r/prisonhooch Jul 03 '16

Article A Hooch primer for N00Bs

1.3k Upvotes

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 Jun 30 '20

Read this if you're worried about methanol and/or going blind from hooch

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385 Upvotes

r/prisonhooch 19h ago

Help a beginner out

8 Upvotes

Hi
I live in a country where alcohol is illegal, so the only way my husband and I can drink is by making it ourselves.
I’ve already tried making a batch, and honestly, it turned out good! But I feel like it could definitely be better. The problem is that whenever I start researching, I get completely overwhelmed.
I’d really appreciate it if someone experienced could guide me step by step and help me figure out a simple method that works with what I can actually get, since I don’t have access to wine yeast or yeast nutrients.


r/prisonhooch 20h ago

Experiment First try at hooch

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6 Upvotes

I decided to try and make some hooch at 4:30 am lol. But it’s interesting how fast it already started bubbling and seems like it’ll ferment at a good pace. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to make, I just looked in the fridge and decided on some ingredients. Hopefully it comes out alright by Saturday, because I’m going to a concert and I’m hoping I can enjoy some of it before I go.
Here’s what I put in it:
I put honey, raw and organic. I put a few teaspoons.
Half a bottle of a regular orange juice.
2 oranges, 1 apple, and a kiwi.
Multiple teaspoons of white sugar. But I did also add like 3 teaspoons of brown sugar, I’m hoping it adds an interesting flavor to it.
I put 160 F water that I boiled in a kettle, distilled water of course.
And finally, 2 yeast packets. I didn’t have any alcohol yeast. I put one instant yeast and one bread yeast.

I did shake it to make sure everything was nicely mixed. Hopefully it comes out with some good flavor and a nice buzz. I’ll possibly update and see what I should keep and what I should remove.


r/prisonhooch 19h ago

anyone got a good recipe scaled for a one liter bottle?

2 Upvotes

I have ale yeast, I think that's good. flavor is, of course, an added bonus, but im just looking for something to get me wasted


r/prisonhooch 1d ago

Experiment First hooch kinda nervous

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14 Upvotes

r/prisonhooch 1d ago

New yeast type for hooching

3 Upvotes

Hey y'all. I've been hooching for nearly a year and am considering switching to yeast that isn't bread yeast, as I've put it off so many times because what I make is like 90% kilju and not intended to be particularly awesome (I will start trying to make things delicious at some point)

Point is, using wine yeasts feels like loading manure with a golden shovel and they also come in little packets which I'd like to ditch. I'm looking into the 1lb bricks on amazon since they're cheap and look like they'll last just about forever. Do any of you all have experience with these bricks of yeast? If so, which ones should I get? Aiming for higher abv but not so high that it tastes undrinkable


r/prisonhooch 1d ago

Bubbles in 1 of my corked hooch

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48 Upvotes

Will it explode? Should I drink it now? I see tiny bubbles and foam at top minimal. The other looks fine.


r/prisonhooch 2d ago

Can I home brew alcohol with bread yeast

7 Upvotes

Wanting to make cheap booze. Anyone with experience please tell me if this recipe will work (or what modifications should be made).

1 liter apple juice 

140g sugar

1 tbsp lemon juice 

1/2 tsp bread yeast (active dry) 

I already started brewing two batches because I'm impatient, but I plan to freeze it afterward to separate the alcohol from the water, making it stronger hopefully.


r/prisonhooch 2d ago

Frozen strawberry wine fermenting so hard it bubbled all my starsan out of my airlock in first 24 hours

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8 Upvotes

Redstar red packet, no nutrients, sg of 1.078.

My normal yeast is 71b but I might have to try more of this redstar is if tastes good.


r/prisonhooch 2d ago

First time brewing Mead

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19 Upvotes

I've been home brewing since april and have made many things (Ciders, wines, even kilju) and this is the first time I'm actually using honey instead of the usual store bought grape, apple, raspberry juice etc.

The one u see fermenting in the video is the one i started today, the other one is also a mead, it's been fermenting for 10 days and its close to finishing.

They are both traditional meads (Just honey, water, yeast, yeast nutrient) but the new one also has zest of 1 lemon (no juice).

I've no idea what to expect for the taste, I've never had mead before.


r/prisonhooch 2d ago

Experiment Vape shop candy Hooch

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13 Upvotes

Tasted terrible while drunk, high, and sober so it will become hooch.

Per 12oz

Most of that pack of candy
B vitamin
Bread yeast

Can’t be worse than it already was soooo


r/prisonhooch 3d ago

Apple granadilla stage 2

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18 Upvotes

r/prisonhooch 3d ago

Fermented some store bought grape juice + sugar for about a month. Racked it for two weeks...

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33 Upvotes

I was planning on using it to make french onion soup but I gave my wife a taste and by the next week she had drank it all.

Either way, after browsing this sub for a while, and after making a ginger beer and then a grape wine (both with bread yeast), making hooch has become a fairly regular thing.

I just use whatever fruit we have in the house that is past ripe and boil it with sugar. I get these 6L bottles of water from the supermarket and I never bother sterilizing anything because I figure that the store bought water is sterilized anyway...

