| #1. Homemade alcohol |
| Published: 2024-01-08 [Mon] 15:38, by |
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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!) |
| #2. |
| Published: 2024-01-08 [Mon] 15:42, by |
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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. |
| #3. |
| Published: 2024-02-10 [Sat] 07:15, by |
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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 |
| #4. |
| Published: 2024-02-12 [Mon] 15:18, by |
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>>3 Can I know if baker's yeast can make mead from honey |
| #5. |
| Published: 2024-02-13 [Tue] 10:01, by |
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>>4 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 |
| #6. |
| Published: 2024-02-13 [Tue] 16:53, by |
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stop drinking anon, you'll become gay dick lover like everyone. go out and r.pe someone instead. its better for your health |
| #7. Ayoo cuh |
| Published: 2024-02-15 [Thu] 22:06, by |
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>>6 Nigga please, it's just honey, yeast and water in a bottle. |
| #8. |
| Published: 2024-02-24 [Sat] 06:46, by |
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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... |
| #9. |
| Published: 2024-02-24 [Sat] 10:54, by |
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>>8 Ack, maybe I should make the spoiler syntax be two percent signs instead of one, annoying formatting error... |
| #10. |
| Published: 2024-03-05 [Tue] 11:59, by |
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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. |
| #11. |
| Published: 2024-03-14 [Thu] 16:07, by |
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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 |
| #12. |
| Published: 2024-03-20 [Wed] 20:14, by |
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>>11 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. |
| #13. |
| Published: 2024-04-06 [Sat] 07:06, by |
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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. |
| #14. PURCHASE ALERT! |
| Published: 2024-04-28 [Sun] 19:43, by |
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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. |
| #15. |
| Published: 2024-05-03 [Fri] 18:53, by |
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>>13 For those who wondered, I got roughly 7 liters of 80% as an end result of hearts pickiness from a batch of low wines |
| #16. |
| Published: 2024-05-25 [Sat] 04:40, by |
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>>14 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. |
| #17. |
| Published: 2024-06-05 [Wed] 15:45, by |
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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. |
| #18. |
| Published: 2024-07-11 [Thu] 19:05, by |
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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! |
| #19. |
| Published: 2024-07-11 [Thu] 22:47, by |
| Message removed |
| #20. |
| Published: 2024-07-15 [Mon] 05:29, by |
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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! |
| #21. |
| Published: 2024-07-24 [Wed] 15:07, by |
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>>20 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. |
| #22. |
| Published: 2024-07-25 [Thu] 01:57, by |
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>>21 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. |
| #23. |
| Published: 2024-09-05 [Thu] 13:37, by |
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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! |
| #24. |
| Published: 2024-09-06 [Fri] 18:37, by |
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>>23 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. |
| #25. |
| Published: 2024-12-05 [Thu] 17:45, by |
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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. |