r/prisonhooch • u/sarahmohawk • Jul 03 '16
Article A Hooch primer for N00Bs
A Hooch primer for N00Bs.
Version 1.0.
So with my limited hoochy knowledge I thought I'd put together a guide that helps noobs with making low-cost fermentations. With Prison Hooch we are mostly assuming you're just cheap/in an area where there's limited homebrew supply/up for a challenge rather than in actual prison, but for fun we'll keep a bit of plausibility that you could actually make this stuff in prison.
Note: I will not be liable for anyone underage that tries to make this hooch. If you're a kid reading this, please go away and keep your brain cells intact.
Part 1: Fermentation Vessel
To hooch, you'll need something to hooch in.
Homebrewer's way: Normally this is a sealed vessel (bucket or carboy) fitted with an airlock. If you're going to buy anything from a homebrew store, an airlock filled with water or sanitiser is the safest way to ensure your brew is sanitary and won't have any visiting creatures. For very vigorous fermentation, you can fit a blow-off tube (tube running from the fermentor into a smaller container with sanitiser).
Cheapskate way: As long as gases can escape, you'll be reasonably okay. You can fit a balloon or condom with a hole pierced in it to the top of your vessel. Make sure you put some rubber bands around to keep it tight. This is has slightly more upkeep than an airlock as you'll want to keep an eye on it in the beginning to ensure your fake-airlock doesn't over inflate. Also, don't reuse the condom and get prison babies. A bucket or carboy is great, but you can plausibly use any vessel that can withstand pressure ie. plastic jug, soda bottle, etc. DO NOT USE: glass that is not specifically for brewing. This is can be too weak for the amount of gases and could end explosively. You don't want a bomb.
Prisoner way: You can get by without an airlock, however you will need to 'burp' your container daily (or more than once a day at the start). This is easiest with a soda bottle as you can feel the pressure easily. Just loosen the lid just enough to let out the CO2, and re fasten. Or, do an open fermentation at the beginning when a lot of CO2 gas is escaping - usually there isn't great risk of airborne infection when fermentation is vigorous. Open ferment for 12-24 hours than proceed to 'burp' your container whenever pressure is feeling high. If you forget to do this and pressure gets too high it will explode. So if you're not in prison, just spend your $3 and invest in a fucking airlock.
Part 2: Sanitation
You'll need to clean all the equipment that comes in contact with the brew. Homebrewers buy cleaners like PBW and sanitiser such as StarSan. Make sure you do not mix acid and alkaline cleaning agents (ie. PBW and Starsan together) or you will make chlorine gas. However bleach will also work, a 5% solution is ideal. My preferred way is to fill a bucket with sanitiser and soak every piece of equipment before brewing. You can also boil metal equipment to sanitize it.
Part 3: Fermentables
As long as it has sugar, you can brew with it. Well mostly. Products with a lot of preservatives can have an odd effect on yeast viability, you can add a small amount of preserved goods to your brew but the largest part cannot be full of that stuff.
In this case we're going to just do sugar and fruit, even though there are lots of other options (malt, rice, sorghum, etc) these two are the most easily accessed. You need to anticipate the flavour of your fermentable without any sweetness to it, as all the sugar will be consumed by the yeast. This means some things (ie. apples) taste awesome fermented, and other things (ie. molasses) taste like absolute ass.
Table sugar and honey are safe bets for a high fermentation yield, though sugar by itself will taste pretty bad, it's the simplest way to make hooch. 1kg of sugar (100% fermentable) in 5 litres of solution (or 1.3 gallons for yankees) will give you around 7.5% alcohol.
Fruit can make your hooch taste a lot better, however. Sweet fruit that we mainly ferment have different types of acidity in their juices. You have Tartaric (found in grapes - wine), Malic (apples, pears etc) and Citric acid. Citrus fruits are the easiest to make juice from and will be a tempting option, however they impart a strong sour flavour when fermented. To make a more balanced brew you can use a base of Tartaric or Malic fruits, or honey (eg. mead). Honey is expensive as fuck so we'd recommend apple juice for hooch newbies. Most apple juices aren't preservative loaded and trustworthy to ferment. However, if you just want alcohol content, have at it any way you want.
