Homemade alcohol

2024-01-08T15:38:38+00:00

Interested in making booze at home?
Is saving money or making delicious drinks an appeal to you?
Experimenting with new recipes or techniques?

This a thread for homebrewers and distillers to ask questions, give
advice, or share progress reports.
(Pictures and experiences are very welcome!)

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2024-01-08T15:42:56+00:00

I've been making alcohol at home for about a year now. I started with
various wines (grape juice, apple juice, sugar water, and even orange
juice) and naturally progressed to distilling about 9 months ago.

These days, my favorite wines are lower % apple juices or meads, along
with ginger ale, while my preferred spirit is vodka, in part because
it's cheap, as well as because it can be further flavored after
production... eg, going from vodka to gin is very simple

For my "drinking wines" (as contrasted with "distilling wines") I prefer
making lower % stuff because they have more flavor and are more
generally drinkable. Everything I make, I ferment to 100% "dry" (no
sugar remaining) and if I want to correct the taste, I'll add artificial
sweeteners after fermenting.

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2024-02-10T07:15:32+00:00

Making tomato paste wash (birdwatchers): 18L of 10%
https://imgur.com/a/58rhQQc

Doing a "stripping run" to produce "low wines"
https://imgur.com/a/8DWdYKH

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2024-02-12T15:18:20+00:00

Can I know if baker's yeast can make mead from honey

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2024-02-13T10:01:07+00:00

Sure can!

I go for 150g honey per 1.5L, works out to be
beer strength (around 5%). For best results, you
want to keep adding small batches of honey every
week or two. This keeps the yeast from getting
stressed, improving flavor, and also lets you
work to higher percents.

Black tea and fruits at the end of fermentation,
or throughout, will definitely improve the flavor

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2024-02-13T16:53:58+00:00

stop drinking anon, you'll become gay dick lover like everyone.
go out and r.pe someone instead. its better for your health

Ayoo cuh

2024-02-15T22:06:32+00:00

Nigga please, it's just honey, yeast and water in a bottle.

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2024-02-24T06:46:49+00:00

Doing a "spirits run" now.

I stripped ~60L of ~10% sugar wine to ~10L of ~40% low wines. diluted
down to 12L. Feeling optimistic for how this will turn out, it's been
a good while since I did some proper distilling...

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2024-02-24T10:54:34+00:00

Ack, maybe I should make the spoiler syntax be two percent signs instead
of one, annoying formatting error...

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2024-03-05T11:59:45+00:00

One of my last experiments was 4 parts apple juice to 2 parts cranberry
juice (well, storebought juices, and the cranberry also has pear and
grape juices mixed). It turned out fantastic! More sour than a typical
cider -- in a good way -- with a lot more complexity.

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2024-03-14T16:07:06+00:00

Started three new wines:

1. Apple:cranberry (5:1)
2. Blueberry:honey-water (5:1)
3. Mango:apple:peach (1:1:1)

All should work out to be 10% in about a week from now, curious to see
how they turn out. I really liked the cranberry:apple from before;
wanted to try to do something with blueberry and honey just felt like a
natural fit

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2024-03-20T20:14:42+00:00

The apple cranberry finished first: really I have to say, it's an utter
delight to drink. Apple ciders fermented *dry* on their own can
sometimes be a bit unpleasant, but somehow the more sour cranberry
matches these off-tastes, and really ups the end result.

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2024-04-06T07:06:36+00:00

Distilled ~14L of 40% alcohol from tomato paste wash (72L, 14%) this
week. Sadly, they need another distillation or two yet to become a
vodka, but it's been nice to keep busy.

PURCHASE ALERT!

2024-04-28T19:43:31+00:00

A few kilograms of dry malt extract, various hops, food grade
20L / 5 gallon buckets, and airlocks with grommets are coming in
the mail. My beer and whisky making arc will begin soon.

I'm thinking of initially trying to make whisky via UJSSM tech but also
considering making one from dry malt extract sans hops -- I hear hops
are neither necessary nor desirable when producing whisky ...

