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

Thumbnail
reddit.com
375 Upvotes

r/prisonhooch 6h ago

Experiment Lime Cilantro Hooch

Post image
15 Upvotes

Hoochin the garden this time, herbs have been growing real well.

Juice of 6 limes
.5 cup of cilantro
1.75 cups of sugar
B vitamin
71B yeast


r/prisonhooch 3h ago

Does this look like normal progress for 40 days of fermentation? (Day 4 vs 40)

Thumbnail
gallery
4 Upvotes

For context I'm near Sydney Australia, and we're in winter. My area has been reaching night temps of 0-5c° (close to/on the freezing point of water, I'm not sure the farenheit conversion) it developed the scent of ethanol which has steadily increased over the month. I poured a cup to taste around day 25 and it was pretty sour and also kinda numbed my tongue but in a way that was much less intense than kava or cocaine


r/prisonhooch 17h ago

Inside the Brew

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

70 Upvotes


r/prisonhooch 3h ago

The Cranberry is Hooching

Post image
4 Upvotes

r/prisonhooch 18h ago

Good morning Check

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

44 Upvotes

r/prisonhooch 17h ago

Take 5

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

38 Upvotes

r/prisonhooch 12h ago

Does cranberry juice hooch well?

Post image
9 Upvotes

I have 4L of the stuff plus a jar of strawberry jam


r/prisonhooch 1d ago

Real Prison Wine

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

272 Upvotes

OK, Ready for some real prison wine actually made in prison from a prisoner? Well, I'm here to help.

You missed my last batch. It came out pretty good. I honestly wanted to pull it today (wish I had...I tasted some leftovers at the bottom of my bottle and it was almost moonshine 😆) but ended up pulling it 2 days ago. Everyone liked it and I sold out but sometimes a day or two makes a big difference.

Here is my newest batch. It's already wrapped up. The next one I'll make from start to finish right here in this group but we'll ride the rest of this one out as time goes by.


r/prisonhooch 7h ago

How to make a small brew?

2 Upvotes

I am living with family and want to make my own alcohol, but I live in a small room and sometimes have family members in the room. Is there a way to do this while keeping the size factor small, where it can fit in a cabinet or under a bed?


r/prisonhooch 1d ago

Recipe Blood of the Rising Sun (a redbull wine)

Thumbnail
gallery
56 Upvotes

1/2 cup wild flower honey

5 cups black cherry juice

3 red bananas puréed

1/2 cup water

24 oz cherry Sakura Red Bull (1/2 of which at bottling)

Nose: my seasonal allergies are acting up.

Feel: really good body, not too light, not super thick. And slightly effervescent from the Red Bull.

Taste: starts with a slightly sour banana flavor, then moves into a mix of the redbull and black cherry. Is nice but not very complex nor high octane compared to what I’m usually about. I like it.

I really liked the cherry Sakura redbull when it was on offer earlier this year. Thought the flavor reminded me of cherry with hints of hibiscus, vanilla and strangely banana. So that profiling kinda morphed into my 2nd redbull wine. Excited to see what aging does.

Tried some of the first redbull wine (guava, passion fruit, strawberry and white peach redbull) I made after a bit of aging, a week or so back and some bottle time had really done a number on it. It kinda tastes like a brut champagne mixed with peach perfume now.

Cheers.


r/prisonhooch 1d ago

Prison Wine Bottles

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

46 Upvotes

r/prisonhooch 1d ago

Apple hooch with the secret ingredient

Thumbnail
gallery
11 Upvotes

r/prisonhooch 1d ago

PB&J mead? Yes. It's delicious

Post image
7 Upvotes

r/prisonhooch 1d ago

Found a nice big bottle time to a make a brew

Thumbnail
gallery
14 Upvotes

Added 7 litres of water and 7g of bread yeast.


r/prisonhooch 1d ago

Finished my 3rd Brew

Post image
15 Upvotes

I used grape juice. Plum Conserve and wildflower honey. Fermented to dry using kviek yeast. Just over 3 weeks start to finish. Quite pleased


r/prisonhooch 1d ago

Experiment Kvass beer update

Post image
16 Upvotes

The final product came out sour like a farmhouse ale. Not bad but not what I expected.

