DIY Alcohol

[BananaFuck]

I know that alcohol is made by fermenting with yeast or similar. But are there recipes for certain brews? Anything you recomend?

I have found some, but lost the link, but the output was like 120 liters. I just want to make 1-5 gallons at a time.

What are the best ways to get rid of the Carbon Dioxide build up?

[BananaFuck]

Okay, I just found a few links.

http://homedistiller.org/wash-sugar.htm Has a shit ton of recipes, but I am still not sure wheather or not I can just do ratios.

http://www.diehippiedie.com/screwball/diywine.html is just some shitty wine. It tasted like shit last time I tried it.

[BreadAndButter]

I always made wine and have done it various time.



I found the recipe off an old Totse archive....... sigh..... and the most important thing you can do is have a balloon with holes in it from a needle or somhing, (So small that when there is no air pressure, air can't get in but when the pressure builds up, it let's the methane out.)



The first time I tried it, I just bought some grape juice and yeast. Probably active dried yeast. I just through in some yeast, (I put in way to much), and stuck it in a dark place for about a month. It wasn't done and it wasn't siphoned through a coffee filter but I got drunk. (I was a light weight back then)



Then I found a new recipe. 7 cups of sugar to every one gallon of water, add about a dimeful of yeast, (about how much will sit on a dime), cap off with balloon and let sit in dark relatively cool, (anywhere in the lower 70 degrees is purrfect), for about a month. When this stuff is donw, add two pack of any cool aid flavor you want but also watch out, addind the kool aid wil make it froth like fuck. ( I think that's because it wasn't all the way done though)




You will know when it's done because eventually all the yeast shit in you alcoholic mix won't be able live in the water because it's pretty much poisonous. Once your balloon stops expanding, (you can test by deflating balloon and placing back on for a day) your shit is done.


Supposedly you can freeze this wine and all the water/juice will freeze leaving only the rotgut which you can pour into another container, but, everytime I tried it the whole thing would just freeze and be kinda 'juicy'.




one last story, my buddy got three big old grease containers which we thoroughly rinsed out. I did the calculations and bought the sugar we stuck them in his blanketed off closet and pretty much just let them sit.

Well I moved away and story goes after a month, (which was not done for something that size) he take on over to my buddies house and right before they drink it, he shakes the fuck out of it.

You need to pour it through a coffee filter because you don't want to be drinking dead yeast.

You also need to keep it in a dark place to ward off anything that may have contaminated your brew during the water/sugar/yeast/balloon process.


They drink the whole thing in one night, (supposedly, I wasn't there) and the next day, they were sick as fuck with some nasty shit to boot.

[mrgoodbar]

What is the result if you use bakers yeast instead of whatever yeasts they use for spirits?

[Dr rocker]

The maximum you will get from fermentation is 20-22%, that is with super yeast and chemicals so the yeast doesnt die. Most yeast is killed @ 13-14 %. Google turbo cider, visit a home brew shop and buy a demi john and some air locks and brewing yeast.

[mrgoodbar]

bummer, I dont intend to spend any money on this

[Tick Tock]

What is the result if you use bakers yeast instead of whatever yeasts they use for spirits?

You can use regular bread yeast, you just have to wait longer than you would have to wait with turbo yeast.

I understand not wanting to spend money, of course I hope you don't expect to magically do it for free. However, if you want something affordable, make wine or cider. You might need a few common kitchen utensils, but other than that, you only have to buy juice and yeast. A balloon and some extra sugar are also cheap, but not required.

[graphite]

I made wine a few times back in the day. The result was usually horrible tasting with low alcohol content. IIRC I used sugar, grape juice, bakers yeast, two liter bottle, balloon, etc. I don't reccommend.

At least get some proper yeast. I believe that would have had a significant impact on the taste of my final product. Unless you are fortunate enough to live in an area with a store selling brewer type shit you can usually find it reasonably priced on the internet.

There was a guy on totse that seemed to be very knowledgeable about all of this. I think it was Social Junker, though I may be mistaken.

Good luck.

[BananaFuck]

I read that if I were to make alcohol with a mash (hops, barley, or similar) I need to distill it to remove the Methanol (can cause blindness). But methanol is from grains, if I were to use white sugar will it have have methanol as a byproduct?

Not that distilling would be a problem, it would actually remove impurities. Is there another forum that this would be better in? or is there no one who has good information?

