/ck/ - Food & Cooking

i've been wanting to try doing a jug of mead forever but the ease of going to the corner shop and buying tall cans has prevented me from even reaching the step of purchasing even a single one of the ingredients or equipment. I do have the jug though!

Yeah I probably spent $100 on winemaking supplies getting carboys and fermenting buckets and all the shit, and then I made like 2 batches, one from apple juice and one from grape juice and then I got bored and quit and it's all collecting dust.

135 liters at a time. Yes.

>>12926355
I wanna make some mead, see if I could make it purple by adding fruit to it. Not red or burgundy but a nice royal purple color

Maybe blackberries or blueberries would work

i'd try to make beer but it probably wouldn't be worth the effort when i can just go to a local craft brewery and get top tier beer for a few bucks

Just make the simple cheap and easy stuff
>like pic related

>>12926494
What are you making?

>>12926494

I've made about 45,000 dollars worth of booze since 2014 using this method.

>>12926500

It's Birdwatchers Sugar wash.

>>12926500

https://shuggo.com/calculator/

>>12926522
I just make kilju or apple wine

>>12926528

You're probably not an alcoholic.

>>12926494
plz explain

>>12926535

This is the recipe for a vodka wash.

115L of water
30Kg Sugar
1326ml tomato paste (8.5cans)
5tsp Citric Acid
380g Yeast
1 tsp Epsom salt
2 campden tablets in water

After that, you distillate it in a machine like this. That thing pulls the alcohol from the water.

>>12926555

There's a lot of moving parts on that still, mostly water based that you need to learn the chemistry behind. The Liebig cools the distillate that goes into the bottle, the Jackson Crossflow Condenser uses low pressure flow copper to "knock down" the vapour. The Vapour contains the alcohol. That's a 2600watt heater with a condenser that can "knock down" at least 3Kw. of heat energy.

>>12926355
i used to make cider
was fun but now im stuck in college where they dont let me ferment on campus

pretty gay to be honest

>>12926570

Huddle together with engineering nerds. Get them to build a still.

>>12926570
get an apartment
college dorms are for faggots who like to have a boot over their heads

>>12926570

Give engineering nerds a fluid flow problem and they'll flip out.

>>12926573
>>12926584
hmmmmmm
im planning on becoming an engineering nerd
maybe this is a good way to get to know the people

>>12926613

Build a jackson crossflow condenser that can make vodka on demand. You'll be a college hero.

>>12926613

Those tubes look conspicuously like the coolant devices in the Bruce Nuclear plant for Huron Point. Don't they? All they do is make booze.

>>12926355
I made my first batch if mead this year. Was pretty fun, still came out much sweeter than I expected though.

>>12926635

There was a robot they operated at Bruce Nuclear called Oscar and it was used to clean the secondary nuclear coolant system of calcite because our water is hard. I used their coolant rod design to create a booze still designed in CAD.

I want to learn how to brew my own hefewiezen because I am a cheap fuck

>>12926471
What is that?

>>12926657
That looks Rly nice anon

>>12926760
Thanks mate

I'm a poor fag and my country alcohol is expensive so had to find a simple way to get drunk. around 10%
>Bread yeast
>water or applejuice
>sugar
Shake the bottle and unscrew the cap slightly so the gas can escape(squeeze the bottle and cap goes up slightly and air leaves) . Then wait about a week and drink

Are there any other simple stuff to make? I was thinking of mead but I heard you have to wait much longer


Was thinking of buying an airlock and bigger containers since it works pretty well.

>>12926686
Kilju/sugarwine

>>12926840
Mead takes several weeks to ferment and then needs to be aged before it tastes any good. The ideal bottle is at least two years old.

FYI /diy/ has a homebrew general

>>12927015
Seems like a lot of waiting

>>12926676
wheat beers are dummy easy to make, what's stopping you? $150 or less in gear and ingredients and you're on your way.
Just taste tested a 9.5% imperial red ale and holy shit boys. Gonna secondary and dry hop a little

>>12926840
>google it
>it actually does work

wow, i might just try it. That sounds bomb

>>12926840
how much sugar and yeast do you add for a 500ml soda bottle..?

>>12926570
I brew cider in my dorm (I do wanna get an apartment but a host of complications made it exceedingly difficult). I hid it in the closet. A backpack is essential, timing is another thing, and hope you have a nearby market too. Bread yeast works in a pinch, so does an apple juice made from concentrate. It's good stuff, it also takes like 4 weeks to achieve dryness and you can't really age it, but it still tastes good. Oddly enough I've found that most of the people willing to homebrew in college dorms are engineering nerds who like alcohol but don't like parties or party culture.

