Homebrew / Moonshine - Sink vodka appreciation

[E. Knee as Weapon - Cont.]

Fair enough but I'm not sure how much weirdo British-style homebrew I can give away to the Bud Light connoisseurs in my life.

 

[Catgirl Tyranid]

Don't scale it down on principle or is there a practical reason?

Yeah, the practical reason is that you're worried about having to become an alcoholic to justify the full size, but it's more fun to have enough to give away.

100%, the best thing about making your own booze is sharing your booze with friends and family.

Same reason I started making cocktails, being able to whip up the perfect margarita for the mother-in-law on demand prevents in-law strife from ever taking root.

Edit:

Fair enough but I'm not sure how much weirdo British-style homebrew I can give away to the Bud Light connoisseurs in my life.

No one is going to turn down free beer especially if it doesn't taste like ass.

 

[Señora Airi]

Edit:

No one is going to turn down free beer especially if it doesn't taste like ass.

The best beer is free beer as they say.

Tax: neither mead didn't turn out the way I wanted it to so far. The black/blueberry one was rather tannin heavy(was hoping for a sweeter one. Maybe backsweeten), and the strawberry one just tasted weird. Are either salvageable?

 

[Zhores Medvedev]

Fair enough but I'm not sure how much weirdo British-style homebrew I can give away to the Bud Light connoisseurs in my life.

I run six packs to my friends every time I finish a batch and I make plenty of weird shit, but they always have been thankful. In fact many of them have really opened up to the various styles there are. You never know! They went from solely PBR to stouts, bitters and Belgian ales.

strawberry one just tasted weird

Did it taste like Band-Aids smell? I've heard that can happen with strawberries. Something to do with the flavor of the seeds leeching overtime into the mead. If thats the case, Im not sure what to do. It might age out with time, that's probably what I would do. There have been some meads Ive tasted that I really really did not like but with time turned out decent.

The black/blueberry one was rather tannin heavy(was hoping for a sweeter one. Maybe backsweeten)

I had a cranberry mead that ! did that turned out like this, I think you are on the right track to back sweeten

Tax: Has any body ever stabilized a wine or mead with chemicals? I generally ferment dry or pasteurize if I choose to back sweeten. Whats been your experience if you have tried it, I've always been afraid of messing it up and having bottles explode

 

[Señora Airi]

Did it taste like Band-Aids smell? I've heard that can happen with strawberries. Something to do with the flavor of the seeds leeching overtime into the mead. If thats the case, Im not sure what to do. It might age out with time, that's probably what I would do. There have been some meads Ive tasted that I really really did not like but with time turned out decent

That's the taste, yeah. I'll let it age a bit more and see how it goes

 

[VeteranOfTheRetardWars]

Through luck, coupons, bulk sales, and political relations with the local sketchy grocery store I acquired two dozen cans of ravioli, two dozen cans of good canned peaches, and twenty four pounds of dark brown sugar for twenty dollars. All good shit, it's the "we got pallets in, take shit you goblins" sale and the cashier fucked up somehow and we both didn't notice or give a shit.
So I'm brewing a brown sugar peach wine with the wine yeast I got, I'm excited for it this'll definitely be good.
Five gallon container, one and a half dozen cans of peaches (peaches, cane sugar, water), ten pounds of dark brown sugar, boiled water to fill the container (dissolve the sugar in the water after it's boiled, it's easy to mix in the brew that way), and one pack of yeast (activated). Gravity of 1.09, tastes like brown sugar and peaches unsurprisingly, and we are grooving.

 

[Joshua Connor Tomar]

i gotta clean out some COPPAH sulfate any tips?

 

[Hantavirus]

Tax: neither mead didn't turn out the way I wanted it to so far. The black/blueberry one was rather tannin heavy(was hoping for a sweeter one. Maybe backsweeten), and the strawberry one just tasted weird. Are either salvageable?

You need to age it, it's a very rare mead that is drinkable before a year of aging, never mind right after bottling. Seems mead and grape wine need aging, while most other brews are best consumed within a year of bottling. I always save a couple bottles of my mead batches and cellar them with my tobacco collection. The only thing better than making your own hooch is pulling out a vintage homebrew that has had a decade to age, and a vintage tobacco to smoke with it!

Has any body ever stabilized a wine or mead with chemicals? I generally ferment dry or pasteurize if I choose to back sweeten. Whats been your experience if you have tried it, I've always been afraid of messing it up and having bottles explode

Throw a campden tablet dissolved in a quarter cup of warm water in there when it gets to your preferred SG to stop fermentation, then let it air out for a day or two before bottling. This is where most sulfites in commercial wine come from. I have heard of people using sorbates, but I prefer to stick with the tried-and-true methods.

 

[Joshua Connor Tomar]

Gunna buy a bunch of wine from Costco and still it I'm thinking white just because I've never seen white brandy wine. Probably for good reason

She's got a nose like jet fuel but it's pretty good Brandy

 

[Hantavirus]

Gunna buy a bunch of wine from Costco and still it I'm thinking white just because I've never seen white brandy wine. Probably for good reason

Sounds fun! Home distilling is well on its way to being legal all over the US; I plan on doing some white lightning (sugar head, specifically) before trying some whiskey or rum, but I might just have to do brandy first.

