r/prisonhooch • u/sarahmohawk • Jul 03 '16
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
r/prisonhooch • u/Unable_Piano_6570 • 6h ago
Mixed in 2kg of sugar with almost 5 gallons of water and tomato paste with a bag of raisins also threw in like 6 cinnamon sti ks so it doesnt taste so shitty ill update when its done
r/prisonhooch • u/No_Lychee9282 • 14h ago
I sanitized my hands before handling the wine so that no foreign bacteria could enter. I shook it up a bit and put a new condom on. It’s fermenting faster than in his recipe even though I’m following the steps exactly. I’ve been letting it ferment under my bed. I’m gonna go to the thrift store in town to get a stained. I’m pretty excited how it turns out
r/prisonhooch • u/buck_mysalls_ • 15h ago
i started my first batch of hooch around 3 days ago, using motts apple juice and activedry yeast. i did not add extra sugar as the sugar content was already relatively high. im wondering what the general abv estimates would be for this batch? i added 1 tsp of yeast, the total sugar content is 448g, and its a one gallon bottle.
i also made a second batch with welch’s grape juice, with the same amount of yeast. although, added an extra 1/2 cup of sugar. the grape juice is in a 2L bottle.
both batches have rapid bubbling and everything seems to be going as planned!
r/prisonhooch • u/TheMeowzor • 1d ago
I bought a pie pumpkin a while ago, and then decided to start making alcohol again. One thing led to another and well, pumpkin cider! Or pucider for short. I used amylase enzyme to convert the starches in the pumpkin into sugar, and added it to Mott’s apple juice. I added acid blend at the beginning, 3/4 tsp. And 0.5 tsp wine tannin. I’m staggering fermaid o, I added 1/4 tsp after 28 hours, and I added 1/4 tsp 12 hours after that. Gonna stagger a total dose of 0.5 tsp more. Only gonna get to like 7-8% alcohol, but that’s what I want. I used red star premier blanc yeast as apparently it’s good for ciders. I will probably get a cinnamon stick, toast it on a skillet, and then throw it in here when fermentation is done.
r/prisonhooch • u/ohmegatron • 1d ago
I have been very patient with my first brew, but my instincts tell me there has got to be some bacteria growing in that stuff up in the neck.
r/prisonhooch • u/Strong_Pop_5343 • 1d ago
They're overfilled, I realise. I had to take the airlocks off and give them a quick rinse twice now.
Used a video from this sub to start: https://www.reddit.com/r/prisonhooch/comments/17fthwr/made_a_video_for_people_new_to_this_sub/
Steps taken:
- Cleaned with dish soap and hot water. Filled each bottle 3/4 (or a little less) of the way with an apple/pear juice, from homegrown apples and pears.
40 kCal per 100mL juice. Plastice bottle is max 1.5L, glass ones are 700mL.
- shook them, added 2-3 tablespoons of agave syrup each. Didn't care to get sugar. Next time.
- rehydrated one baggie of EC-1118 wine yeast - for 18 minutes in lukewarm tapwater. Said to do so on the bag, didn't know that/forgot to check, so ended up having to put a whole bunch more liquid in there than expected. About half the yeast liquid in the big bottle, a quarter each in the glass bottles.
- put airlocks on.
Roomtemp of 20 celcius. Gonna check in 2 weeks and see if it's stopped bubbling. Then cold shock for a day and pour, right? Also intermittently checking to see if it's overflowing and cleaning the airlocks each time they do - is fresh oxygen every now and then an issue?
r/prisonhooch • u/MaddeningAscentII • 1d ago
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r/prisonhooch • u/Hazynseptember • 2d ago
Running a bigger batch this time. Real lemon juice. Some peels thrown in. Trying it with 1116 yeast. Last time I did 3tlrs and it didn’t survive until bottling it was so drinkable.
1.070 starting gravity.
r/prisonhooch • u/Alamo94 • 2d ago
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I was surprised🥴
r/prisonhooch • u/buck_mysalls_ • 2d ago
i started this last night and woke up this morning to this foam all over the top of the container. i have the cap loosely fitted so it doesnt explode. is this foam normal? its my first batch.
i added 1 tsp of yeast to this, no extra sugar was added.
r/prisonhooch • u/galactic_observer • 2d ago
At Homemade Beverages, we offer a place for discussing and sharing tips for homemade beers, wines, cocktails, sodas, and café drinks. You can give and receive advice and recipes to and from other people.
r/prisonhooch • u/RelationshipMore6900 • 3d ago
To be honest, I didn't have much faith in this experiment. As yeast I used a pineapple vinegar I made, I didn't use any source of amylase, the rice was only there for flavor, not for the sugars.