>>12926355
Homebrew comprises the vast majority of beer that I consume.

>>12927898
>>12926570
Recipe or link to the good recipe? I live by myself, so space is not an issue.
I fucking love cider, but in my country it`s hard to find good one.

I want to but I'm scared shitless of making that one small fuck up that contaminates the whole thing or distilling methanol instead.
What's the most forgiving drink?

>>12928082
>contaminates
Just be careful
>methanol
No need to worry if you're making small batches.
You could drink mash straight without any methanol related issue, so if you assume the methanol is equally distributed (important!) you can drink distillate without caring about methanol too. The problem arises when you have several bottles of end product, meaning that methanol is not equally distributed, it's all in the first bottle because it comes out of the still first. To fix that you could just pour all your distillate in a drum, mix it around, then bottle it, but that's far more trouble than just monitoring the temperature and throwing away the foreshot.

And anyway, methanol is a big part of what causes hangovers, so it's in your best interest to take that shit out. As a general rule, the less coloured the distillate, the less cogeners (hangover causing non-ethanol chemicals), so vodka and clear rum are your best bet.

>>12928082
>>12928441
>methanol
Not even once.

I listen to my God and am not a degenerate

>>12928029
Proper cider you need a shitload of apples and a cider press to get the base juice and you theoretically can just leave it there, and the wild yeasts present in the apples will take over. You could get some apple juice (as long as it's made from concentrate) and just dump it with some yeast and maybe a good amount of sugar, using a wine yeast. The gist is apple juice and yeast. Fermentation is up to you, I like to get it to dryness. I don't have a press, so I use a mix of apple juice from concentrate (the more the merrier) and sourer apples that I blend whole on the blender with just a bit of water, as well as a small spoonful of wine yeast. It helps give it a more "natural" flavor, so to speak, even if it makes it less controllable (in other words, it might become vinegar).

>>12928441
I'd suggest an apple brandy, personally, or just a brandy overall, it's a lot easier to get the base for these.

>>12926555
>tfw distilling is illegal without a permit
god i fucking hate all the nanny-state bullshit in australia.
at least i was able to buy the equipment without a permit.

>>12928552
The problem with apple juice from concentrate is the anti-yeast agent they usually mix into it where I'm from.

>>12928601
Fair enough, generally they'll use anti-UV lights. In that case just blending whole apples, then passing them through a cheesecloth should work.

>>12928589

It's ostensibly illegal in Canada but all the 'brewing' and wine making stores sell shit to distill. Do it on your own without selling it and no on gives a fuck.

>>12927898
>most of the people willing to homebrew in college dorms are engineering nerds who like alcohol but don't like parties or party culture
thats me bro

>>12926494
Is that some jenkem??

>>12926355
I’m currently making some mead from local raw honey, champagne yeast, local spring water, and sweet mint I grew in my garden. Gonna shoot for carbonation but it turns out you have to add water to a 3 piece airlock so that might not work out now. It’s been fermenting for a week and a half before I found that out, real rookie mistake but this is my first time making a legit homebrew with actual equipment instead of just hooch. Should taste fine though, no off odors coming from it at all. Gonna let it go for 4 weeks total then try to carbonate it in flip-top bottles(while also infusing the mead with more fresh mint) for a few days before popping them in the fridge to arrest fermentation. I’m hoping the final result will be a nice dry bubbly mead with a cool mint taste.

>>12926613
Engineer hooch is a classic of any major engineering school.

>>12928730
I lucked out in as much as that I had multiple brewmasters in my family (notably my paternal greatgrandma and her brother), I discovered a taste for "good" alcohol at a young age, and repudiated most parties (probably due to the autism). So when I went to college and my first roommates were chugging Natty Light and plastic bottle vodka with like 20 ABV, I was so outrageously repulsed by it that I felt the only way to make up for it was by making my own good quality alcohol, and that meant starting with the basics.

My roommate made mead and we bottled it last night. It tastes like jet fuel but we haven't gone blind, and can enjoy the fruits of our labour even if it tastes like shit desu. Can only get better, will probably do it again. Highly reccomend.

>>12928971
Let it age, dude. Doesn't need to be so long, but if you let it stay a month it'll be a thousand times better.

