Home Brewing (Non Computer Edition)

Does anyone else here ferment their own alcohol? What do you ferment and how are they doing at the moment? I make cider, mead, and wine! I have a 6 gal bucket with apple juice in it and half a gallon of grape wine that I just started. Then I have two meads going right now doing their thing. How about distilling? Does anyone here have experience with distilling using those cheap items off am*zon or anything like that? It's illegal in most countries without a license, so it's a little difficult to circumvent, at least where I'm at. I'd love to see anyone's pot still and get ideas.

>>8107 Here is my meads.

>>8107 I've been interested in trying this for a while now - anything you can share on how you got started? Looks like a cool setup :)

>>8107 Distilling is very illegal where I live, but it's barely enforced. I have a friend who does it very successfully. They use something called an "air still"; i believe you can buy them off Amazon or eBay. The device does everything automatically, you just put alcohol in the chamber and press "go", kinda like a rice cooker. Results don't taste bad and I kinda trust cheap Chinese electronics not to start a fire or send anyone blind more than my friend doing it manually lel

>>8127 The bare minimum that you will need to have is: >1 gallon glass jug This is for fermenting (both primary and secondary) >An airlock and a bung that will fit in the glass jug This keeps oxygen (and bugs/dust/etc.) out >sanitizer (Star San is a good call.) This is so you don't introduce anything bad to your fermentation. It's cheap and lasts for a lot. I bought an 8oz bottle and I've gone through about 20 sessions with it. >Yeast (Cider yeast, Champagne yeast, but really whatever you want. Bread yeast does actually work!) This is what causes the fermentation to start. >Hydrometer + graduated cylinder This is for recording data, this way you keep an eye on things. You can find out if the fermentation has stopped, whether it happened at all, etc. As well as calclualting ABV. >1 gallon pitcher >A plastic spoon, pref. with holes in the paddle These two are for degassing. One time I didn't degass and I lost about 750mL in my freezer... lol >An autosiphon + a foodsafe plastic tube This is for siphoning between the jug, the pitcher, and the containers. You want to use a siphon for three reasons: It prevents oxygen from entering your brew (This *can* turn it into vinegar.), it helps you avoid stirring up the lees at the bottom which can taste not-so-good, and it's less messy. >containers to store the cider in Most people opt for 750mL bottles or 16.9oz bottles. I recommend 64oz jugs if you start making big batches like I do. I use 750mL bottles for gifting. >Juice (Stay away from ingredients that end in "-ate" and "-ite", it will give the yeast a hard time to start.) The juice is what you ferment. Make sure you pick something that you think tastes good, otherwise you won't (probably) like the end product. Sometimes you can get a free fermentation vessel out of it. For example what I did was buy a one gallon glass jug of apple juice. Its ingredients were "apple juice (from concentrate)" and "Ascorbic acid". The Ascorbic acid just keeps the color, so it's not a big deal. But I ended up with about 4 or 5 glass jugs because of it. >>8133 I have considered it, but I would prefer to be 100% electricity free if I can help it.

>>8134 Oh, and one more thing: Age can do wonders to a cider, mead, or wine. One year has made a mead go from "eh.. Its hardly drinkable" to "I WANT SOME MORE." Ciders can really benefit for a 2 - 3 month age, minimum, to help round it off better.

Is it better to ferment in glass or ceramic versus plastic? I cant help thinking the plastic leaches chemicals into it.

My friend made some very strong mead once, it was really more like wine. Good stuff but it was for sipping, not chugging. Apple juice is piss easy to ferment. You don't even need to take it out of the plastic jug the juice comes in. I've also fermented some juice I derived from wild berries, it was fun. Never made anything the "proper way" though, and usually my stuff came out tasting yeasty. I like the yeast taste. >>8140 if you'd be okay with storing the juice in a plastic container you should be okay with fermenting the juice in a plastic container.

