough, but it is dangerous. When the yeast breaks down the sugar, it releases carbon dioxide, which can build pressure inside the bottle, and creates a risk of explosion.
In addition to having your alcohol explode on you, drinking homemade alcohol can make you seriously sick. Homemade hooch can give drinkers botulism, a disease that attacks the body’s nerves and can result in paralysis or even death. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), inmates have been poisoned from drinking hooch in Arizona, California, Mississippi, and Utah.
Students beware: It may seem like harmless fun on TikTok, but drinking “dorm mead” can result in serious sickness or even death.
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