Fruit has a much lower content of fermentable sugars and is only an estimate at best. Here's a fun table. Data was retrieved from Advanced Winemaking Basics: Sugars in Winemaking
Grams fermentable in each 100 grams of fruit (sorry USA, 1 oz is about 28 grams)
Apples, raw, unpeeled 13.3
Apple juice, unsweetened 10.9
Apricots, raw 9.3
Apricots, dried 38.9
Advocados, raw [0.9]
Bananas, raw 15.6
Blackberries, raw 7.9
Blueberries, raw [7.3]
Cantaloup, raw [8.7]
Carambola, raw [7.1]
Cherries, raw, Sour [8.1]
Cherries, raw, Sweet [14.6]
Cranberry juice cocktail 13.5
Currants, raw [8.0]
Dates, dried [64.2]
Figs, raw [6.9]
Figs, dried [66.5]
Grapefruit, raw [6.2]
Grapefruit juice, fresh [6.3]
Grapefruit juice, canned 7.5
Grapes, raw, American [16.4]
Grapes, raw, European [18.1]
Grape juice, frozen concentrate reconstituted 14.2
Guava, raw 6
Jackfruit, raw 18.4
Kiwifruit, raw, without skin [10.5]
Kiwifruit, canned, in syrup [12.8]
Lemons, raw, peeled 2.5
Lemon juice, raw [2.4]
Limes, raw, peeled 0.4
Mangos, raw 14.8
Nectarines, raw [8.5]
Oranges, raw, peeled 8.9
Orange Juice, fresh 10.2
Orange juice, frozen concentrate reconstituted 10.6
Papaya, raw [5.9]
Passion fruit, raw 11.2
Peaches, raw [8.7]
Peaches, canned in juice [17.4]
Peaches, dried [44.6]
Pears, table, raw [10.5]
Pears, canned in water 6.1
Pears, canned in juice 9.7
Pears, canned in light syrup 12.1
Pears, canned in heavy syrup 15.2
Pear juice, fresh [8.7]
Pineapple, raw 11.9
Pineapple, canned in juice [14.2]
Pineapple, canned in heavy syrup [16.9]
Pineapple juice, canned 12.5
Plums, common, raw [7.5]
Plums, common, dried [11.7]
Pomegranates, raw 8.9
Prunes, dried [44.0]
Prune juice, bottled [13.4]
Raisins [65.0]
Raspberries, red, raw [9.5]
Rhubarb, raw [0.9]
Strawberries, raw [5.7]
Strawberries, frozen, unsweetened [6.5]
Tangelos, raw [7.4]
Watermelon, raw [9.0]
So for example, if I were to make a Watermelon brew, I would need around 11kg of Watermelon if I was going to replace my original 7.5ABV sugar brew 1:1 with Watermelon, to meet the same fermentable sugar content. Experimentation is key and it's probably best to balance your cheaper fermentables with other additions.
Part 4: Yeast
The most obvious yeast you can get is bread yeast, or brewing yeast, from stores. Note if you get brewing yeast, you need to go to a homebrew store as the "Brewer's yeast" supplements sold by pharmacies are well and truly dead. The yeast consume sugar and excrete alcohol. They are your buddies and you need to be nice to them, which means keeping your brew at a safe temperature (10-28C at a stretch, 15-22C is ideal). Otherwise your workers will all be dead instead of getting to it. A normal pitch for dried yeast is around 20-40g, we won't be talking liquid yeast because this is hooch.
Second possible source of yeast is out in the wild. Yeast already exists on most fruit, so as long as it's not pasteurised (processed/heated up to kill bacteria), you can expect a wild fermentation to occur. This is more random than bought yeast but can yield good results. Most mead is made with a wild fermentation from honey. There's lots of places you can find yeast. You can't ferment using vegemite, marmite, or other yeast-based spreads, these are well and truly dead. However dead yeast (ie. boiled bakers' yeast) can be used as a nutrient to help the live yeast grow.
Part 5: GO
Now you have all the steps to make hooch. Wait 14 days for fermentation to complete, and you get alcohol. I could explain carbonation and stuff but I can't be bothered. Please use google if you'd like to learn about making your flat wine into a fizzy beverage.
r/prisonhooch • u/mexicanlizards • Jun 30 '20
Read this if you're worried about methanol and/or going blind from hooch
reddit.comr/prisonhooch • u/UKantkeeper123 • 2h ago
UPDATE 3 - Brew smells like egg.