Big concern for beer production: I don't have any feasible way to
carbonate beverages, whether in glass bottles or keg. So I guess
it'll be "not even beer!" depending on one's definition. I'd love to
buy a keg and CO2 tanks, maybe even a devoted fridge down the line, but
wife is already annoyed as-is by the malt/hops/buckets/airlocks
purchase. We'll just have to wait and see.

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2024-05-03T18:53:25+00:00

For those who wondered, I got roughly 7 liters of 80% as an end result
of hearts pickiness from a batch of low wines

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2024-05-25T04:40:36+00:00

A month out and here's where we stand on the order:

1. Airlocks came first
2. Buckets came second
3. Dry malt extract is still in transit (???)
4. The hops seller cancelled the order. Tried ordering a few different
kinds of hops from a few different sellers; they all seemed to cancel.
I will have to try sourcing hops again later. Until then, I can
try making a whisky once this DME shows up.

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2024-06-05T15:45:44+00:00

Made like 3 liters "low wines" last night, probably going to get 5
liters tonight. One of the ferments didn't go well and I couldn't get it
to really pick back up. Ah well, still getting my fun + cheap booze out
of it :D

I'm planning to make gin after doing a spirit run on this.

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2024-07-11T19:05:33+00:00

Sipped on some apple cider with spices added, then some homemade vodka
with coca-cola. Very tasty.

In a few days, my first generation of UJSSM (kilju with cracked corn)
will finish fermenting; after I distill that, I'll throw some backset
back in the bucket with some new sugar to start a proper sour mash of
corn whisky. Looking forward to it!

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2024-07-11T22:47:52+00:00

Message removed

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2024-07-15T05:29:48+00:00

Distilling my "sweet mash" UJSSM whisky now. I was surprised, the top
layer of corn is gray but most of the corn is still good and yellow.
It fermented pretty quick and it smells a bit corny but nothing
really impressive.

Once my distillation is done, I'll pour some of the "backset" (the
beer without alcohol left in the boiler) back into my corn yeast sugar
bucket and kick off a "sour mash fermentation."

Right now I'm using cracked corn for flavor, partially because it's
so damn cheap, but I've seen people speak very highly of corn flake
whisky.

Made about 6L more of apple cider this afternoon, too. I am a busy
little bee!

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2024-07-24T15:07:49+00:00

I did the second batch of UJSSM whisky yesterday (aka, a proper sour
mash bourbon) and ran it with the low wines from the first stripping
run. After taking decent cuts, I diluted and blended all the jars today
and mixed the better tasting stuff together. Ended up with 4x 700ml
bottles around 43% each.

It's nowhere near as smooth as it could be if I distilled it another
time or carbon filtered it or aged it on charred oak for a few years.
But for what it is, it's pretty good. I've been mixing it with Sprite
and sipping it on the rocks. The bourbon is sweet, corny, and... creamy,
almost buttery. It's a little hard to drink neat, but it adds some nice
flavor to mixed beverages.

My 3rd generation UJSSM is currently fermenting, 20L worth, along with
another 20L of sugar-wine (kilju) that will end up as vodka. There is
no more tomato paste for sale in my town so I tried adding some of the
bourbon backset with some boiled yeast to serve as a nutrient for the
new vodka.

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2024-07-25T01:57:48+00:00

I managed to drink 3/4 of a bottle of my bourbon last night (mixed with
Sprite and Coca-Cola) while the most I've ever been able to drink of
commercial whisky in a night is 1/4 of a bottle. And that 1/4 a bottle
of whisky would always give me a terrible headache while I'm feeling
terrific today.

Whether that's a statement in favor of or against moonshining depends on
your point of view... only $2 down the drain on that bottle, at least.

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2024-09-05T13:37:42+00:00

6 bottles of corn whisky, 3 liters of apple cider, and 1.5 liters of
ginger ale ready for consumption. Bringing it to a party tomorrow night!

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2024-09-06T18:37:28+00:00

My friends (2/3) preferred the apple cider to ginger ale, but they all
enjoyed everything. They were really impressed by the homemade whisky --
per my advice, they mixed it with Sprite (I brought several bottles of
Sprite) and they had several servings of it.