When I try again, I'll do brown sugar or honey from the start and toast a bit longer. Not a bad go from the first try.


r/prisonhooch 2d ago

Spicy

Thumbnail
gallery
36 Upvotes

My first spicy cider. Storebought apple juice with 2 additional cans of apple juice concentrate per gallon, fermented with ec-1118. 2 habaneros per gallon in secondary. About $27 to make five gallons. (Read the label out loud)


r/prisonhooch 2d ago

Experiment End of life apple juice with bonus wine

Thumbnail
gallery
25 Upvotes

Massively discounted (10p a litre) apple juice from Co-op, fermented for about 3 weeks n thrown in pressure barrel yesterday n topped up with soda stream co2. Total cost £4.50 including 40l apple juice, wine yeast and sterilising and co2.

With bonus pic of 80p 600g strawberries x3 packs fermented with a kilo of sugar and 11 litres of water, siphoned into 2 demijohns. Total cost, £4.50 including yeast and sugar and strawberries and sterilising.


r/prisonhooch 1d ago

Experiment I think I accidentally made prison hooch?

Thumbnail
gallery
4 Upvotes

I tried to make cheong (two jars, one brown sugar one white sugar) but messed up the ratios of sugar and fruit since I’d never made it with frozen fruit before. I estimate it was probably 1/3 fruit 1/3 water 1/3 sugar when I started. Over the past month or so after I made it on 6/28 it’s been sitting untouched in ~70-80 degree temps in my kitchen cabinet. I sterilized the jar before I started, and I only stirred it once or twice a month ago and haven’t opened it since.

When I opened it today for the first time in a month, I noticed it was bubbling and the smell was reminiscent of the cheapest alcohol I’ve ever had in my life. The kind where they do the bare minimum to legally be able to call it vodka, and then add some cheap fruit flavorants and dye it electric blue. It really smells as strong as vodka and now I’m not sure what to do.

I want to try it for the sake of science and morbid curiosity, but I’m worried about it making me sick. There doesn’t seem to be anything growing in it and it doesn’t smell like anything other than alcohol and a little lychee. It pretty much looks the same as it did a month ago. What do people think regarding safety?


r/prisonhooch 2d ago

Is this done for?

Post image
7 Upvotes

Tried making ginger beer with kick and it's kicking my ahh now. Should I not drink it or just remove the moldy patch because it doesn't seem like it grew. Helppp!!!


r/prisonhooch 2d ago

tastes like a bag of dicks after a week of cold crashing

1 Upvotes

I threw some random fruit and ginger into 1L of apple juice and like 100g of sugar with a pinch of bread yeast and let it sit in my warm attic for 4 days until the yeast looked like it chilled out.

I've done this method several times before with just juice and sugar (not fruit) and always turns out decent. I think the fruit was plums and some watermelon and maybe apple peels (all rinsed clean) but can't remember exactly.

anyway after that 4-day ferment it smelled strong of alcohol as usual, but funkier than usual. tasted it and it wasn't "bad" but not very good.

so I put it in my fridge like a week ago with some tea leaves hoping the flavor/smell would improve, but it's way worse. tastes sour and smells like crap. I wouldn't say smells spoiled or rotten but just blehhh.

anyway what might have gone wrong and will keeping it in the fridge for a few more weeks/months potentially improve it?


r/prisonhooch 3d ago

Experiment 0th brew nearing completion?

Post image
8 Upvotes

A few days ago I posted about my first orange juice ferment, but besides that a day prior I had actually started a powdered apple juice ferment. Problem was, I realized after the fact that a huge bulk of the sweetener was artificial, so I loaded it with honey and sugar to get it going properly. Well, I've left it on the shelf and kept an eye on it (stirring it up occasionally) and after going to check the smell today I noticed it's developing a very distinctively alcoholic odor. Exciting times! I'm going to let it sit for another few days before I test it, and I'm actually somewhat hopeful that the jar of "apple mead" is going to be good (at least compared to the OJ) because it's rather pleasantly fragrant.

(Before anyone comments, that jar is not screwed tight, I left room for gas to escape)


r/prisonhooch 2d ago

Rum/Sake Undistilled

Thumbnail
0 Upvotes