>>8141 >>8140 >Is it better to ferment in glass or ceramic versus plastic? I cant help thinking the plastic leaches chemicals into it. There is a lot of debate about using plastic. So, for primary fermentation, you can absolutely use food-safe plastic. You want HDPE. I know some people are using PET, I think that one is an okay option. However, once you do primary fermentation, you'll want to use glass or ceramic or whatever non-porus vessel you'd like. The biggest gripe I have about primary fermentation in an HDPE bucket is the potential for scrapes. Those scrapes hide bacteria and can ruin your stuff. So, if you want to go an extra step to be careful, use one of those big turkey plastic bags that some people use. They are made for temperature changes and all kinds of acids, so there's not really a chance of anything bad going on with them. This specific set I have in the OP image is the first, and only, batch I am going to be making without a turkey bag. >>8141 I usually expect meads to be around 12%, at minimum. I try to make mind hit around 14% though. >proper way I mean "yeast go in juice. wait some days. drink." is the "proper way". I just want to avoid things like botulism, infections, as well as foreign entities in my beverages. The way I see it is that if I invest in all these precautions, I can have $200 worth of cider for less than $16 and it's assured, instead of "oh no, this 5 gal batch went bad. Now I'm down $16." On an unrelated note: One thing I'd like to do is see what happens if I reuse the same yeast for awhile. My current goal is to have about 10 gallons going at any given time, so this would make things much cheaper if it turns out good. If it is like kicking dead whales down the beach, then it is like kicking dead whales down the beach. I'll probably do it with one of my 50oz growlers to get an idea, just run it for about a year and do a taste test.

>>8134 >The bare minimum that you will need to have is: An empty 2 liter soda bottle, honey, water, gorilla glue, and a balloon. Punch a hole in the 2 liter cap and glue a balloon around the top. Anything more is try hard.

>>8143 >trying is bad lol your 2 liter soda bottle is going to inject bad things in your mead. But enjoy.

>>8107 the best for small batch fermentation is those pop top with a lock bottles. you know the rubber sealed ones. you can ferment directly in the bottles and any high pressure leaks from the rubber gasket.

>>8143 there are some very cheap gallon jug (glass) wines around here that might even be more bang per buck but I dont know how much soda costs these days

>>8143 Glue? Brah, just leave the cap off and stretch the balloon over the top of the bottle. You'll know it's done when you squeeze the gas out of the balloon and it doesn't re-inflate. Honey is also tryhard, it's gloopy and it takes effort to make it taste good. Minimal effort is fruit juice or even just sugar water (once it's done add cordial to taste).

>>8144 >lol your 2 liter soda bottle is going to inject bad things in your mead. But enjoy. Plastic isn't magically evil. It's a 2 liter *soda* bottle. If it was going to leak plastic, we'd have bigger problems.

>>8148 Well, I'm not a conspiritard but there's a lot of people who are and think plastic might be bad. They can't all be wrong imo. Besides, light alcohol at warm temps for months at a time with yeast running around in there is different from relatively short time, soda (harshest thing in there is probably the CO2), and typically in cool temps.

>>8148 Dude what? I'm using a plastic HDPE bucket to ferment. PET (the plastic used for those 2 liters) contains endocrine disruptors. This is not even relatively new information. Then you've to deal with the antimony, which leaks in over time due to heat, then theres the microplastics themselves, which we know are very bad for your digestive tract alone. As I had mentioned in a previous post: Some people use PET fermentation vessels. I am not one of those people. The risk seems pointless to me. But I am also a health conscious person. And on the final little note, turning the thread into a "how to make cheap alcohol without spending more than $6" kills the thread. I'd prefer to have a pleasant discussion about what people are making, what they've tried, etc. So, I guess you could say the intent of this thread is to "try hard". >>8149 I'm not a conspiritard. I'm not saying your dick is going to fly off and turn into a drone to spy on your guns. I'm just trying to promote safer habits for homebrewing. I watched a video of some guy making a mash for his moonshine, and he was slapping his paddle on his garbage can, then using the paddle to push the mash down. People think this is okay for some reason.

Fermented fruity vodka with apricots and spice for a little over a month. Honestly, soykaf tasted awful. Just left it in a cupboard where it sits fermenting to this day, half a year later. If anyone wants something strong or different we take it out.

>>8153 Vodka doesn't ferment, did you mean infuse?

>>8155 Huh, I guess you're right. I am both not a big drinker and a moron. Thanks for educating me.

>>8149 >Well, I'm not a conspiritard but there's a lot of people who are and think plastic might be bad. They can't all be wrong imo. Yes, but the plastic is *already* intended for long term storage of beverages. >Besides, light alcohol at warm temps for months at a time with yeast running around in there is different from relatively short time, soda (harshest thing in there is probably the CO2), and typically in cool temps. A 2-liter plastic soda bottle is made of PET. It won't leach into water or alcohol. These bottles are stored in super markets and warehouses at room temperature for months (years?) at a time. PET is used for cheap commercial liquor. Yeast does not eat plastic, it eats sugar. Unless you refuse to drink bottled water, how could you be concerned with 2-liter PET brewing?