Had fun bringing the party in a dry county for $10-ish.

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2024-12-05T17:45:29+00:00

Recently produced ~12 liters of "low wines" from sugar washes.

Biggest game changer in my fermentation for distillation lately:
I add a tablespoon or two of diammonium phosphate and tiny pinch of
magnesium sulfate per ~20L of ferment I do. Seems to make a pretty
big difference: ferments go faster and cleaner.

Picked up about 200g of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) today and
converted it to washing soda (sodium carbonate) by throwing it in a
saucepan on the stove at a low heat and constantly stirring. Sure
enough, I could see the powder "boiling" -- despite wearing a face
mask, some funky smells came through. After about 20 minutes or so,
the texture of the powder appeared to change, and the powder seemed to
stop reacting.

Spilled a little in the process. Post-cook weight of sodium carbonate
was about 120g which is consistent with the theory.

Tomorrow I'll be throwing my 12 liters of "low wines" into the pot still
with 3-4 liters water and 4 tablespoons of washing soda. This should
result in a large volume of hearts, which will be turned into... gin!
this Saturday.

Stay tuned for updates.

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2025-01-27T15:08:09+00:00

Recently turned 80L of sugar wine (containing 12kg of sugar) into ~10
bottles of vodka. It was an easy and smooth process. Something that's
really aided my hooching lately is adding a small amount of diammonium
phosphate and magnesium sulfate to the start of fermentation -- barely
a pitch, hardly a gram of each -- but it somehow makes a huge difference
in fermentation time.

I plan on turning most of it into gin, but with the vodka, I've made
some knock-off Bailey's that turned out amazing well (and only cost $1
to make a bottle of!) and tomorrow I'll try making a blood mary. Tomato
juice is not sold here so I intend to make some fake V8 from a mix of
tomato, carrot, salad greens, onion, bell pepper and then I'll add a
dash of worcestor sauce and hot sauce to the cocktail, along with some
lemon juice.

When I more-or-less perfect my Bailey's and Bloody Mary recipes I will
share them here.

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2025-02-02T14:11:22+00:00

I did the sugar water and baking yeast thing in a bottle.liquid alcoholic bread

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2025-02-02T14:21:28+00:00

I need da baileys recipe

sad boy

2025-02-08T19:38:03+00:00

I tried turning 5kg of (dry) rice into rice wine, making use of a 20L
bucket. I did not buy sticky rice and I did not steam my rice: I just
kept throwing batches into my rice cooker. After rice cooked and cooled
down in the bucket, I smeared in rice wine mold-yeast

The end result was not good. Most of the rice became a thick, porridge
like consistency. Despite containing high amounts of alcohol, the solids
and liquids formed an undesirable team and possibly a 5th state of matter.

Starting throwing slop a bowl at a time through a filter from one bucket
to another, and as space began to emerge in the fermentation vessel I
began adding water and shaking, in the hope to liberate more alcohol
from solids.

After many hours of pointless labor, my bucket with liters of thick,
milky "rice wine" is just about a bust in my book. At least I can just
distill it to make it not end up a complete waste...

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2025-03-06T17:47:36+00:00

What I made today with waifu:
- 3 liters ginger/lime wine (100g ginger, 1/2 lime per liter)
- 3 liters apple/cranberry wine (5:1 apple:cran)
- 20 liters sugar wine (4kg sugar, yeast nutrient)

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2025-03-06T17:49:26+00:00

Wiki article on winemaking up:
https://wiki.gikopoi.com/w/WineMaking

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2025-03-12T18:34:39+00:00

Fresh fermenting ciders:
https://booru.gikopoi.com/post/view/253

Post fermentation / aging dry ciders:
https://booru.gikopoi.com/post/view/254

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2025-03-18T18:36:18+00:00

Processed ~20L of 12% ABV sugar wine to 4L of 40% ABV "low wines" last
night. Next distillation this week is ~20L of "trix cereal" liquor:

>18L water
>3kg sugar
>700g trix cereal
>pinches yeast nutrient

The idea is that the sugar produces alcohol, and the cereal infuses
the alcohol, and provides additional nutrients and sugar to the yeast.
I think it should end up as a slightly fruity bourbon, but who knows.
Breaking new ground here!

