I remember reading a thread “Ask the ex-con” or something to that effect where it is mentioned that a form of alcohol distilled from bread and oranges is consumed in prison.
I have come to the realization that this recipe would be invaluable to me. Can anyone give me some direction on how i may obtain alcohol from bread and oranges (or apples i guess) with the least amount of equipment (since i assume it would have to be done this way in prison)
Much thanx
I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s very foul.
Inmates have been known to use any kind of juice you can think of, tomato juice included. The product, sometimes known as “Hooch” is nasty, stinky, bad-tasting, but will actually get you drunk.
Personally, I suggest just making your own wine at home. There are a great deal of recipes on the internet, one of which I remember that involved a few yeast packets, two cans of Welch’s Grape Juice concentrate, and a milk jug. I think it was called “Grandma’s Moonshine Wine.”
Anything with sugar can ferment.
Not everything which ferments is fit to drink, grasshopper.
cheap homemade cider isn’t bad, either. It is drinkable, anyway. But then again, I buy 12 packs of Beast Ice, so don’t look to me for comments on the taste of alcohol.
We just had a long thread on making booze at home: Can water be fermented? It’s pretty easy to make stuff that’ll get you drunk, but tougher to make stuff that also tastes good.
Oddly enough, there was just an article about prison hooch in the UK Guardian newspaper.
I’ve read elsewhere that there’s a further nasty aspect about the bread and orange thing; that they chew the bread and spit it. Starch doesn’t ferment, but the amylase in saliva breaks it down into fermentable sugar. (This trick is actually quite common worldwide - for instance, in native cultures that ferment drinks from cassava starch).
Basically any sugary fruit mixture will ferment if exposed to the air (it picks up wild yeast) then kept warm. Apart from giving flavour, fruit helps things along because yeast likes mildly acidic conditions and needs nutrients as well as sugar. As Lissa says, check out home winemaking; there are plenty of recipes - for instance, apple wine or raisin wine - that are simple, and nice to drink.
There were also recent articles in the LA Times http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-me-pruno23dec23.story and the NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/01/national/01PRIS.html (both require free registration). The Guardian article is partially based on the NY Times article.
I know an old man that’s been making his own booze for years. Water, rye-flour, and sugar are fermented in a couple of standard garbage pails. He keeps a hydrometer in there to tell when fermentation is complete, and a waterbed heater/thermostat to keep it at the right temp. All perfectly legal – until it’s distilled. He distills it twice, and gets something very like an overproof vodka out of it – which, in my opinion, is a suitable punishment for his crimes.
If you want to make libations at home, stick to wine, beer, & ale-- legal, and there’s lots of support out there for newbies. (Usenet will get you through.)
The thing about jailhouse brews is that they have appeal when there’s absolutely no other options, and you feel you absolutely must get drunk.
My late brother, who did a little time, used to horrify me with his stories of improvised brews. The one that sticks in my memory the most was about a can of stewed tomatos filched from the kitchen and allowed to ferment in a toilet tank. Inspections came up before the fermentation was complete, and my bro & his cellmate drank the crap as quick as they could – whilst it was still producing CO2.
Mmmmmm… yeasty. From the toilet.
The Russians make a drink called kvass out of bread. I never tried it, mainly because I have an aversion to drinking something called kvass.
You can also make an alcoholic brew from MILK. My brother who homebrews a lot decided to experiment. The end result was a translucent cloudy liquid (the opaque milk proteins coagulate and are skimmed out) that smelled like sour milk. It was alcoholic, but foul. Yeck.
Lots of recipe’s for kvass. Apparently it’s not very alcoholic though.
Pix xx
Lemur866
an alcohlic brew made from milk
Yes. See koumiss (traditionally made by nomadic tribes from mare’s milk). If it can be fermented, someone in the world will have thought of it long since.