>>8157 >tfw I actually do refuse to drink bottled water Also, what is this misinformation BS? "It won't leach into water or alcohol" - Then explain https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.0901253 and especially https://doi.org/10.1128/AEM.02773-17 -- which references degredation by common bacteria strains, as well. To make matters worse, we have been studying PET for the last 30 years and we have not, no pun intended, scratched the surface. And that doesn't even bring up the microplastics issue, which all plastics put out, which you'll find here https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP7171 You, personally, can use whatever you want to use. But I am not going to promote any potentially dangerous methods, when you can bypass all the negative potentials by just simply using glass or clay pots.

Finished up my dry mead at 12.9% (0.990 FG) - I'm going to age one of the bottles for a year, but it's pretty great.

>>8159 Got my 5 gal carboy, moved the cider, and now it's time to wait a few months. The final gravity was 1.000 (11.6% ABV)

How do you test for methanol presence in DIY alcohol?

>>8180 methanol has a distinct taste and smell. It is also easy to distill out as its temp of evaporation is ~10degress lower than ethyl alcohol usually you dont really need to test, if you put in the right ingredients for your mash, you shouldnt get meth

>>8180 methanol is no concern whatsoever when brewing and rarely even when distilling. Also ethanol is the antidote to methanol, so there is that too.

>>8189 Not sure that is quite right. Ethanol isnt the first choice and when ethanol is used I've seen some papers describe also doing dialysis after. The ethanol just delays methanol metabolism and doesn't help eliminate 100% of it so there must be a level of methanol to ethanol ratio that wont cut it. Im not sure what the exact number is though.

>>8142 Cider doesn't "go bad", it turns into Vinegar! Which while not as fun to drink as cider, is plenty useful! I had a half bottle of red go to vinegar several years ago. I added it to 4 gals of fermenting cider, and ended up with 4 gallons of wonderful AC Vinegar. I haven't had to buy vinegar since then.

>>8531 You can brew mead with no special equipment or supplies. See >>8143 No doubt the police recognize the smell of yeast.

>>10379 Hi, what in particular do you want to do. Making spirit is quite different from making wine, as when making wine you opt to make a very fine mash to filter and clear from yeast. Distilling does not mean to make such fine mash. One of the main differences is also : spirit mash is not filter. Wine mash is mostly a juice. If your an American, i would not suggest you to not distill as laws are soykaf. But if you want the kicks, do as you please. In Austria we have local spirits like 'Obstler' referring to a mix of apples and pears. Its easy to make for beginners when distilling. Make sure to get good fruits,wash them very well,this will influence how much methyl you get when distilling. Know that methyl blinds you. You therefore remove it. It has a distinct toxic glue smell, 1l of mash gets you 40 drops from the still, which you throw away. Then the good stuff comes. This will be about 0.5l , then you should stop distillation and keep your raw brandy. You can go for another round and distill, to make a more refined spirit - i recommend it. Again cut off the first bad drops, and at the 2nd time you can keep about 400ml of your previous fire water. This will get you a very fine result, which i recommend you to store for 2 - months, in order for it to smoothen its character. I promise you will be very happy with the result. Making the 'Most' , this is a wine which is not yet a wine, and usually drunken in fall. It does not age greatly. For this, you can take your obstler mash, and filter it off. What you get will be stored for a few months. You dont need to kill the yeast, but make sure to store it cold and dark. How long to keep a mash ? 4-7 days when distilling. How about wine : filter it after 4 - 7 days, then put into a clean glass wine balloon or wood barrel, if at disposal. Keep as long as you please. What yeast ? See for a portwine-yeast or a steinberg-yeast. You find them online or at specialist stores. Have fun experimenting lainon. Remember to work very cleanly and sanitize your tools with hot water. Report in your experience.

