Brewing - making your own alcohol

[VIKETIME]

does anyone know a simple way to make your own alcohol, just not beer, mainly whiskey, butswim will make wine if its easier.swim isinterested in trying it ontheir own. maybe making a new flavor or something lol.

[PenguinPhreak]

Ethyl Alcohol is a byproduct of anerobic respiration of yeast.
Basically all you need to create alcohol is yeast and sugar. Different
alcoholic beverages are usually only different in the source of the
sugar (i.e. rum is honey, wine is fruit) You can find all the
instructions you need to make various different alcoholic beverages by
searching for a few minutes on Google.
Edited by: PenguinPhreak

[VIKETIME]

tried searching on google for a while, but the info sucks. need a simple explanation, basically what i need (ingredient wise), and the easiest way to ferment the shit or whatever. Edited by: VIKETIME

[motorhead]

Well the easiest way is to get a bucket, throw in some orange peels, apple cores, grapes , molasses whatever really if its got natural sugars, water , and yeast. Youll get some kind of yukky mess my great uncle calls 'Panther Piss'. Ex cons call it prison wine lol


but if your serious about it go to some file sharing sites and put in alcohol or distillation in the search and ull get some info. Swim likes bearshare and limewire the best. Swim cant get imesh to work tho he hears thats a good one.

[VIKETIME]

i have limewire, but what do i do a search for? cuz u can pick like what kinda media u want or w/e would it be documents?

[bman1]

There are kits one can buy to make their own wine. There are many homebrew andwine shops. One needs a bucket to ferment in many corks and corker and a few other various supplies. And many pounds of grape or grape concentrae. Or other fruit if desired. There are yeast strains specific to wine. One needs a good yeast strain since wine reaches 14% alcoholThis is high enough to kill many yeast strains. If your looking just for cheap stuff through fruit and sugar in a bucket and seal it makeing sure there is an air lock. throw wine yeast in and a few days later you have alcohol. Yeat can be reused each times so onlyt have to buy once. To make Whiskey one needs a distiller. This gets complicated. You can buy ones made for alcohol but they make basiclly moonshine. Whiskey has to be aged in an Oak barrel for several years. This gives whiskey its color and flavor. The alcohol combines with wood sugar and other chemicals in the wood. Many liquirs are made this way.

[motorhead]

make it a documents search anytime u are looking for text based information.

[nEone]

"Making alcohol" is kind of a confused idea.It's actually not hard to
make alcohol....but making anything worth drinking (and safe to drink) is
another story altogether.

It would help if you actually understood where alcohol COMES from.

Alcohol is a product of fermentation. When anything with sugar in it sits
around for a while, bacteria in the air will cause it to start to degrade. the
bacteria feeds off of the sugar and grows and emits both carbon-dioxide
and alcohol.

Over the years, people have isolated yeast that produces alcohol quickly
enough that other contaminates don't grow and turn their brews into
potentially dangerous funk.

They've also played with a wide variety of sugary materials to make
alcohol out of. From apples to barley (anything rich in carbohydrates is
essentially rich in sugar - even though it's not "sweet" like we associate
with sugar), to raw molasses.

if you leave it at that, you have a sludge that has a slightly alcoholic
content. If you filter that sludge - you have the beginnings of beer. If
you manage to bottle that filtration before the yeast has finished eating
all of the sugars - then the carbon-dioxide that is given out will cause the
beer to be fizzy. (modern beer makers add CO2).

But what if you want something stronger than 4-8% alcohol? WEll, then
you need to distill the sludge. Distilling is the process of separating the
alcohol from the sludge - thereby concentrating it.Alcohol has a lower
boiling point than water - so if you put a water/alcohol mix over a heat
source, the alcohol will evaporate before the water does. a simple pot-
still is basically a pot for your sludge and a tube running out of the top of
it and coiling back down. You heat up the liquid and the alcohol
evaporates and travels up the tube as a vapor, and then cools down in the
tube and turns back into a liquid that is caught in a second container. if
you stop the process then, you have two pots of liquid...one with sludge
that has had the alcohol removed from it, and one with pure alcohol in it.

But don't go drinking the pure alcohol. That's a good way to get alcohol
poisoning. First of all, not all "alcohol" is fit to drink...there are different
types of alcohol, and it takes a good amount of knowledge to know
what's drinkable and what will make you go blind.