I used:
3 kg of sugar
2 kg of rice, which I washed and boiled
15 L of water
Total cost $6.60
I like the flavor, there's nothing weird about it. The only thing I can criticize is that it's slightly sweet, which indicates that fermentation stopped before consuming all the sugar, and it also has a very, very slight acidic touch, but overall it's good.
r/prisonhooch • u/TheMeowzor • 3d ago
I recently bought about a pound or so of hot peppers. This includes, Carolina reapers, chocolate bhutlas, Trinidad scorpions, habaneros, and way more! If anyone can identify any of the others lmk. I was thinking of making a hot honey and then making mead out of it, or making cider or something with this as an ingredient. Drop any suggestions/ideas in the comments!
r/prisonhooch • u/Eyeless_Seth • 3d ago
I made an amazing batch of low alcohol cranberry wine with a half gallon batch and putting 1.5 cups of sugar in it, then letting it ferment for three weeks before I got tired of waiting and learned cranberrys can take forever to ferment. So I cold crashed it, my first time cold crashing, for 4 Days, took it out, used siphon cheese cloth? And it was one of the best batches I ever made despite being low alcohol, just a very sweet tasting wine. Wanna make an even bigger batch of the same thing, how much sugar and yeast would ya recommend?
r/prisonhooch • u/dreamyangel • 3d ago
35 days old Swiss unfiltered apple juice. Yogourt bucket for yeast spills.
I bought aliexpress 18% proof wine yeast, yanked enough sugar as said chatGPT to reach 18% abv.
Taste like cider, without bubbles, but the aroma is great. No yeast tastes, fruitful. Honestly most people would think it's a store bought product with too much alcool content.
I'm not poor mind you, I just looked at the sub and thought I had to ball.
No rubber gloves, I dye my hair black and have a box of 100, but don't give a shit the cap is enough.
I cold crashed this lady in the freezer for an hour, and left half in a side bottle. Somehow became slushy, and I pored it with the cap lightly screwed, making apple jack by accident.
I'm going to Vietnam next week. I'm leaving the other bottle to mature. Love y'a all.
r/prisonhooch • u/ohmegatron • 4d ago
I decided to give er a go, and put my first batch in. It's just 750 ml water, 1.5 cups white sugar, about a teaspoon or a tablespoon of ReaLemon brand juice, and .5 teaspoon bakers yeast. I was reading a post in this sub about my new hyperfixation (will my AuDHD remain fixated on this for the duration of the fermentation? Nobody knows! Least of all me!), and it said to avoid preservatives. It also said that a little is ok, but a lot is bad.
I checked the label, and ReaLemon has sulphites, but it doesn't say what the concentration is. Did I screw the hooch on this one folks?
EDIT: All of these products were bought in Canada.
r/prisonhooch • u/Eyeless_Seth • 4d ago
This is something that kinda confuses me, I’ve heard a general rule for making homemade hooch being to let it ferment for 2 weeks and then you can drink after using either a cheese cloth or siphon (I do both as a extra precaution) But I’ve started making half gallon batches and they seem to take a lot longer or maybe I’m just missing something, is it bad to transfer your hooch into another jar while it’s still bubbling/fermenting?
r/prisonhooch • u/Intelligent-Wind2583 • 5d ago
So I have to transport my hooch from one house to another. About 30-40 min drive between. I have a batch of mead (1 L) and a batch of peach wine (1.5 L) in plastic bottles with the lid just sitting on it to let air escape. Both of these batches were made a day ago.
How do I safely transport it in the car? Is it safe to completely tighten the cap just for the 30-40 min or will it explode? I was thinking I could put them in plastic rubbish bags and then hold them upright in the car so they don't spill...
r/prisonhooch • u/Intelligent-Wind2583 • 4d ago
So I made a couple batches of hooch yesterday and the day before. I've made hooch successfully once before and it got me buzzed after only like 5 days I think.
For batch 1 (yesterday), the total volume is 1.5 L, including peach iced tea (no preservatives), 200 g sugar, 1 1/2 tsp bread yeast. I can see vigorous fermentation with lots of bubbles and a thick krausen.
For batch 2 (today), the total volume is 1 L, including about 1/2 cup of honey and 3/4 cup of strawberry jam, 1 1/2 tsp bread yeast, and between 100-200 g of sugar (I forgot, lol).
I am aiming for a wine strength, I'm not sure if the amount of sugar or the use of bread yeast will prevent fermentation up to a light wine strength. But ideally I want to enjoy this in a wine glass and feel the effects after sipping on one glass.
How long should I leave the batches? Total 5 days, 7 days, 10 days, more?
r/prisonhooch • u/Jizzler088 • 5d ago
My ingredients:
64oz of Lipton lemon flavored tea from concentrate
1.5lbs of sugar
Fleischman active dry yeast
Overall it was like $6 for all ingredients at Ollie's, super cheap recipe.
I'm interested to see what will come of it, also how much yeast do y'all think I should use? I was thinking maybe 2 packets would be enough.
Edit: I'm also thinking about frost jacking it, depending on the weather and the abv at the end.
r/prisonhooch • u/LoosePrisonPurse • 6d ago
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