>>8254 >Cider doesn't "go bad", it turns into Vinegar! If I don't elaborate, I get dumb responses like this. If I do elaborate, no one wants to talk to me. I hate everyone. Contextually, it's implied if I want my apple juice to become cider, then if it it were to become vineger, it has "gone bad" as in the outcome is wrong. Right? Right. I'm sure you meant well, but I don't make exception for illiterates, not even well intended illiterates. On a side note, ACV is pretty great and I take it half an hour before lunch on occasion. It had completely solved my heart burn. >>8531 Just ferment some juice and try to keep the temperature in a range that the yeast enjoys. In my experience, it doesn't produce a strong smell if the yeast is comfortable, which is basically just relating to temperature and pH. You can find this information on the yeast packet, but if you just use bread yeast or something, you can find this information online easily. >>8536 Kombucha does contain a small percentage of alcohol. People who are low tolerance can, and do, get drunk given enough of it. My mother can't drive after a cup of my kombucha. >>8581 Stop trying to get people sick. Thankfully, honey is very hard to infect. >>10379 fement some apple juice, it's low effort and has a very low entry level for equipment. If you pour a small amout of yeast into a freshly opened jug of apple juice (avoid anything with ingredients like -ates and -ides in it, this is put in to actually prevent fermentation [not to prevent you from doing it, but rather to make the juice last for longer.]) and wrap a cheese cloth around the top with a rubberband. Sanitize the cheese cloth (note: you don't have to sterilize it. Yes, there is a difference.) -- Don't reuse the plastic jug though, it was sterilized before when the apple juice was put in, but you don't really want to take the effort to sanitize it. cider is pretty easy to get into. If you prefer other juice or anything like that, go ahead and do that. But when you get into bigger batches, you're going to want better equipment. I used 1gal glass jugs of apple juice, but you can just use other things.

Here is my method, absolute minimum effort and expense: Materials: Unopened Apple or Grape juice (homogenized meaning the sterilization already done for you, no preservatives except Ascorbic acid), granulated sugar, packet of champagne yeast (buy online), funnel (optional, can use folded paper instead or just be careful pouring) Pour out one glass of juice (this is to make room for the sugar and to leave extra room at the top so the foam won't overflow). Add between 1 and 2 cups of sugar to the jug (more sugar for fermenting longer periods, less for less). Add the yeast (You can use less than 1 packet of yeast and it will work out fine it will just take longer, you can substitute bakers yeast which will actually ferment faster but will die before wine levels of alcohol and taste funny). Then put the cap back on, shake it up (I've heard people say not to do this which probably works too but I do it with no problems), then loosen the cap so gas can escape and the jug won't explode, set aside in a room temperature environment for 1-3 weeks. Whole process takes 3 minutes of work and costs a few dollars. If stealth is a concern note that the fermentation produces a slight odor. It also works to just fill a clean empty container with water and otherwise do the same stuff. Fermented sugarwater is actually pretty good, like a yeasty hard seltzer. I don't drink that much anymore due to the ways in which alcohol is a soykafty drug and less fun as I get older, but still do this occasionally, much nicer than overpaying for booze and having to show id.

>>10886 >Stop trying to get people sick. Thankfully, honey is very hard to infect. Not him but it is pretty easy to brew with very limited supplies. No need to worry about sickness. Made ~3 gallons of wine using: - 4 lbs store bought grapes - sugar (can't remember how much, iirc ~1kg, but look online for advice) (you can calc it yourself, bread yeast goes to ~10% in my experience) - tap water - bread yeast - bucket with a lid - vinyl tubing from store - empty glass jar - raisins (optional) - 1 L liquor bottle (or whatever) Part 0. Wash Wash everything with soap and water. That's it. Nothing special. Part 1. DIY Airlock Drill the lid so the vinyl tubing can squeeze through (tight fit). Put the tubing in the lid. Put the other end of the tubing in the jar. Fill the jar with water, tape the tubing to the side of the jar so it doesn't fall out. Done, no need to buy an airlock. Part 2. Starting the yeast Crush 30 grapes. Add to liquor bottle. Add some sugar. Add a couple raisins. Add some warm-hot water (not scalding). Add the yeast. Cap, shake, let it sit O/N. If it works, you should see lots of bubbles. Part 3. Starting the brew Crush the rest of the grapes by hand. Toss them all in your bucket. Add sugar. Add warm water. Add a box of raisins. Stir it up. Add the 1L of yeast-water from yesterday. Seal it up with the lid, and do the airlock if you haven't already. Part 4. Waiting Wait. After 8-24 hours you should notice bubbling in the airlock. Count the time between bubbles, write it down. Do this every 12 hours or so. Rate of bubbling is directly proportional to rate of alcohol production, so you can figure out how far along you are by doing this. Once your rate of bubbling is very low (think: 1/10 - 1/60 of max rate) you take all the grapes out, pour into a new container, get all the scum out of the old one, move back to the old bucket. Now you have two choices: 1) Wait a while for "more flavor and a little more alcohol" 2) Drink it now Note: The single biggest improvement you can make to the above is to get a wine yeast instead of bread yeast. Wine yeast flocculate (crash out of solution) MUCH faster, so you get a big sediment layer and much less cloudy (and bitter) wine. Bread yeast take ages to fall out, so your wine will almost always be cloudy and somewhat "off" tasting. Wine yeast packets can be had online for ~1$, vs ~30c for bread yeast. t. done this a couple times no issues contamination risk is minimized by growing out your yeast in the 1L, so you always have yeast WAY in excess of other things