Curious what your still setup is like. Have you heard of the "bokakob" still? It's basically a compact reflux still with the reflux element itself optional, and the condenser at the very top of the column and the take-off inline with it. It's an interesting alternative to the traditional alembic-style pot still and much easier to hide/more innocuous looking when disassembled if that is a factor for you.

 

[Joshua Connor Tomar]

Sounds fun! Home distilling is well on its way to being legal all over the US; I plan on doing some white lightning (sugar head, specifically) before trying some whiskey or rum, but I might just have to do brandy first.

Curious what your still setup is like. Have you heard of the "bokakob" still? It's basically a compact reflux still with the reflux element itself optional, and the condenser at the very top of the column and the take-off inline with it. It's an interesting alternative to the traditional alembic-style pot still and much easier to hide/more innocuous looking when disassembled if that is a factor for you.

I got a pot a thumper and a condenser set up on Papa John's boxes with a pump and not enough ice

 

[VeteranOfTheRetardWars]

My jackfruit/lychee wine is legit pretty good. the spices are just right for the flavors of the fruit, it mellowed out surprisingly quickly, and I added a little bit of stevia to sweeten it as before the jackfruit was bizarre to taste. It was savory in a bad way, jackfruit is an interesting fruit as is so you have to work with it.
I got out a gallon of it to really let sit and age to see what happens, because I like this so far. The best way to describe it is that jackfruit tastes like a strange mango and lychee is mild but pleasant. I probably should have used some brown sugar in the initial brew because the Philippino dessert turon is amazing, and molasses just jives so well with jackfruit in particular.

 

[Hantavirus]

Looking forward to doing dandelion wine this year, it's been a few years. I think I might do parsnip in the fall as well. I made a gallon batch out of an edible dogwood variety a few years ago, but the weather has not been good for dogwoods since so I have not had the opportunity to do it again. I use 375 ml wine bottles with corks or pint grolsch bottles with the reusable bale stoppers; usually save a few bottles from each batch but I am almost always disappointed. Country wines really don't age well for the most part, they just get kind of yeasty and oxidized, while all the good flavors kind of fade into a sharp "stale country wine" flavor.

 

[VIPPER?]

I made prison style wine a few times. Literally just a bucket, baking yeast, and frozen fruit. Was gud and the only reason I haven't done a ton more is that fruit is so expensive. Maybe as it warms up I'll finally hit up a restaurant supply store for some proper equipment.
Probably the best one I made was a pineapple-pear-ginger cider type thing. Luckily the pineapple didn't delete my yeast from existence. It was a great summer drink, real refreshing. The next batch was a red berry mix with some stale bread added in place of extra sugar, and that worked out fine too. It was only okay, but it tasted like red wine and I don't particularly like red wine so I'm not sure how it'd taste to someone who does. But it was drinkable.
If I start doing it again, I was thinking of trying to culture my own slightly more alcohol tolerant yeast by just having a continual batch as a starter like people do with sourdough. Just let natural selection handle it instead of buying single-use sachets of champagne yeast for 29.99

What I'm thinking of doing is scaling down the recipes to maybe 2 gallon batches and brewing through the primary fermentation in the traditional way, then bottle finishing in either champagne bottles or those pop top bottles with a small measure of priming sugar, erring on the side of too little until I finesse the process. After one to two weeks, move the bottles to the fridge to slow/stop the fermentation.

Does that make sense or am I completely out to lunch?

A lot of first-time brewers start off in those standard sysco slop restaurant pails, which are 1 or 5 gallons iirc. Your typical "wine shop" kit uses a 5 gallon contractor/food service bucket with a check valve pre-installed on it.
The biggest danger is the bottle-finishing, even in the fridge you could maybe have one pop, I think.

 

[Hantavirus]

Just let natural selection handle it instead of buying single-use sachets of champagne yeast for 29.99

Commercial yeasts have lost the ability to undergo meiosis, meaning their genome is fixed--that is why you get the same thing every time you buy a sachet--and wild yeast would take generations to become a wine yeast. That is how the first brewing yeasts came about. You're better off just keeping a culture of a commercial wine yeast.

Though if you're paying 29.99 for a single sachet of champagne yeast, I have some beachfront property in Arizona to sell you...

 

[samarinda]

I'm always curious when it comes to "prison wine" style recipies so thought I'd give this a go. Besides, all my fellas kit is loaned out to a friend, and we're stony broke so a cheap "one supermarket run" option is attractive.

I like the fact that the water bottle will already be fairly clean. However I'm a bit worried that my ginger was starting to be a bit "past it" and I should have tried harder to keep everything else clean too.