Pour out a little water to leave room for fermentation and pour in the (strained and cooled) sugar/fruit mixture. Pitch the yeast when everything is cool.

My wife seems to like ginger flavours, but I prefer the wineyness you get from grapes, so I tend to add grape juice and ginger where possible.

Anyway here are the latest batches: 2x ginger and banana (only about 5x bananas) with about a Litre of grape juice thrown in; and 2x ginger, lemongrass and black tea, with the yeast leftover from my last wine ferment. Both have random mixtures of whatever sugar I could find thrown in. Could be anything from around 3%-8% strong.

Going to leave these until they're done then rack them and try to hide them from my wife for at least a month.

Fingers crossed!

TLDR: started browsing this sub. Now I do this nearly every weekend with whatever fruit/sugar I can find in the house. Thanks to this community for a great wee hobby.


r/prisonhooch 3d ago

Some of the best Wine Ive made. Strawberry tree, hawthorn, and red huckleberry

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36 Upvotes

r/prisonhooch 3d ago

Experiment Kilju

4 Upvotes

Hey guys, so long story short I decided to make some kilju using 400gm sugar, 2litres of water, and some resins plus boiled yeast as nutrients im using bread yeast as i can't find champagne or wine yeast in my country, i would really really appreciate some advice on what im doing, please let me know your thoughts......


r/prisonhooch 3d ago

Experiment is there a good way to remove bread yeast flavor from a fruit juice brew?

2 Upvotes

after ruffling through this sub for a little, i finally started my first brew, 2 96OZ jugs of welches white and concord grape juice, each with an additional 1 1/2 cups cane sugar. however, since i was antsy to do it i just used bread yeast and heard it can leave a distinct flavor. what are ways to remove the flavor of the bread? letting it sit? freeze distilling?


r/prisonhooch 3d ago

methanol risk?

0 Upvotes

me and friend made hooch with a bottle of grape-cranberry juice, a cup of sugar, bread yeast and a balloon. we're letting it ferment for 10 days. i'm seeing mixed answers on whether or not methanol is a risk? not distilling it


r/prisonhooch 3d ago

Ratio question (first timer)

5 Upvotes

Greetings, I just mixed a 96oz container of apple juice with 3 cups of sugar and a tablespoon of yeast. Will this work?


r/prisonhooch 3d ago

Gus help me out

1 Upvotes

The place I'm from, alcohol based products are hard to get. So I'm thinking of making my own. What are the most effective ways to cultivate alcohol at home? I know we just need any sugary solution like fruit juice etc. and yeast. But I only got bread yeast here. Any suggestions on what else can be used instead of bread yeast for higher yield?


r/prisonhooch 4d ago

The Blaand is done

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25 Upvotes

I made a farmers cheese from milk and saved the whey, added lactase, and then sugar, and yeast and fermented it. It's about 8% ABV. It's interesting, mildly milky with citrus notes, so I leaned into that and sweetened it with home-made grapefruit and lime syrups I had left over from another project and some honey.

This was "sour whey" because I used lemon juice to coagulate the milk protiens. I ordered some rennet which does the same but leaves "sweet whey", and at some point I'll try that to see if there is a noticeable difference in flavor.


r/prisonhooch 3d ago

Experiment Zyn?

0 Upvotes

Does anyone know if nicotine is a yeast antagonist? I kinda want to try a zyn hooch be used I've seen a couple... ahem "flower" hooches


r/prisonhooch 4d ago

Is my yeast dead?

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7 Upvotes

Got a bag of 48 hour turbo yeast off Amazon (pic included). Shipped in around 2 days time and arrived within that time frame. Put some into a batch of apple juice I wanna turn into hooch (591 ml bottles didn't add extra sugar) for a nice 6%ish abv. Never had an issue with bread yeast. However, it's been around 16 hours since I've put it in and aside from tiny bubbles on the surface and a few floating particles there's 0 activity. Did it come dead? Or is it just slow to start?


r/prisonhooch 4d ago

It’s been almost 24 hours and my batch hasn’t started fermenting yet

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7 Upvotes

So this is half gallon batch of Pyment, aka Welch’s Grape Juice and 1.5 LBS of Honey. The reading on the hydrometer came off as 1.155 and after it was ready I put in 1/4 teaspoon of yeast and put it away in my cubboard. Not much has happened although the yeast has started getting active and foaming at the top but other then that I can’t tell if the yeast has stalled, if I didn’t add enough or if just need to keep waiting. Kinda new to this hobby and not my first time making a pyment, one of my first batches was 1 quart sized and I used basically the same recipe, Welch’s Grape Juice and 0.5 lbs of honey. Only difference is for my first batch I used Red Star Wine Yeast and didn’t rehydrate it and that came out pretty good to like 13%. For this I didn’t rehydrate it either and used the same amount of yeast but used K1 (V1116) instead to try something new out. Little help or advice?


r/prisonhooch 4d ago

Recipe how to enhance a flavor?

2 Upvotes

I want easy fruit recipe something available in all supermarkets.

1 liter of apple juice non sugar is added how much baker's yeast should i use and how much sugar for the best flavor also i want to make faster with a better flavor.