>>10888 >Not him but it is pretty easy to brew with very limited supplies. Yes. I am fully aware of this. This can be seen in my inclusion of a method that is exactly that, limited supplies. Which you read as you mentioned my mentioning the bread yeast. On that note, I prefer 71B and EC-1118 -- Where I use EC-1118 as an emergency to deal with anything being stubborn -- but I figured a low cost entry would be bread yeast instead of various recommendations. Then again, champaign yeast, like red star, (as you noted) is very cheap. Although, you can go a step further and you can even split up, or even outright reuse, the packet. >soap and water Yes. Like I said: Hygiene. Oh and because you and everyone else who decides to responds to me, no. I did not literally say "hygiene", it was implied with my mention of sanitizing. >DIY airlock Yes. Like I said: An airlock. All I said was an airlock. I usually tell people to buy one because people are lazy. An airlock costs less money than a foodsafe tube, but it all works the same.

Did it once with grapes from the store and made a weak wine out of it. Still interested to try making wine or other types of stuff in the future. Cool to see other peoples pics/reports with this here.

I have recently been feeling a growing temptation to make whiskey. Anyone here ever done distillation ? Ive a tiny bit of beer experience and figure its basically the same but lazy and distilled at the end, and perhaps careful to get out the methanol. And aging, of course....perhaps thats the kicker.

>>10890 >split up or reuse packet you can also keep your own yeast culture alive and not need to buy any yeast at all, or just buy a little to start out. I am not sure how champaign yeast differs from i.e. sourdough but if you just want to diy something my understanding is that the latter generally is entirely alright. if you or someone else here can speak a little more to the differences between these yeast varieties I would be very interested to read. >>8189 methanol is of no concern when brewing and rarely even when distilling reading guides online for distilling I always find people telling you to discard an early portion with scary warnings of methanol, but its possible they're just pussies and dont know what they're talking about. Seems like if you have a good thermometer and uniform heating on your still you should be able to just see when the temperature gets highenough that no methanol remains. If there's that much of it, set it aside and use it for something else, easy peasy. This is what distillation is for, removal of soykaf like this.

>>10976 Champaign yeast is defined by, lower temperatures and re-fermenting a wine, therefore must withstand more alcohol.

Been fermenting milk with sugar, champaign yeast and activia. Also have a Mr Beer kit I found at the thrift shop I'm using for honey+fruit. My friends suggested I look into distilling, but not a fan of killing brain cells with even more alcohol. Any good uses for alcohol, or cool chemicals to make from it? I suggest free condoms if you're a student for airlocks. Be sure to poke holes.

>>10992 This has to be the nastiest diy drink I have ever seen. How long does it have to ferment to generate even moderate amounts of alcohol? I cannot imagine that it is worth the effort…

I've made lemonade last summer. It was pretty tasty. >Fill a glass jar with lemons cut in 4 >Add the two halves of a plum (without the kernel) >Add a few tablespoons of sugar >Fill with water >Close the jar and let rest in the dark for a couple days

>>8107 How did your mead turn out? Isn't that made from honey? I've tried German meade, very tasty, but I'm allergic to phosphates so I always get sick after. Do you know why they put phosphates in everything? We can make meade without phosphates right? What are the disadvantages of not using phosphates? Now I'm considering making meade again. Is that your bucket? I started to look into meade before I think I need some expensive equipment, a still? I'll look into again. Thanks for reminding me. I'll reply more when I have time.