Also, 100% alcohol would just rip through your system. So once you've
distilled pure alcohol, you need to water it down to a drinkable level.
Most Vodka is watered down to about 40% alcohol.

Sound easy? It's not. It's really hard to get a clean distillation - and
harder still to make anything worth drinking.


One way to get around this - if you're looking for a weekend project - is
to exploit the differences between alcohol and water. We know that they
have different boiling points - right? Well, they also have different
FREEZING points. Water freezes at a higher temperature than alcohol.
Meaning, it's easier to freeze water.

Take a bottle of apple cider. OPEN the bottle and pour it into a
tupperware tub (meaning, get rid of anything that's glass and that could
break).Now put that in the freezer.The water/juice will freeze, but
the alcohol will not. Strain off the liquid - there won't be much (since
cider/beer tends to be 4-5% alcohol.) toss out half of the ice and then
thaw the cider. Voila - you've "made" Applejack.

The best part about this is that you don't have to worry about the kind of
alcohol in the cider because someone else has already done that FOR you.

Anyways, there's no easy way to make GOOD alcohol. You can do it, but
it takes a fair amount of practice, equipment - and of course, quality
ingredients.

[DrugPhreak]

You can make your own ethanol (grain alcohol) in a couple ofdays with turbo yeast and sugar, but I've only used it forlaboratory purposes. Ethanol production normallyproduces asmall amount of methanol also so keep that in mind.Edited by: DrugPhreak

[Turricaine]

www.homedistiller.org has all the juicy info you need.


One thing I would recommend is you save your grains for beer production. Or if you are not at the stage of handling grains, buy a homebrew kit first.


Attempting to distill anything other the broth obtained from fermenting sucrose & yeast extract (biological equivalent of 'yeast nutrient') gives yields too lousy to be worth theeffortIMO.


Having said that, SWIM might try doing a finishing touch as follows:


Dump 1kg sucrose in a pot of boiling water and add one tsp lemon juice. Boil for 1/2 hour to get invert syrup, which is said to have a pale golden color.


This saves the yeast the effort of having to use the 'invertase' enzyme making the conversion (hydrolysing the saccharide linkage) a chemical step ie. not enzymatic. It is actual called invert syrup because it rotates plane-polarized light. Theoretically speaking this might increase yields of productand/or therate of fermentation. I have heard that it lightly caramalizes the sugar, thus it couldenhance the delicate smell/taste of the final product, maybe.


Find the rest of my recipie in the 'moonshine' thread. BTW this is theoretical, dont walk away with the impression that I actually do this.Edited by: Turricaine

[VIKETIME]

thanks nEone, drugphreak, and turricaine, your posts have been quite helping. looking to get started soon, i'll update how it goes.

[DrugPhreak]

There's a lot of info and links here too... http://www.green-trust.org/ethanol.htm

[korky8097]

I saw a wine making guide a while back. It really just produces
some fermented grape concentrate that probably doesnt taste amazing,
but will get you drunk. If you are interested in this let me
know, ill try to dig it up.

[sg43]

I attempted to brew alchoholone time, I used kyro syrup and yeast the only problem i ran into was distilling it, I used a tea kettle and coper tubing but had problems keeping the tubbing cold. I distilled probably only about 8 ounces of alchohol, next time I attempt this I plan to use a proper distill kit.

[Shocktherapy]

i use a 4-5 gallon bucket/container, 4 cans of apple juice concentrate, 4-8 cups of sugar and 4 packets of dry yeast, and then i fill it the rest of the way with water, give it a week or two and you'll have indiana hooch, made in quantity this shit will fuck you and all your friends up for a good night or two...the taste can be kinda harsh...like old sour apple cider...but it will get you drunk, and it's cheap...and, yeah give it a try.

