I don’t have the equipment to try this.
To make wine one adds brewing yeast to grape juice. The yeast turns the sugars in the juice to alcohol. Add more sugar to the juice, and the yeast makes more alcohol. Right?
So, what if you add that same yeast to a bottle of sugar water? Will it turn the sugar water into alcohol? Would that be a quick and dirty way of making vodka?
Well, you would wind up with alcohol if you use the right kind of yeast. I don’t know if you could call it vodka which is really just grain alcohol these days. However vodka does have some flavor.
You could add honey to water and make mead, molassas and make rum, but watch out for the “revenooers.”
You are only allowed to make a small quantity per year for you own use if you want to stay legal in the US, and the moderators don’t like instructions for doing things that are illegal. So we might get shut off.
What are you talking about? None of this is illegal!
David, one is allowed in the U.S. to make 100 gallons of home brewed beer or wine per person, up to 200 gallons per house hold. That’s actually not a small quantity. A large store bought jug of wine is about 1 gallon, so you can legally make 200 of those jugs a year (assuming you don’t live alone). That’s a lot of booze. A case of beer is about 2.5 gallons give or take. You could legally brew more than a case a week. As long as it’s not being sold, none of this is illegal.
I don’t believe trying to ferment sugar water qualifies as making grain alcohol. though I do have the equipment, I’ve never tried it.
In fact, I even own the kit 'duke linked to. It works well. I recommend it.
Yep. I’ve done it. The yeast will die off when they get alchohol poisoning, so it’s not like you’re going to start with sugarwater and end up with 200 proof alchohol, without the use of equipment not currently legal in the U.S. Move to N.Z.
What equipment? I took a gallon mason jar, filled it with warm water, dissolved some sugar, and dumped in a spoonfull of bread yeast. I left it in the warmest dark spot I could find, which wasn’t very warm, and it still smelled of alcohol a few days later.
But how much alcohol? (what percentage) And what would Haydukes concoction taste like?
STAY TUNED! I have just mixed up a batch of sugar water and added some yeast to it, put it in a 2 liter bottle and topped it with my OZTOPS I’ll report back here in a week with my results
(sombody please remind me via e-mail if I forget to report back:D).
Sounds like you all are making Zima!
Reminds me of that line from The Matrix: “This stuff is good for two things: degreasing engines and killing brain cells.”
I don’t drink. Never have, never will. Given that ethyl alcohol has certain properties besides giving you a buzz (disinfectant, solvent, reactant), would it be legal to create pure alcohol (using the simple methods in this thread, possibly refined to create a higher proof endproduct) for personal non-consumption? Would it have to be denatured?
How the hell would the government even know?
Well, for it to be legal, you’d have to file the correct permits. As for the government finding out, they probably wouldn’t unless you screwed something up and had a big explosion, or someone ratted you out.
Also, it depends upon where in the US you live. Tennessee is one of those states where it’s illegal to brew your own, but in one of the strange quirks of law, it’s perfectly legal to sell the kit.
Common yeasts will stop growing when the alcohol content of the medium, juice or water, reaches 10-14%. If you want to produce something with more kick, you should know that it’s illegal to distill alcohol at home in the U.S. (BATF faqs) I think it may be legal to concentrate the fermentation product by cooling it and removing the pure water ice that forms on the surface. Others claim that “The BATF considers this to be essentially the same as distillation.”
Sure, drinking kills brain cells, but only the weak ones!
The only kind of neurons are weak neurons.
Never too old to learn. I thought for sure it was down in the 5 gallon range.
As far as 100 gallons of beer/year being a lot, when I was in my drinking days that was just a warm up for the serious stuff. Hell, that’s only a little over a quart a day.
This is incorrect. While it is illegal, via federal law, to home distill grain alcohol (whiskey, vodka, etc.) it is perfectly legal, via federal Law to home brew beer/wine for personal consumption. I don’t believe state laws can trump the federal Homebrewing statute.
If I’m wrong about that, I want to see a cite.
i don’t believe trying to ferment sugar water qualifies as grain alcohol. It’s simply a sweet wine, if anything. The batch I made up this morning is doing something. The bottle is puffed up with some carbination.
Yeah, it’s kind of odd calling something “grain alcohol” when no grain is involved.
Well, I have an old cite that claims that Arkansas also has disallowed home brewing, but the cite is old - from the 1980’s. I’m not certain that the States are disallowed from home rule over homebrewing, so long as they are not in violation of Federal law.
pkbites, here’s a comment by a Utahan (Utahian?) from Homebrew Digest which indicates that in Utah, such things are illegal
So while I can’t find anything for TN, there’s a claim from at least one individual that in Utah, it’s illegal to do so.
Well, I was somewhat mistaken. While Federal law allows for home wine and beer production, it specifically does not trump state laws/regulations.
However, I was on another web site which state 49 of 50 states had adopted some form of the Federal Law allowing home brewing.
But I forgot to copy the URL, so I can’t paste it up here. I’m searching for it, though, and when I find it, I’ll paste it here.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Tennessee were the remaining state not allowing home brewing. I remember some years ago I was driving back to Wisconsin from Miami. I took a specific route so I could visit the Jack Daniels distillary. I figured it’d be like a tour of a Milwaukee brewery and I’d get free samples at the end of the tour. No such luck! They make it in a “dry county” and all I got was some spring water!:mad: what the hell is wrong with people down there? they can make whiskey but can’t drink it? DRY COUNTY! How absurd!Duh!:rolleyes:
Yeah, there’s not a lot of logic to this state. We had Prohibition going back before the rest of the US. I always had fun at work when they asked for locations for the company picnic. I’d suggest the Jack Daniels distillery just to watch folks get excited, and then crestfallen when I reminded them that it’s a dry county. I think they have amended the laws there slightly so that you can get some samples now.