I tried to rush things as I was also cooking for a hungry child, and waiting until hubs (a brewing autist) was out of the way so he couldn't stop me (added to the "contraband" vibe!) This may have been mistake #2

Mistake #3 is the combo of feeling like I put in too much yeast, maybe closer to 2 tsp? Thankfully its not a fast acting yeast as #4 is a fear I've overfilled the bottle and that it will fountain everywhere. At least I've wedged it in a biscuit tin to catch spills and keep things stable.

I'll let you know how it goes. I love ginger but if I use up my stash trying this, I'll try the apple juice method. I so want this to work, but have my doubts!

I wanted to update and say that lime juice is better at the end, you can add some at the beginning but unless you halt fermentation partway through or add a bunch of artificial sweetener at the end, it will taste nasty dry. Citrus don't seem to ferment well. Try fermenting orange juice sometime and you'll see what I mean...

 

[GratsTheat783]

-post with recipe-

How long should mead be left to ferment for once all the ingredients are in? The recipe didn't specify how long to leave it for. Left it for about 2 weeks right now and it's cleared a bit, but not wholly. Could I skip putting it into another jar and go straight to bottling? Someone told me that when they tried brewing mead, they left it too long and it became ethanol, how long would you need to leave it for that to happen?

 

[The Fuck's Going On Here]

How long should mead be left to ferment for once all the ingredients are in? The recipe didn't specify how long to leave it for. Left it for about 2 weeks right now and it's cleared a bit, but not wholly.

I mean, since mead is wine, you WANT it to become ethanol. The only question is HOW MUCH.
Usually when it comes to primary fermentation, I usually leave it for a month, though I usually aim for drier meads. For a dessert mead, I'd estimate 2 weeks might be enough. That said, I've seen the best way to confirm is through measuring it's specific gravity. IIRC, dessert meads have a specific gravity of 1.02 or so, so if you can measure it, be best to get an idea that way.
If you can't directly measure the specific gravity, a quick and dirty alternative I've seen is taste a couple of droplets and see how much it tastes like gasoline (hyperbolic, but yeah...). The more you get a 'jet fuel' feeling, the higher the alcohol %.

Could I skip putting it into another jar and go straight to bottling?

You could, but the thing I've seen with doing that is whatever stuff was still in the mead that hadn't sunk to the bottom will sink to the bottom of the bottle. This can have other detrimental effects, which is anything from "weird flavor for that last bit when you drink it" to "yeast in there caused secondary fermentation making the mead not so sweet." So if you're not gonna go for secondary, I'd suggest you at least use some potassium campden tablets or something to at least prevent any more fermentation.

Someone told me that when they tried brewing mead, they left it too long and it became ethanol, how long would you need to leave it for that to happen?

If you leave it "too long", it means 1 of 2 things depending on the context.
1) Depending on the yeast you use and the amount of honey/sugar in there, your mead becomes TOO alcoholic. Basically, if you want a sweeter wine with less %alcohol (something like 12%), and instead it went too long, all the sugar got fermented and now you have a drier, more alcoholic wine (usually 16-20% at upper limits).
2) If other contaminants that are usually in the air like acetobacter come in, they can ferment the alcohol into acetic acid, turning your wine into vinegar. Which, it's good for cooking, no doubt. But I've been stuck with a gallon of vinegar before...takes a long time to use up.
I think the person you were talking to was talking about 1 rather than 2 in this specific case.

I find getting high alcohol % usually needs about a month or so, though it heavily depends on what kinda yeast you use as well. Because something like tokay yeast can give you higher alcohol% (think Tokay goes up to 18%, but don't remember), while other yeasts can't tolerate that high a level (I've had fun making meads using bread yeast that probably hit 10% on a good batch.)

 

[Hantavirus]

How long should mead be left to ferment for once all the ingredients are in? The recipe didn't specify how long to leave it for. Left it for about 2 weeks right now and it's cleared a bit, but not wholly. Could I skip putting it into another jar and go straight to bottling? Someone told me that when they tried brewing mead, they left it too long and it became ethanol, how long would you need to leave it for that to happen?

I usually just gauge by eye instead of using SG. I rack it off once the bubbling has slowed down considerably. A healthy primary ferment might "burp" the airlock every couple minutes, while a secondary might only get a few per day. I would not skip racking into secondary, in fact you will probably want to rack two or even three times, with a month between each, to get all the lees off. If you leave wine "on the lees" too long, it will taste yeasty and unpleasant, and there is no way to correct this fault. As far as ethanol, that is the chemical that males booze, well, booze. As the poster above me said, this person was probably referring to it becoming vinegar, which should not be a problem if you sanitize before racking and before bottling and bottle after a few months.

You will need to leave your mead to age; I have never made a mead that was drinkable before the one year mark, and I have had a couple that took more like 18 months to two years!

 

[Ass to Ass]

I don't know if anyone has said it ITT yet, but Fleischman RapidRise bread yeast is pretty damn good for making wine and cider. You can use it as yeast nutrient if you boil it, too. I once used it as yeast nutrient on a batch of cider that hit ~20% ABV with two satchets of Red Star Premier Cuvee. Tasted like ass but it got you drunk in a heartbeat.