[Muirner]

A friend of mine his dad makes hard cider. The way he does it is with 1gallon of Cider, and 1/2 a lb of sugar (i think). I believe that he has to have yeast in there to make a reaction begin. But he corks the top with a little cork with a tube running through it, at the end of the tube that is in the open air, he runs a small flexable tube from the end of the pipet (looking thing that goes through the cork) to a bucket of water and submerges it. When it stops bubbling then you know that you have fermented it. I have heard about this working in a horticulture class, but their was yeast involved


Muirner

[transit]

Swim started as simple as possible and
bought a wine kit. </span>The basic ideas
underlying the making of alcohol are incredibly simple. </span>It happened long before people got
involved. </span>Having said that, when making
it at home there are some basic principles that need to be learned. </span>While they are ultimately quite simple, using
a kit is kind of like learning to paint using a paint by numbers approach – it is
much harder to make any serious mistakes.
</span>After using a kit approach a few times, one is much better prepared to
get creative on one’s own.</span>

[Diphenhydramine]

SWIM tried a few times to make boomshine. Only problems are
temperature and amount of yeast. Here's directions that SWIM used:

-Take bottle of sugar water (bottle of water, dissolve as much sugar as possible into it)

-Add yeast (still trying to figure out ratios)

-Let ferment for a few days with the cap loose to discharge gas

-Pour into a cappucino machine. This needs to be the type that is simple, and uses a stove (not elctric powered).

-Heat at lowest setting, and aim tube into a glass bottle that is surrounded by ice (like in a bowl of ice).

-Play with temperature. You want condensation to drip through the
tube, but at the lowes temperature. This is what distilling is.



The whole process follows like this. The yeast and sugar will
produce ethanol, but one needs to distill it to get a high
concentration. So, the water-yeast-sugar (by now fermented) needs
to be heated at the boiling point of alcohol (which is lower than
water). This means that the alcohol will evaporate, leaving water
behind. You need to collect the evaporation. That's why I
use an old cappucino (expresso?) machine.



This is easy if you can figure out how to do it. It also takes a
long time...like an couple hours for a shot or two. Any easier
homemade recipes out there?

[BrugmansiaBrujo]

Easy and cheap, and fits in small places, like apartments. I like my kit.


Mr. Beer - America's favorite home brewing kit



Most importantly, it makes good beer. You can adjust the recipies
for higher alcohol contemt, like 7-9 percent or so. Complete
instructions in the included recipe book, you even know exactly how
much alcohol your beer will have when finished, before you even make
it, thanks to the chart in the book that tells you how much alcohol
will result from each recipe adjustment. Way cool, for beginners!

[Turricaine]

Diphenyl, good post except you are not stating the type of sugar used. It is good to calculate the carbohydrate content to 1kg in 5L solution. Only one tsp yeast is all that is required.


My point is that a small amount of nitrogenous material and nutrients/trace elements are needed to promote the yeasts well-being. The yeast also perish in solutions that are too rich in sugar/alcohol.


Failing this yeast will either churn out things such as aldehydes (partial fermentation of sugar), or their cells may even burst and die if they are stressed with excessive workloads.

[genaro]

Yeh that's a good thread: I would need to make BIG quantities of unflavoured 80% alcohol (96% would even be better). The purpose is to use this alcohol to make absinth liquor (which preparation requires 80 to 96% alcohol)...I would need to make some 10L 80-96% alcohol...at first


Has anyone experience with making pure alcohol for preparing liquors with? How do you make it?


I guess you may use some yeast (where do one get yeast suitable for alchol manufacture?) ...and macerate it with water and sugar for some time (how long should I allow it to macerate? weeks? months?). What would be the yeast/sugar/water ratio to produce 1L 80-96% pure alcohol? And then I guess I have to filter it and then distill right to obtain pure alcohol, right? Would the obtainedalcohol be around 80-96% ? Any important tips I should know before attempting this? For instance is there anything I should do so the fermentation doesn't produce any dangerous bacterias? How can I be sure there's no methanol produced during the process ?


Or maybe I should make grain alcohol? Is it suitable for making liquors?


And last question (yes one more!) : do you see any other way I could get 80 or 96% drinkable alcohol for cheap in great quantities (in some country there is some for sale, but not in my country, too bad)...and as I need great quantities I would need to get one very cheap.Edited by: genaro

[BrugmansiaBrujo]

You have to build and operate a "still", AKA distiller.



You have to ferment something into low grade alcohol Then you
distill what you fermented, usually 2-3 times, until you get the
alcohol content you want.



Operating a still is illegal in most places, and dangerous if you don't have your shit together too.



If you take a potato mash and ferment it, adding a few juniper berries
to it. Then you filter the mash, and put the liquid through the
still 3 times, you'll wind up with a passable gin.