[mrgoodbar]

it seems to me that distilling would not remove methanol as it is an alcohol, it should have the same vaporization point

[BananaFuck]

it seems to me that distilling would not remove methanol as it is an alcohol, it should have the same vaporization point

They have different boiling points, and would separate.

[mrgoodbar]

They have different boiling points, and would separate.

good to know

[DiamondX]

http://brewery.org/
http://brewiki.org/GettingStarted

[ATG]

a friend made some of this with legitimate brewers yeast and said it was excellent.

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/8259775/page/0/fpart/1/vc/1

Also, BreadandButter: how did the sugar/water one work out? Im planning on doing a sort of large scale brew and that looks appealing for its extreme cheapness.

[kfc v lot]

As someone said before the best way to make cheap booze is turbo yeast, if you do want super cider you will need to add sugar as apples don't contain as much sugar as sat grapes.

But tbh if you want to be able brew stuff that tastes good you are going to have to spend a bit of dosh.

Oh and one more thing if you dont want to stretch to turbo yeast use champagne yeast ;)

[scovegner]

It's really not that hard .. I just got loads of apple juice, got one of those water cooler bottles, washed it out well, dumped the juice in, put a packet of yeast for every gallon ..
clingfilm with a couple holes poked in it over the top ..
Leave for a few weeks until it stops bubbling, filter/siphon off, drink ..
Brewers yeast works fine but gives a bit of a bad taste and doesn't get very high alcohol concentration, better to get some brewing yeast ..

[Nefret]

http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000373.php

[Irukanji]

Get one of those water dispenser containers. There 20L each, made from plastic and you can probably get one for free. I think you can get glass "carboys" in the U.S, these are basically the same, just glass.

[puzld]

I read that if I were to make alcohol with a mash (hops, barley, or similar) I need to distill it to remove the Methanol (can cause blindness). But methanol is from grains, if I were to use white sugar will it have have methanol as a byproduct?

Not that distilling would be a problem, it would actually remove impurities. Is there another forum that this would be better in? or is there no one who has good information?

No, methanol is wood alcohol. If you make a mash from barley, hops, etc., this is beer and of course beer is not distilled.

[puzld]

They have different boiling points, and would separate.

Methanol is added to ethyl alcohol to "denature" ethyl alcohol (which is the drinkable type of alcohol). Denaturing is a euphemism for making ethyl alcohol poisonous. Methanol is added because it is difficult to separate methanol from ethanol. Yes, there may be a slight difference between the boiling point of methanol and ethanol, but I think to separate the two through distillation would be difficult.

[scovegner]

And there's not dangerous levels of methanol in undistilled alcohol, normal to have 1 or 2 % methanol in wine etc .. it's only when distilling when it can (arguably) be in too high amounts, so when distilling the first part which may contain the methanol is thrown away ..
And denatured alcohol often has bitrex, colouring etc added to it in addition the methanol ..

[Irukanji]

Methanol - BP - 64.7C(148.8F)
Ethanol - BP - 78.4C(173F)

Im sure it would vaporize a few degree's above these, right? Maybe just stick a thermometer in it and when it reaches the vapor point for methanol turn the heat source off, and just repeat a few times.
Wouldnt an activated charcoal(carbon) filter be able to remove most of the methanol? They did a test where they passed a bottle of normal, cheap vodka through one and it scored higher(in a blind taste test) then the really expensive one.

[Jizzmeister]

I read that if I were to make alcohol with a mash (hops, barley, or similar) I need to distill it to remove the Methanol (can cause blindness). But methanol is from grains, if I were to use white sugar will it have have methanol as a byproduct?

Not that distilling would be a problem, it would actually remove impurities. Is there another forum that this would be better in? or is there no one who has good information?

????WTF :facepalm:

you sure as shit don't need to distill it to remove all the methanol. Methanol during fermentation is supposedly formed by pectins (mainly with grapes and berries) so with just sugar or mash you have even less to worry about. Distilling ethanol in the UK is illegal, and probably illegal in the US too.

Make a cheap airlock from a large cork and and some tube into a cup of water. or don't be a cheapskate and buy one for about $1.

I managed to brew some pretty good cider a few years back just using about 3kg of apples, some brewers yeast (although the natural yeast on the skins should have worked by itself) and some sugar and lemon juice for the citric acid. Demi-johns are pretty much given away nowadays and can be found in free-ad newspapers etc.
If you want to brew realllly cheap just get a 2l coke bottle, put in some sugary juice (with no yeast inhibiting/killing chemicals) and a half teaspoon of yeast, maybe squeeze half a lemon in too. Cap it, and leave it in a const temp room, about 20C is pretty good. Remember to release most of the pressure every day or two unless you want your walls painted with yeasty shit.

