Making your own ghetto-hol

[Hydroponichronic]

This may belong elsewhere (NfHC, maybe) but w/e. So I've been doing some reading and apparently it's as simple as turbo yeast (google it) and sugar and water. Then just carbon filter when it's done fermenting. So, what I as wondering was if anyone who's done this can comment on the drinkability of the really ghetto-vised brews, and any method that was used. Also any techniques or otherwise advise.


Thanks.

[kfc v lot]

It will probably taste like yeasty ass, i did some sugar wine years ago and left it in a bottle for about two years and tasted very similar to cheap white wine...

[BoilingLeadBath]

Ya really want to be putting in an acid, a protein, and macro-mineral source; it'll speed up and make more efficient the yeast, and so result in less "off" flavor.

I know that I did a sucrose-water-EC 11-18 once, and it was, well, awful.
You'll be able to make some better stuff if you make something mead-like, but with sucrose instead of honey... say, the following:
1 Gallon Water
3 lbs Honey (1 quart) -> 2.5 lbs sucrose
1 Lemon
12 Cloves
1 cup strong tea

Personally, I was instructed to boil a broken-up egg in my mead-water (eggdrop-soup-style) to dissolve some proteins.
This shouldn't be required if you use a high initial dose of yeast, but if you act like us and make a 1g packet of yeast last a couple years by adding .125g or so per gallon batch... you'll need something in the mix that the yeast can use to make more yeasts, or it's going to take forever to ferment, allowing other organisms to grow.

Also, you may find some use for ammonium phosphate and similar yeast nutrients.

[JustAnotherAsshole]

You don't need to make your own booze in the Ghetto, there's a fucking liquor store on every block.

[Hydroponichronic]

Thanks everyone who contributed. I was actually thinking of using turbo yeast, which comes with yeast fertilizer (not sure if it contains proteins...) and is cheap enough that it probably wouldn't be too bad to use the specified amount of yeast per batch. Thanks for that bit about egg in the swill. That seems like a good idea, just so long as it doesn't attract too much bad bacteria. It doesn't, right? BTW, Boiling, did you carbon-filter your stuff? I am set on carbon filtering it and am hoping that will make the difference between nasty and less-than-tasty.

[BoilingLeadBath]

With mead, we filter after the boiling faze; there's no need keep it in there, we can eat it so it doesn't go to waste, and nothing good can come of tempting nature by keeping chunks of egg in a low-oxygen environment.

No, I've never done an activated-charcoal filtration; we tend to do flavored stuff, typically fruit juices or beers, with the occasional mead (which are flavored, although typically mildly).
I have produced batches of stuff that's not readily drinkable, but nothing that couldn't be corrected with some aging. For instance, we made a white grapefruit wine about 3.5 years ago that is just now actually drinkable (and actually fairly good), due to a really high initial level of bitterness, but I'm not sure that charcoal would have helped - distillation certainly didn't.

[Kow]

How could you add flavors to it? After it's done brewing or when you first set it up?

[Para-Vision Girl]

I've made sugar/water wine before, ended up flavoring it with Cherry Kool-aid.

My only suggestion is keep it in the dark, filter the yeast out, and don't put a cap on it. Put a ballon on the top, and poke afew holes in it, so the gasses can escape.

If you don't filter the yeast you'll get really, really sick.

[13579]

How could you add flavors to it? After it's done brewing or when you first set it up?

Skittles?

[Kow]

Skittles?

http://candyaddict.com/blog/candy_images/skittles_crazy_core.jpg

Those would be awesome!

[Sentinel owl]

normal filtering blows. Here's the best way to get all of that yucky yeast crap out of your booze:

1) get a few feet of PVC pipe (at least 1.5"--bigger is better. or faster, at least.) and an endcap for it. Clean both of them with soapy water, rinse a few times.
2)drill some small holes in the endcap. Or big holes, it doesn't really matter. The more the better, pretty much.
3) put a coffee filter inside the endcap, then fit the endcap onto the PVC pipe
4)pour a few inches' worth of activated charcoal down the PVC pipe so it sits on top of the filter. You can find activated charcoal at the pet store where all of the junk for fish aquariums is.
5) clamp the whole assembly vertical, with the endcap down (duh). Pour a liter or two of water down, just to flush out any bad junk. Put a container under it.
6) pour your brew into the pipe, and collect the filtered booze. A gallon or so might take a while to filter through. Good things come to those who wait.
7) Enjoy (without a nasty upset stomach!)

[My Mom Is Dead]

I came across this genius design for a cheap and easy distiller last week:
http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/moon1.html
I plan on making it soon.

The instructions show how to not only make some potent booze, but also comes with a ghetto recipe. There are also cheap and easy "evaporation distillers" you can make out of those big five gallon buckets and fish tank heaters--google wasn't able to help me at the moment, but maybe you'd have better luck.
The basic principle for "mash" is all the same (ferment some form of sugar with yeast), so you can use dangerouslaboratories.org's recipe for any form of still you make.

google has many homemade alcohol still designs.

[PukeRat]

Meh I would just by 40's of cheap beer like 211.

[BoilingLeadBath]

Skittles?
I've made sugar/water wine before, ended up flavoring it with Cherry Kool-aid.
Meh I would just by 40's of cheap beer like 211.

...you make me sad. And making me sad is a good way to make me productive, so...

********

You guys have been proposing, mostly, to make a mead, but substitute cheap sugar (or, heck, subsidized HFCS) for the more expensive honey. So, here, I link you to a very nice collection of mead recipes:
Mead recipes

Now, you could do as "show" style mead... unflavored... but white sugar doesn't exactly have any flavors or aromas to show off, so you'll just be putting every mistake you made on a uncluttered pedestal.
So, naturally, you want to put something else in there that will give it flavor; you should look through the melomel (fruited) and the metheglin (spiced) recipes, as well as the subtypes of melomel (which, due to their popularity, have gotten names): pyment (grapes), cyser, (apples), capsicumel (hot&spicy)...

These are appealing to the yeast (the fruits bring along all sorts of vitamins and minerals that they like), and you do want to keep your yeast happy - and appealing to your budget, as they contain only a small proportion of (expensive) juice, compared to the alcohol content.

Incidentally, it appears to me that a, eh "lemon melomel" might be possible; I hear the commercial product sells well enough that they have advertisements about this product of mike's....

*************

Fruit juices are always an option, of course, but might be more expensive than you wish to pay for.

And I'm not going to promote distillation, because that's a violation of federal law & all... (but if ya going to do it, hey, ya going to do it... and the enterprising individual might look into packed reflux columns and malted corn mashes... ya know, with corn at like 10$/50 lbs...)

[My Mom Is Dead]

And I'm not going to promote distillation, because that's a violation of federal law & all...

I don't think that applies to private brewing.
And, I just found another simple way to make a still.
http://www.ehow.com/how_2091257_still-out-common-household-items.html

I don't know how well that would work, though.

[BoilingLeadBath]

I don't think that [the federal restrictions on distillation] applies to private brewing.

http://www.ttb.gov/faqs/genalcohol.shtml

[Sentinel owl]

http://www.ttb.gov/faqs/genalcohol.shtml

...meh. We tend to disregard the law 'round these parts.

Also, you can use grape juice concentrate or apple juice/cider...as long as there aren't preservatives! That'll muck up the whole operation.