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2025-03-21T22:25:18+00:00

Started 13 liters of apple cider a few hours ago...
airlocks beginning to show that fermentation has began

And tonight, I'll distill my "Trix Cereal" wine
(~18L water, 700g Trix cereal, 3kg sugar, yeast nutrient)
notes on smell and taste will come....

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2025-03-22T10:47:43+00:00

Just started distilling the Trix cereal wine / beer!
I wonder how it'll turn out...

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2025-03-22T17:51:14+00:00

The early part of the run has smelled very berry-like. Not what I was
expecting, though I never eat Trix cereal so I'm a poor judge.

As we approach the end of the run, the corn notes are starting to come
through. It's interesting how different smells and tastes come out at
different parts.

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2025-03-22T21:24:40+00:00

I got about ~4 liters out of my 18L 9% ABV Trix experiment.

700g of smashed and boiled Trix cereal with 3kg of sugar.
Fermented for 1 week, allowed to clear a bit before boiling

1st jar (1.5L) smells very fruity -- perhaps berries and citrus
... but also very strong in alcohol
2nd jar (1.5L) is a bit more ambiguous.
3rd jar (~1L) is much more corny, but also weaker in alcohol.

I will likely incorporate this with my ~10L of "stripped" tomato paste
wash to make some kind of gin. The corn and berry notes should add a
nice complexity to the juniper, coriander, et al.

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2025-03-23T17:49:20+00:00

Sampling jar #2 of the Trix cereal wine (72% ABV), mixing with cola.

The strongest flavors carrying through are corn with incidental
berry / lemon sweetness. But the heads and tails present hinder the
potential for tastiness. I feel like if it were to be distilled again,
aged hearts on oak would taste as a pretty tasty bourbon ..

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2025-03-25T16:53:40+00:00

Mixed some of jar #1 with milk -- wondered how milk w/ cereal liquor
would be. I'm not sure if it was the "heads" or what but the cocktail
was almost completely revolting and not something I would wish upon
my friends or enemies. 2/10

2025-04 ferments

2025-04-04T12:45:44+00:00

I started a 20L ferment tonight of a new recipe

In the boiler:
* 100g of homemade tomato paste
* 100g of old bran
* 8g of old yeast
* 30ml end of old bottle of wine (mostly sludge)
* 4kg sugar

After cooling:
* 50g baker's yeast
* pinch DAP
* pinch epsom salts

just finished cooking this up. Never tried using bran as a nutrient
before so I'm curious how it turns out. It should finish around 12% ABV
or so, fingers crossed! I wonder how bran flavor will compare with
tomato flavor...

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2025-04-04T12:53:50+00:00

fermentation finished in under a week; another week of aging made it
quite clear and smooth. Great cider!

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2025-04-06T16:40:39+00:00

Tonight's ferment of 20L:

* 4kg sugar
* 700g "honey stars" breakfast cereal, crushed up
* 30g baker's yeast
* pinch DAP, epsom salts

Breakfast cereals have tons of yeast nutrients and this one tastes like
whole grain and honey. So this is more whisky-esque than the Trix cereal
experiment -- I've tried it before and it turns out well

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2025-04-07T14:40:02+00:00

New ferment tonight:

* 4kg sugar
* 250g bran
* 50g yeast
* pinch DAP, epsom salt
* fill up 20L bucket to top

I cooked the bran for about 30 minutes before adding the sugar,
never did an all bran but curious how it'll turn out. I want to compare
tomato paste washes and bran washes once I get my new reflux still up
and running.

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2025-04-08T18:04:37+00:00

It's been ~4 days but the tomato/bran wash (4kg) is essentially done
fermenting, with a SG of 0, so it's roughly 18L of 13% ABV. That is
pretty magnificent from < $5 EUR worth of sugar! I'm going to give it
another few days to finish fermenting and clearing before I run it,
but that bran is no joke.