PROTIP: if you want fizzy cider/juice at the end leave the bottle capped with just a small amount of sugar in the solution. After perhaps 5 days the pressure will have built up enough to self-carbonate it.

[kfc v lot]

Jizzmeister that is sound advice:thumbsup:

To ansawer the OP there are many ways to make booze, the safest by far is in my opinion just beer wine and turbo cider. Best advice i can give is to use proper yeast, and to do as much research as possible into what you want to brew. So for instance with turbo cider just get some apple juice or other fruit juice add some extra sugar by dissolving in sugar in hot water next get some turbo yeast or champagne yeast and activate it as per instructions to create a starter then add to fermenting vessel along with juice add airlock and leave somewhere warm preferably at about 20 degrees Celsius and leave till it stops bubbling then syphon and drink ;)

Homebrew is a rewarding hobby and is great fun look for homebrew forums and pod casts in perticular basic brewing radio on itunes.

[Irukanji]

http://www.neverfail.com.au/products/springwater.aspx

The bottles at the top are what i was talking about before.

[White Jesus]

So how would you go about filtering a large amount of homebrew?

[Jizzmeister]

So how would you go about filtering a large amount of homebrew?

Generally speaking it is much easier to 'filter' by just simply syphoning the liquid out and leaving the sediment behind. However there are also additives (bentonite IIRC) Or according to the web 'Isinglass Liquid' that will clear the wine/beer to a degree.

Just so you know according to the internets, filtering with a course filter or similar will cause it to stop being 'fizzy'.

Syphoning FTW (nice length of rubber hose or w/e),

[Dread_Lord]

On the note of methanol I read that it doesn't really matter if you're not distilling the alcohol. Not enough Methanol will be produced in a clean proper environment to do do anything harmful.

The blindness comes from the first products of the still in a fresh batch. When you're distilling the condensation front and some of the following product is mostly Methanol.

The maximum you will get from fermentation is 20-22%, that is with super yeast and chemicals so the yeast doesnt die. Most yeast is killed @ 13-14 %. Google turbo cider, visit a home brew shop and buy a demi john and some air locks and brewing yeast.

Great info, I thanked you for that one.
I was unaware they died at a 13% content level. Is it the actual ethanol that kills?

Just curious do you know how to keep dry yeast colonies? Or simply how to obtain yeast naturally or methods used by industry?

[White Jesus]

On the note of methanol I read that it doesn't really matter if you're not distilling the alcohol. Not enough Methanol will be produced in a clean proper environment to do do anything harmful.

The blindness comes from the first products of the still in a fresh batch. When you're distilling the condensation front and some of the following product is mostly Methanol.



Great info, I thanked you for that one.
I was unaware they died at a 13% content level. Is it the actual ethanol that kills?

Just curious do you know how to keep dry yeast colonies? Or simply how to obtain yeast naturally or methods used by industry?

I was reading about how methanol kills the yeast so the product added must off put the production of the methanol

[BananaFuck]

Thanks for everyone's contribution, I've been letting one batch ferment for a week now and hopefully it turns out good.

I found this blog entry today http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2009/02/27/a-walkthrough-and-cost-breakdown-of-brewing-your-own-beer/

[kfc v lot]

Hey BananaFuck,
that link you posted is actually good its what is known as partial mash whereby you only 'mash' your speciality grain. One of the best things you can do is get John Palmer's book How to Brew (http://tinyurl.com/cxmqdp) its a great book and covers all aspects of brewing beer. If you do want to start brewing its probably best to get the book have a read through.

Next head to www.homebrewtalk.com and have a look in the forums and have a look round. There are recipes there aswell with both partial mash and all grain.

Oh and John Palmers book is also online for free although it does miss certain things out that are in the book: http://howtobrew.com/

[Jizzmeister]

Ok its time to lay down a thread pwn;

I've decided to get my ass in gear and do my first uni brew. So I took the liberty to take a few pics for anyone who's interested (poor quality cameraphone pics unfortunately). This is a simple brew made from a tin of extracts (http://www.brew-it-yourself.co.uk/shop/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=100), which should make 40 pints, or 23L, as you can see it cost under £8.