>>12929002
This. I taste all my wine at bottling for sweetening purposes (mead is just honey wine) and it always tastes not so good at the time. When it ages a few months though, you can really tell the difference.

I want to make federweisser and it sounds relatively easy. It's basically a very bubbly sweet wine made with yeast

any ideas? Never done this before

>>12929121
Yeast is basic, the most difficult part is a wine press (not exactly hugely expensive, but required) and the grapes, which aren't necessarily the grapes you eat. It's easy but certainly more expensive than most early brews.

I'm about to make my own wine batch. Do I just double the sugar if I want it to be more alcoholic? The current recipe puts it at around 5%, aiming for around 10%

>>12929277
Sugar + yeast + time = alchol
The more sugar available to the yeast the more alcohol it can produce, but the more time it will need to make all that alcohol. However, alcohol will eventually kill the yeast and limiting its time. Different strains of yeast can tolerate different amounts of alcohol, a winemaker’s yeast can tolerate between 10 and 14 percent alcohol by volume. Baker’s yeast can’t really take more than 5% max.

>>12929211
Do you think I can buy wine grape juice and just add yeast? What kind of yeast should I use and what ratio?

I'm thinking of getting some white juice from a store and just adding some kind of yeast. I've read people just use a jar of Welches and champagne yeast too, then let it sit for a few days. Think either of these methods would work?

>>12928815
yup

>>12928082
Nothing is all that forgiving. Cider might be the cheapest thing to fuck up but you needn’t do that. Just clean everything that will be up next to whatever you’re making with bleach or StarSan, and I mean everything.

>>12929433
You need a wine yeast; you can use wine grape juice (make sure you use concentrate-based) and blended grapes with just a bit of water, or alternatively the grape juice (the idea is to get anything of a must going). The main flavor is in the use of the must as the main base, compared to other wines.

>>12929543
If I'm going to be using juice from concentrate do I need to add sugar? Or is it as simple as procuring the right juice and adding yeast?

>>12929293
>Baker’s yeast can’t really take more than 5% max.
This is blatantly false, Baker's yeast can easily go above 10%.

>>12929547
You're asking questions that are subjective. There's enough sugar in regular fruit juices that it can ferment by itself if it's not pasteurized (which most are). More sugar will raise the alcohol content, increase the fermentation length, etc. The recipe I gave you contains wild yeasts, and hopefully a mix of grape juices (getting two or three different types and using one of them with the blended grapes, for instance, gets a far more thorough flavor). With what you're asking, I would not recommend adding sugar, or if doing so adding very little.

>>12928828
in theory this sounds amazing

>>12927868
i go 1 liter with 1 dl of sugar

>>12929577

That's fucking bullshit, SAF Yeast does 12.99% for my Birdwatcher's yeast. Here's your recipe.

115L of water
30Kg Sugar
1326ml tomato paste (8.5cans)
5tsp Citric Acid
380g Yeast
1 tsp Epsom salt
2 campden tablets in water

>>12929447

It's "sugar wash" for you proles. It's how they make vodka. Jesus Christ.

>>12929577

Look up 'yeast attenuation' It happens over the fermentation time in bread and also in booze.

You guys don't do industrial fermentation, do you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uidKlNmlLc

>>12928589
People kill themselves doing it. Brew beer. The Coopers kits make it trivial, you just have to find the right weather (or buy a fridge).

>>12931123

Kill themselves how?

>>12931068
being a poorfag how would it help me if i did ?

>>12931135
Exploding stills, regular poisoning, alcohol poisoning. Suffocation if you're doing it inside.

>>12931169

You don't know a damn thing about distilling. My still is basically a coffee machine. They can't explode because they operate at 1 atmosphere. You can't get methanol poisoning because you can't concentrate methanol more than you can in wine and when you don't use fruit pectin you don't create methanol at ALL. You can alcohol poison yourself just like everyone else and You can't suffocate because you use electric heat, like a fucking coffee machine.

God, you people are so stupid it beggars the mind.

>>12931233
You're retarded.

>>12926355
Yup, brew a bunch of different shit.

>>12931256

Does /ck/ have bots like reddit?

>>12926640
It's just a tube bundle for a heat exchanger, nothing special.

Yes. I put some sugar, bread yeast, and boiled raisin water in a bottle of cranberry-flavored juice cocktail. I drank a bunch of it at once and got extremely drunk and sick. I had no tolerance for alcohol because I was underaged. To this day, the smell of wine disgusts me. Now, I just buy whatever beer I want because I'm drinking age now.