It is currently day 6 of the no added sugar bread yeast cider, and it should be done within the next few days, the sulphur/egg smell is completely gone, and is replaced with an alcohol apple smell. I gave it a taste test and OMG it is probably the best cider I’ve tried, better than some commercial ones. All the sweetness is gone and it will reach 5.72%. I’m then going to carbonate in two 500ml bottles with 1tsp brown sugar, which will bring it to 6.16% ABV.
r/prisonhooch • u/Serious-Ant56 • 2h ago
hoochable?
has anyone hooched this before? heres the ingredients, Water, Sugar, Cranberry Juice (water, cranberry juice concentrate), Apple Juice (water, apple juice concentrate), Natural Flavor, Fumaric Acid, Ascorbic Acid (vitamin C), Sodium Citrate, Malic Acid, Vegetable Concentrate for Color.
(if your wondering why im ordering instead of buying at a store its cause i live in a small town and the nearest grocery store is far af)
r/prisonhooch • u/In-Hell123 • 25m ago
my alcohol is still fermenting can I drink it?
I botched the entire thing tbh I added water to a liter bottle, 250mg sugar, and I added 10g of bread yeast but I read it 10 instead of 1 by mistake so I scooped it out real quick I'd say 2 grams remained? its still fermenting fast after 11 days I opened it and I thought it was done, I closed it after drinking a cup of it and I realized its actually stronger than I expected I'd say 10%? I closed it and I woke up then opened it and the bottle cap flew to the other side of the room after hitting the ceiling so I closed it real quick and added my diy air lock back again
how can I use cloth or something (no coffee filter) to get rid of the yeast so I can drink it, or can I just drink it right away?
r/prisonhooch • u/Serious-Ant56 • 10h ago
why is my hooch not foaming up?
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so i made this batch yesterday and theres like no foam whatsoever. usually whenever i make hooch it usually has about an inch or so of foam at the top but this time it doesn’t? here’s the ingredients, 64oz apple juice, cup and half of sugar, half teaspoon of fleischmans yeast. did i do something wrong or could it maybe be the weather or the yeast i used??
r/prisonhooch • u/IgnisSauros • 18h ago
What base sugars work well?
I want to try to make a "mead" adjacent drink without the use of honey. (yes I know that is technically not mead, please just humor me)
To create sugar wines like this, which I can then experiment with different fruits and whatnot, what would be some possibly tasty alternatives that I could use as the base sugar?
r/prisonhooch • u/JudgementofParis • 17h ago
stabilize before or after cold crash
I'm gonna cold crash and then backsweeten later, does it matter if I put in my additives before or after cold crash? I have a lot going on today and would like to just throw it in the fridge and figure it all out later
r/prisonhooch • u/Tasty-Ad-3753 • 1d ago
I just moved house and found lots of hooch from 4 years ago - this one is sparkling lychee wine and taste like champagne and poison
r/prisonhooch • u/HighFV • 1d ago
Stock pot . new PB 🏴☠️
galleryWatered down my last shine to 40% then run again. 85% 🏴☠️🥂
r/prisonhooch • u/warneverchanges7414 • 2d ago
Oops
gallerySo I accidentally bought a prebiotic drink thinking it was regular juice to hooch (I may have had too many glasses of sunny delight wine). Anyways I'm fermenting it regardless. Wish me luck. It certainly smells like something.
r/prisonhooch • u/GetARealJobReader • 1d ago
Can you ferment Nectar juice?
Hi!
So my local store made the mistake of accidentally sending me Pineapple nectar instead of 100% pineapple juice.
I’m sitting here with 15 bottle of those lol and confused if I can ferment them like my usual Pineapple juice.
Here is the list of ingredients for it:
Purified water. Natural pineapple juice concentrate. White grape juice concentrate. Natural identical pineapple flavor. Stabilizer (E440) preservative (E202) reconstituted pineapple nectar from fruit concentrate.
Fruit content: 75% with added preservatives.
Would love any help please. Happy brewing yall
r/prisonhooch • u/Just-Excitement-9729 • 1d ago
What yeast should i get
i was trying to figure out what wine yeast i should get there is so many options i am planning to make wine out of Welch's grape juice and i want to get a high alcohol percentage what wine yeast would you recommend for this.
r/prisonhooch • u/PolicyOk3476 • 1d ago
Abv potential?
450 mL Tropicana apple juice bottle (48 g of sugar) and a 1/4 tsp of bread yeast. Is it worth adding extra sugar or will it stress the yeast?
r/prisonhooch • u/Juspetey • 2d ago
Back to my roots
It's been a while since I went back to where it all began as a hoocher. Been a long time homebrew, but this community has made me think of a simpler time when I first started brewing. Kept it super simple with just us-05, DAP, and fermaid-o. OG of 1.050, so I should get something decent in a few weeks. I got a few of these jugs because it was on sale for only $5 at Fred Myers, so maybe the next one I'll use bread yeast? I couldn't go full hoocher yet!
r/prisonhooch • u/UKantkeeper123 • 2d ago
UPDATE - Brew Smells like egg.
