Have you made your own alcohol?

[steppen22]

How difficult are home-wine/cider kits to use? Financially speaking, is it worth the effort? What does the process involve? What do I need to start making my own booze?

Advice/advise please.
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no regrets, no retreat, no apology.
I've made mistakes in the past, and I apologise for FUCK ALL.

[ThoughtContro...]

Beer, loads of times. Easy quick, a doddle. Brewing Bin, Plastic spoon, some metabisulphite solution to sterilise everything (most important). Somewhere warm to ferment it, some sugar to prime the bottles or keg, PATIENCE letting it prime and mature properly. A few weeks for standard 5% stuff. 10.5% Barley Wine strength you're supposed to wait months for it to mature properly. Never got that far before it was drunk.

Start with a basic kit and work your way up. A handful of real hops makes all the difference.

Wine I always thought a hassle. Takes forever. Beer is easy.

[colin1]

[ThoughtContro...]

[neil.]

I take apple juice into work and by the end of the day, after the bottle's been on my desk all that time, the dregs at the bottom taste a bit 'alcoholic'. Is it fermenting?
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CBT February 2008 | A2 June 2008 | Yamaha YBR125 (written off) | Honda CBF125 (current)

[ThoughtContro...]

The conditions are there, it's sugary enough, and the temperature is probably about right. Fruit Juice is supposed to be pasteurised tho killing all the bacteria, like yeast for instance.

If you contaminated it by drinking say while eating a sandwich to introduce a weak culture of yeast it's possible, although I'd have thought it would take more than a day, even in the warmest of environments. If you wanted a random alcohol hit at work you might be better drinking a diet drink, loaded with aspartame. Unstable and breaks down into Methyl alcohol and formaldehyde, good stuff eh?

[The Shaggy D.A.]

I used to make wine and beer, but I don't drink anywhere as much as I used to now, so it's more hassle than it's worth.

Boots used to do a "kit in a bag" kind of affair, where you'd just fill ilt with water and hang it up on the back of a door, leave it for a few weeks then use the tap at the bottm to fill your glass. Dunno if it tasted any good, or whether it was cheap enough to warrant it though. This was about 15 years ago, I've not seen them around for a while.
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Currently : Royal Enfield 350 Meteor
Previously : CB100N > CB250RS > XJ900F > GT550 > GPZ750R/1000RX > AJS M16 > R100RT > Bullet 500 > CB500 > LS650P > Bullet Electra X & YBR125 > Bullet 350 "Superstar" & YBR125 Custom > Royal Enfield Classic 500 Despatch Limited Edition (28 of 200) & CB Two-Fifty Nighthawk > ER5

[The Shaggy D.A.]

Which reminds me, should have been out looking for sloes
____________________
Chances are quite high you are not in my Monkeysphere, and I don't care about you. Don't take it personally.
Currently : Royal Enfield 350 Meteor
Previously : CB100N > CB250RS > XJ900F > GT550 > GPZ750R/1000RX > AJS M16 > R100RT > Bullet 500 > CB500 > LS650P > Bullet Electra X & YBR125 > Bullet 350 "Superstar" & YBR125 Custom > Royal Enfield Classic 500 Despatch Limited Edition (28 of 200) & CB Two-Fifty Nighthawk > ER5

[BIKELESS STEVE]

[Itchy]

Yes I have , I found my dad's large facilities in a lockup in Cornwall once , (he was a legend in Cornwall) . I took one of his stills.


The problem is it makes you paranoid , in that you have to distill it over and over.


Distill it , then burn it and look for the flame colour and anything left in the spoon , else you get fusil oils and dangerous stuff which makes you go blind if you drink it.....

There are quite a few moonshiners in Manchester selling badly distilled stuff off the back of vans, made a whole load of people go blind, but if a 2 litre bottle of vodka in a coke bottle is offered to you for £5 you have to question it..
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[Flip]

[rusty_bawz]

where can you buy it? can you buy kits on line?
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[Cigaro]

I tried to make wine once but it turned out to be slightly fizzy Grape cider. It was gash but it did get me pissed. Hope that helps

[colin1]

[ThoughtContro...]

I've had crap pints of Hydes and Robinsons (bad cellar work) that taste worse than homebrew I've made.