>>12928601
If the anti-fungal is potassium sorbate you just need to dose the juice twice at about 12 grams per.

>>12928828
You're probably going to make bottle bombs with that method.

>>12931300

make them by hand and call me. Those are two different types of copper.

>>12931342
Why the fuck would I bother?

>>12931294
>You don't know a damn thing about distilling
>My still
Retarded.
>can't explode because they operate at 1 atmosphere
Retarded.
>you can't concentrate methanol more than you can in wine
Retarded.
>methanol = all poisoning
Retarded.
>You can't suffocate because you use electric heat
Retarded.

>>12931346

Exactly. You're just some boring cunt. You wouldn't have the skill to take a shit properly. Get a bidet.

>>12926388
Holy crap I have some grapes on my fence
How do you do it?

>>12931361

Wait around here and see who buys your shit. You're some dumb angry weirdo that needs validation. Stick around for validation.

>>12931369

Throw all the grapes in with all the sugar and you'll still end up with vodka after you go to Azeotropic alcohol. Or try to do a pot still which will still taste like shit.

>>12931361

Where'd you go, shitbird. I want to learn how you make booze. I fucking love kids. Because you have tight bumholes.

>>12931378
Not that guy, but he can validate himself by pretending to be someone else. Not that validation has any value on an anonymous image board.

>>12931427
The same way I recommended you do it. There's a manual. Here's the stupid shill link:
https://www.lovebrewing.co.uk/downloads/dl/file/id/83/product/0/coopers_diy_beer_kits.pdf

As for distilling, I don't. As I recommended you not to. Obviously.

>>12931641

neat.

>>12931333
That’s why you burp the bottles every 24 hours and store them in a cool place.

>>12926355
God I want to. I have three meads I want to make: One is traditional dry with dank regional wild flower honey, another uses orange blossom honey and a full bottle of orange blossom water, and possibly a yeast that works well to pull out scents, and lastly is a mead made with dark honey like oak honey and buckwheat with water made as a tea of decent grade shu puer tea brick and maybe some juniper berries.

I hate being poor.

>>12926386
same but with beer lel

>>12927390
>what's stopping you?
money
I have no job

I homebrew beer and use it as my main source of alcohol. Bottles I have in storage:
>Porter with Vanilla and Toasted Coconut
>Imperial Stout with cacao nib, vanilla, and lactose
>Belgian Strong Ale
>Last Years Winter Ale
>Raspberry Witbier
>Witbier
>Berliner Weisse
I have only 1 keg right now and it has my latest NEIPA in it with Citra/Columbus.

Planning on brewing either a standard American Pale Ale or a Kolsch next weekend but havent decided

>>12932600

who told you it wouldn't taste like shit?

Bump

>Buy $50 worth of honey and ingredients, plus carboy and airlock
>Follow detailed online instructions to the letter
>Try it
>It’s just yeasty-tasting vinegar
>Age some and try it later
>Get sick

I’ve been meaning to attampt to make a still since I’m an alcohol. Do you have to get the actual condensers and pipes or can you nigger-rig it with household materials?

Is making fruit alcohol as simple as adding fruit juice+ yeast?

>>12934106
Pretty much. You can make alcohol out of anything with sugar, if you're crazy you can make it out of potatoes.

>>12934119
what are the chances that I get sick?

>>12934132
Depends.
If all your shit is cleaned and disinfected properly and your fermenting jug has a proper water lock, slim to none.
If you rinse out your NEET pissjug and top it with a balloon, proceed with caution.

Actually just racked my first wine from my primary bucket into a Carboy yesterday
The color doesn’t look the best and I am expecting it to taste like unadulterated shit as it’s my first time but still interesting
Will probably make a thread about it eventually once the other wine and brewing threads disappear

>>12934159
what was your process? have you considered trying it now mid ferment? (48hrs)
What kinda juice

>>12934139
I'll buy a 1gal carboy off of Amazon and post my results in the future

>>12934132
Very little so long as you actually give a shit about what you're doing, and doing it for taste. The first batch is always the most expensive.

>>12934159
is that made from twizzlers or what?