Since some of you said lack of nutrient was source of the egg smell of my cider hooch, I added nutrient (fermaid - O) and now the smell is starting to fade, I also added some pectin enzyme to help it clear.
r/prisonhooch • u/Serious-Ant56 • 3d ago
you guys think this’ll make decent hooch?
INGREDIENTS: WHITE GRAPE JUICE FROM CONCENTRATE (FILTERED WATER, WHITE GRAPE JUICE CONCENTRATE), WHITE GRAPE JUICE, CITRIC ACID (PROVIDES TARTNESS), ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C), POTASSIUM METABISULFITE (PRESERVATIVE).
theres also a grapefruit one might try that idk
r/prisonhooch • u/Big_Jaguar8848 • 3d ago
How long will fermenting take?
i put an orange sugar water and yeast into a bottle with a loose cap, its bubbling a lot but the question is how long do i wait?
r/prisonhooch • u/Dfjddvhjgf • 3d ago
Question: When to cold crash a turbo yeast?
Bought myself some turboyeast for first hooch attempt, how can i judge when to cold crash if the whole fermentation process only lasts 48-72 hours? The yeast I chose can go up to 17% if left for long enough but i’m hoping to stop it somewhere between 10-14%.
r/prisonhooch • u/one_boot • 4d ago
3 questions
galleryMy process: I bought these 700 ml bottles of pure apple juice. The green one is apple, lemon, and mint while the red one is only apple. Yesterday I drank some of the juice to make some headspace before adding 11 grams of sugar and some yeast from the grocery store. This morning(the first morning of brewing) I saw this.
What happened? How does it affect my brew? How do I prevent it in the future?
r/prisonhooch • u/HighFV • 4d ago
Reverse pot still 70%
galleryMe again, big plate on a coffee cup in pot. strong wash and low heat 🍻🏴☠️💯
r/prisonhooch • u/nukey18mon • 4d ago
Dorm Hooch Round 2: A Report
Hey yall! Thanks for all your advice last time. I am happy to report that my second run of dorm hooch has completed and is significantly better than my first run! A few changes:
-Used a half packet of EC-1118 instead of a full packet
-Ferment time increased from 8 days to 1 month
-Added pectic enzyme at start of fermentation
-Racked twice with auto-siphon
These changes resulted in a better tasting, clearer batch that didn’t overflow during fermentation. 10x less harsh, 12% ABV. I’m happy to provide the full recipe and steps I used for anyone interested.
I will be adding preservative and sugar prior to bottling, unless anyone has good advice why I shouldn’t.
r/prisonhooch • u/Ok-Outcome-5557 • 4d ago
New vigorous batch!
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No questions, just happy with how the new batch is coming along. It’s on it’s second day in primary, a Cherry, strawberry, blueberry blend. Cheers!
r/prisonhooch • u/AromaticWolverine314 • 4d ago
Could I distill way safer with just kilju
Couldn't I just take sugar and water ferment it and distill it without any worry about methanol because there's no pectin?
r/prisonhooch • u/nukey18mon • 4d ago
How to serve from multiple gallons of different hooch with only a small amount of bottles?
Hey yall,
I have a little predicament. I will have 3 gallons of different hooch to serve to my guests. I only have enough bottles to bottle one gallon however (the other two gallons are in glass carboys). How do I go about letting my guests drink whichever hooch they want, while avoiding oxidation/spoilage if they don’t finish it all? Do I have to buy more bottles? Is it ok to leave a gallon half empty? Thanks!
r/prisonhooch • u/UKantkeeper123 • 4d ago
Brew smells like egg.
So Im making some cider, no added sugar just a 900ml test batch before I make a 2gal batch. And I pitched the yeast almost1 day before (bread yeast) and now it smells like eggy apple. Is it because I didn’t add a rubber glove airlock like what I do with my other brews. My friend’s theory is that the egg smell is from the yeast doing aerobic respiration due to me not putting the airlock on and exposing them to air.
r/prisonhooch • u/kiansifkendnen • 4d ago
Is this a good or bad thing this is my first time making it idk if this is normal it’s been 4 days
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