If you make out of tinned kits, then you get what you put in for effort (and they put in the can). Malt extract is malt extract, except for light dark etc. Real hops blow hop extract out the water. You can crack your own malt and mash away. Add extra grain according to recipe of what you're trying to emulate. Treat the water, use the right yeast and correct hops, if lager brew lower and slower. This is all microbrewers do. That level is a faff, though someone who enjoyed cooking might enjoy it, since you have control over the whole process.

It's up to you, do you want to make your own fine food using fresh ingredients or do you want a tin of baked beans on toast cos its convenient. Or would you rather pay alot more for the same tin of beans at the local greasy spoon cafe.

[ThoughtContro...]

[colin1]

You clearly know what you are doing, it would take me a lot of practise to be able to do right all the things you mention.


Interesting to read.
I quite like cooking and will put in a bit of effort to get something nice.

I quite like to cook beans from soaked dried ones as i think they taste better, but some people think i'm nuts when you can get ones that come in a can which are still nice but different.

I quite like the idea of being able to make a decent pint from raw ingredients, rather than just a kit, but I think it would be quite hit and miss, and when a brew takes a few weeks to be ready, and I dont drink that much, its just not worth it for me.

Although I do have nettles in my garden that I could use as a hops substitute...

I know nettles and hops are related and nettles have been used in place of hops in the past.

When you say treat the water, what do you treat it with ?
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colin1 is officially faster than god

[neatbik]

[Suitor_Stu]

[colin1]

yeah i had one on an upstairs window sill for a while at my mums house at the back of the house.

I guess if yours was at the front of the house visible from the street the police had to say something, even if it was try to be less obvious. Or maybe it wasnt yours and some prankster had put it there. Not sure how they could prove otherwise.


The funny thing in my case was at the time, I told my mum it was a sage plant, but years later she told me she knew perfectly well it wasnt a sage plant

So yeah, plants are less hassle than home brew as long as you don't get carried away.

I've only ever grown one plant though as I'm not really a smoker.
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colin1 is officially faster than god

[Louise]

My ex did - a few times.
Horrid stuff. Everytime it would go wrong, taste absolutely viel - yet I had to drink it (Dont ask, very long story) They drank it so thought I should too.
3 times I think - a barrel seemed to last forever.
I wouldnt mind giving it ago, and I might.
Oh, just to add - my old school mates uncle would do home made spirits - archers ect, it tasted fab and he did a good job, such a good job my friend didnt see new year in

[mooserx]

recipe for prison alcohol,

2 litres fruit juice (whichever type you fancy)
1 bag of sugar
half a loaf or marmite (for the yeast)

pour all ingredients into a container and seal , leave somewhere warm for a minimum of 4 days, or till the container starts to hiss when you remove the cap or begins to distort and get hot from the fermentation, strain contents into nother container, drink, throw up then pass out!!!

smells and tastes like shite but will get you leathered
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TL1000r-handful.

[stinkwheel]

Scrumpy cider is a piece of piss.

Chop/pulp apples.

Press apples.

Strain juice (if you can be bothered).

Put in bucket (full nearly to the top), leave lid off for a couple of hours then put lid on but don't totally seal.

Leave to sit somewhere warm for a couple of months.

Syphon off into bottles.

The difficult bit is getting the apples to part with their juice, takes a lot of pressure so you need some sort of press.
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“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[ThoughtContro...]

The problems with the last 2 recipes is one of contamination. You've got to keep everything clean or your results might be literally bad. Sulphite or Campden tablets usually kill off all the unwanted bacteria before you introduce the one you want that produces all the right goods.

Once you've got a good vigorous ferment going with plenty of CO2 output going** to cover and protect the wort it's not too bad a risk but when it starts dying down or if its slow to start then you might have a problem. That's why you have fermentation traps in wine production.

I had a mate who did a batch which got contaminated by some bacteria that produced what tasted like TCP. It was alcoholic alright, but you couldn't drink it cos it tasted like TCP. He sold it all cheap to some punks who were desperate for some cheap beer.

There's also supposed to be one that produces the "odor of mice" and another that produces a thick ropey output but I've never seen them.

Marmite in Beer....? Ugh Mingin!
There's a recipe for an olde English Cock Ale where you lob a chicken carcass in the fermenting wort and it disappears and adds to the body and flavour.


** Oh Noez! Beer production produces CO2. We must ban it immediately

[stinkwheel]