>>12934168
> Harvested, cleaned, and mashed the grapes from my parents’ property (about 2 gallons)
> Added Roughly 4 Gallons of Grape Concentrate, Water, and Sugar with some Campden tablets
> Hydrometer reading between 1.09 - 1.11 at this point (Temp variations and I made some minor mistakes)
> After 24 Hours added Yeast Starter (KIV1116)
> Punched Down daily for week
> Racked Yesterday (Hydrometer around 1.01 yesterday)

>>12934179
It’s about 2 gallons home grown Concord grapes and the rest is Grape Concentrate and water (with added sugar of course) - I didn’t add enough tannin

i made my first batch of mead over a year ago, will probably bottle it soon. hoping that it'll taste ok and that i didn't fuck anything up.
my next batch i'm thinking is gonna be apple, vanilla, cinnamon to get an apple pie mead. when you buy apple juice, they usually have preservatives and additives and shit, is that gonna cause problems?

>>12926494
how do you make that trashcan airtight for fermenting? do you have to use a huge airlock? or is this some other method entirely?

>>12935206

You don't make it air tight at all. You rely on the high proof of the alcohol to kill everything in the wash. 13% is enough to keep it fresh until you distill it.

You place a polycarb top on it with bungie cords. You're not making wine, you're making vodka.

>>12929002
>>12929116
Thanks! I'll keep that in mind next time!

>>12928971
Green mead is fucking nasty. Even after just a few months in a bottle it's so much better. For actual high quality mead you need to age it for 6 months absolute minimum.

Got 3 rows of vines in my backyard about 20 ft long? Made a few gallons of Riesling last year but it looks like we're barely gonna have a harvest this year

Pro tip: tree syrups (like maple or birch or whatever) can be brewed and aged like mead. The resulting drink is apparently incredibly delicious.

>>12932627
Feel like using full sentences today dumbass? Maybe provide context to what you're saying

>>12935422
It is not.
Maple wine tastes like watered down maple syrup and is actually kind of disgusting.

>>12935448
Did you make the mistake of using Grade A syrup?

>>12935448
I wonder if you added orange zest, cinnamon, nutmeg etc and made a sort of maple cider it would be any good. I'd try it but that quantity of syrup is too fucking expensive for me.

I have two carboys in primary. One is mead pitched with EC-1118 that still has about 2-3 weeks to go. The other is hillbilly wine (concord grape juice+bread yeast) that's finishing up. I have a jug of fresh-pressed apple juice that'll I'll turn into cider at some point.

>>12935018
I used store brand apple juice with no problems. Just check the ingredients that it's no preservatives.

>>12931368
>I stuck two pieces of copper together, I'm the greatest
kys asshole

>>12926386
Same but with beer. Made 3 batches which were fun but the beer was always highly ehh. I would do it again but I need to replace a 30 cent part.

>>12932455
I feel you, i've been chronically unemployed and have probably averaged 3 5-gallon batches for the past three years. I'm looking into making some cheaper stuff like hooch and wild-foraging some stuff from my yard to make gruit and berry wine.
Besides the red ale I've got a 3 month old mead sitting at 12% but it still tastes like shit so no drinky on it until probably Winter.

I do a lot of food fermenting, but I've had poor luck with making booze (low alcohol, yeasty taste). Someone mentioned mead to me last night and so today I decided to see if I could make a little bit of it. We'll see what happens.

>>12935826

eat your moms tendies and go to bed you nothing.

i make rakija(from grape pomace),wine and all grain shine.

>>12937128

yeast tastes like yeast until it dies and falls out. keep that in mind.

>>12935826

Where'd you go, human nothingness?

>>12931786
That sounds bomb

>>12935448
I've made molasses "mead" before, and though it wasn't the best thing in the world, it mixed well. pamcacks o yis

I make some mead every so often. I have absolutely no idea how strong it becomes, but my guess it's maybe 3% maximum, but I doubt it becomes that strong.

>>12938561
Thanks. As soon as I'm not poor im making some.

>>12938816
I assume you mean 13%, which is probably accurate but 3% is way too low unless you cut off the fermentation early or are using literal bread yeast or something . My wines usually turn out pretty damn strong for wine anyway since I usually just let the yeast go through all the sugar and die to the alcohol naturally then I sweeten it up a bit at the end.

>>12938950
Bread yeast can easily hit double digit ABVs.

easy hard cider is just 100% apple juice, champagne or beer making yeast, brown sugar, and time. dont settle for using bread yeast, that shit's wack and champagne yeast is cheap online and easy to find in brewmaking stores.
i usually smash some other fruits like peaches, apricots, or pineapple into the mix and let it ferment for 20 days or so, filter it out with a foodsafe hose and let it age in jars in the fridge for a week or two.

>>12935500
No idea, it was a commercial wine.

Bump

was thinking of buying turbo yeast is it worth it ?