Gin and vodka are the easiest to make. Whiskey will be harder to
do, because after you distill the corn mash, it will be clear like
vodka, and tasteless. So now you have to age the stuff in charred
oak barrels to get the color and flavor of whiskey, because that's how
Jack Daniels and the rest of them do it.

[Turricaine]

It is my opinion that it is not worth the effort slaving away for several hours in order to get some "fire" aka spirit. I simply enjoy beer far more and it is more profitable in terms of the payback for the effort involved. You should not have to redistill if your thermometer stays constant at 79C since this is telling you that what you are collecting is pure alcohol-H2O azeotrope. Ofcourse if your thermometer reading is either side of this then actually you are performing a dirty distillation.

[dogcow]

The method described here is the absolute simplest method for winemaking, it doesnt require any fancy stuff and will make honest-to-god wine in about 2-3 months time. Total cost is about $10-15 and you will make ~4-5 gallons of wine.

The most IMPORTANT factor is picking the correct fruit. I made strawberry wine and found to be not without its charms but ultimately not very tasty. I would suggest a fruit with a VERY strong flavor such as grapes or blackberries.

there is one very important note...when you get to the point where it says in the directions "put the wine into plastic jugs and let it stratify , then put it into wine bottles" well, once it stratifies its basically drinkable. However my first batch i made the mistake of NOT bottling it and about a month later ended up with vinegar. YOU MUST BOTTLE IT!

Also if you have say an indoor growing room u know for "tomato plants" or something ;-&gt; this will increase ur yield quite a bit because this method produces MASSIVE co2 wich feeds the plants! they will grow fast and big! Co2 is heavier than air so best to put the bucket of wine above the plants on a shelf. Also don't put it in the room where the plants are flowering because the heat variations from the light cycle (12/12) will kill the bacteria from the yeast. Only put it in the 24/0 vegging room...


without further ado:

INGREDIANTS
-----------------------
20 to 30 litre pail.
The type used for kitchen is ideal, with a tight fitting lid.
8 to 10 kg of frozen berries(1kg=just over 2 pounds)
20-30 litres of boiling water.
One teaspoon of active dry yeast
The end slice off a loaf of bread (the thicker, the better)
2 KG of sugar


EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!!
--------------------------------------

Keeping the berries and/or the wine covered at all times is crucial! If a single fruit fly manages to make his way into the wine vat, (believe me, they will try) your entire batch will be turned into vinegar, and you will have to start again. I recommend using a folded sheet or pillowcase stretched over the top of the pail and held elastically if possible before the lid is put on to block any possible entry by these little kill-joys.They're certain death to your wine.


DON"T FORGET
---------------------
To keep the wine warm at all times, keep the barrel wrapped tightly with a blanket.
You must keep the temp around the ideal range to keep the bacteria alive.



Step One
----------------

Place the frozen (blackberries in this case) into a 20 to 30 litre (ten gallon) pail. Cover with the lid, and let thaw for 24 hours. Bring 20 or 30 litres of cold water to a boil, and pour over the blackberries, filling the pail to within two inches of the top. Cover, and let cool another 24 hours without opening. this will keep conditions as clean as possible, in prep for the yeast.


Step Two
-------------

Prepare a piece of toast, nearly burn it, and let it completely cool before using it. If possible, put it in a warm, dry place for a week or so to really harden and dry out. Remove the berries and add the sugar which has been dissolved in water and cooked to a syrop. Float the toast in the middle, and measure a teaspoon of Active Dry Yeast onto the toast, taking extreme care not to pour it directly into the juice. Cover immediately, and leave for 24 hours, and then remove toast. Secure cover, and wrap entire vat with a blanket to hold the temp @ 72-78 deg.


Step Three
------------------
The wine will bubble for a very long time, and you should check its progress each day, lifting out the last whole berries with a seive. When it stops working, (6 to 8 weeks ) syphon it in gallon jugs, and store in a dark, cool place for at least 1 month to let the sediment stratify. Finally, syphon again into wine bottles laying them down for a month to wet the cork. Stand up again, and store as long as you want, it only improves with age!!! Please share this recipe around as much as you want, this wine can be said to be good for you, unlike some domestic "wine" which is simply berry juice with pure alcohol added, and can actually harm you!!! Best when shared with family and friends, and seldom leaves you hung over. I hope you will enjoy it and experiment with any type of berry you like!! It's a lot of fun!!


enjoy!
-dc