Here's a few pics: http://www.mypicx.com/03072009/Brewing/

NOTES:
Rather than using brewing sugar I used standard granulated sugar (about 1.25kg), this was mainly down to convience. I made sure to take a hydrometer reading too, the specific gravity was 1050. When I think fermentation has ceased I will use the brewing calculator below to work out the %ABV, I'm hoping for around 5%.

http://leebrewery.com/beermath.htm

If all goes well I should have produced ~40 pints for under £10, which works out at I think 37p per pint. :p

[BaconPie]

I recently took a full bottle of my own brew to a party the other week. It was a strawberry wine and it went down pretty well actually!

The first wine I made was in a ghetto milk bottle/balloon combo. I put sugar, water and yeast in it and eventually got a drink tasting like pond water. Yuk!

Anyway I decided to do a good job the next time and went and bought a big glass jar and a water valve. I put some strawberries into a pot of boiling water and mashed them up and added a shit load of citric acid and sugar.

I poured the warm liquid into the jar and then filled the rest up with filtered water. I put some yeast in and then the valve and left it for a week or two.

After that I siphoned the liquid out of the jar into a coffee filter through some cheesecloth (an old shirt someone bought me - at least this way it got some use!). Then I put some filter paper over the actual filter bit and pressed it down.

Bottled what was left at the end of all that and left it to sit for a few months, periodically tasting the smaller bottle. It was alright I guess but it has one awful aftertaste! It was like all the moisture had been sucked out of your mouth and then refilled with piss and yeast.

Anyway after about 4 or 5 months I decided to take it to the party. Shook it up and passed it around. It was quite tasty for a home batch.

All in all: Good Job! :thumbsup:

[White Jesus]

I finished my first batch on friday night.
I took it to a gathering with friends and shared it around.
It was Cider and it carbonated well. They said it was better then goon.
All in all I am really happy with how it turned out.

[dedraic]

I can't wait for early summer, when the huge raspberry bush in my yard will have berries. I've been doing extensive research on brewing and distilling for about four months. I've got a buddy with the spare resources to help me build a proper still too...

Raspberry liqueur here I come...

[Jaguarstrike]

Every winter I would make alcohol when I was a kid. I'm not old enough to buy it yet but I now have my own ways.

I would just activate the yeast and put it into two liter bottles of sugar water in october and let it sit till mid mid december. Then I'd leave it outside to freeze and scrap the ice. Made for a nice few drinks on Christmas morning.

I know that alcohol is made by fermenting with yeast or similar. But are there recipes for certain brews? Anything you recomend?

I have found some, but lost the link, but the output was like 120 liters. I just want to make 1-5 gallons at a time.

What are the best ways to get rid of the Carbon Dioxide build up?

I just used those long balloons that clowns make dogs out of. Just check em every few days and drain the gas so they dont pop.

[kingvitamin]

are we talking about beer brewing or wine making or distilling alcohol......

[Sentinel owl]

All of the above.

***

The yeast die because they are floating in their own piss. Being a brewer used to be a very respected job (back in the dark ages), and parents would make their kids drink beer; they thought it was good for them. And in fact it was, because the alcohol in the beer killed water-born diseases.

So anyways, that's why the yeast dies.

A good way to make it not taste like shit is to filter it through activated charcoal. You can buy some from pet shops in the fish section.

[Vigilante]

My family ancestry and heritage leaves me as an heir to a moonshining legacy. I know the recipes, techniques, and tricks to produce high grade alcohol without drawing much attention. Those techniques of course are a little more sophisticated.. in a sense of the work involved.. But I remember making wine out of my closet back in high school, making probably 6 to 10 gallons a month and selling it by the quart for $10-$12. Needless to say I never needed an after school job. If your serious about making a quality product, I suggest getting a fermenting booster, thought not neccesary. And I would definitely distill it to gain the highest alcohol content possible.

[Kosh Naranek]

My family ancestry and heritage leaves me as an heir to a moonshining legacy. I know the recipes, techniques, and tricks to produce high grade alcohol without drawing much attention. Those techniques of course are a little more sophisticated.. in a sense of the work involved.. But I remember making wine out of my closet back in high school, making probably 6 to 10 gallons a month and selling it by the quart for $10-$12. Needless to say I never needed an after school job. If your serious about making a quality product, I suggest getting a fermenting booster, thought not neccesary. And I would definitely distill it to gain the highest alcohol content possible.

While I don't have the space or technical skill to construct a still, I'm interested in what a "fermenting booster" is. I've been making jugs of cheap wine since high school, and continue to do so to offset the cost of buying the hard stuff all the time.