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2025-04-10T06:54:47+00:00

Started 3 ferments today:

- 1500ml apple cider
- 250g honey, fill bottle with water
- 210g honey, 500ml cider, fill bottle with water

I didn't add any kind of yeast nutrients so I wonder if the honey-alone
drink will be able to ferment. All the drinks will end up in the 6-8%
range so I feel they should be able to ferment fine without extra help...

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2025-04-11T19:00:13+00:00

Started 4 more ferments:

- 1500ml apple cider with sugar added (estimated ABV 8%)
- 1500ml honey/water (estimated ABV 8%)

3 hours in, balloons are beginning to inflate .
I didn't add any yeast nutrient but I think it should be fine.

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2025-04-12T04:26:23+00:00

6 days later and the SG is at 1.010. So maybe it's at 12% but can reach
the full 13% with a bit more time. A pretty fast ferment.

Smells corny and sour, cloudy yellow color. The cereal on top still
looks and smells pretty good. This was a fun brew and I'm looking
forward to see how it distills -- I'll give it a bit more time to
finish fermenting and clear up.

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2025-04-12T04:35:39+00:00

This bran recipe fermented really well. 5 days later and it's below
0 standard gravity -- still pretty cloudy and lots of carbon dioxide
going on, but it smells fine.

So, according to ... science it looks like yeast like bran more than
honey corn cereal (see >>47)

while the bran doesn't smell bad, it doesn't smell good either -- even
if the cereal takes 2 or 3 days longer to ferment out (which is
nothing in the big scheme of things) I have a feeling it's going to
have the superior end result

After my reflux still comes, I plan to run a tomato paste wash and
bran wash and do some blind tastings for the vodka they produce. I
suspect they will be identical but we will have to wait and see.

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2025-04-17T05:42:21+00:00

Started another cider today, mixed with blueberry juice (2:1 ratio).
With added sugar, should ferment to 8%

Also mixed some banana-flavored syrup with water until it should
reach about 6.5% fermented. It smells terrific -- exactly like those
marshmallow peanuts -- but I'm worried the yeast will struggle due to
lack of nutrients. I added some blueberry juice with the thought it
could provide some nutrition.

This week I've distilled ~36L of 12% hooch to ~8L of 40% hooch --
the bran stuff. Sampled a bit of the bran liquor low wines. Very strong
smell but subtle flavor. I'll do a spirit run tonight with the still
filled up with 30% ABV low wines; I intend to make some gin.

I feel a bit bittersweet about this week's distills. Probably by next
week, my new, much more efficient still will be complete. I learned a
lot from this little guy. Now he will sit in a box somewhere
collecting dust because there is no market for tools like this.

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2025-04-17T13:47:04+00:00

That sounds delicious. No home brewing
culture in your country? I'd like to
try the banana drink.

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2025-04-21T11:07:28+00:00

18 liters of 35% ABV in the boiler tonight.

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2025-04-21T15:24:52+00:00

when I get 6 liters out I'm going to shut off the machine
starting to taste a lot of tails coming through now

I estimate maybe 2.5L are hearts but I'll need to wait and let the jars
air out before diluting, tasting, and blending. Really excited to be
making gin again.

Spirit run results

2025-04-23T09:39:34+00:00

Pretty happy with the yields I got from $14 worth of sugar and trivial
amounts of bran, tomato, and yeast. Water and electric are cheap so I'm
not factoring them in to the total price.

> Phase 1
60 L of sugar wine (12kg sugar)

Distilling these in 20L batches gave me..

> Phase 2
20 L of 35% low wines

Distilled slow, collected in small jars gave me...

> Phase 3
~7 liters boiled out
~4 liters of heads and tails to save for a rainy day

~3 liters "hearts" (all with consistent ABV, 70%)
~6 liters 40% spirit, dilute with water
~8x 750ml bottles of 40% spirit, will be turned into gin