Did you actually drink that? If so im surprised you’re still with us.
Why? How harmful could fermented sugar water be?
I gotta know, as previously mentioned I have some fermenting right now.
First of all, let’s reiterate that fermenting sugar water doesn’t make vodka, fermenting barley doesn’t make whiskey, and fermenting molasses doesn’t make rum. To make vodka, whiskey or rum you first ferment the sugar containing substance, producing an alcoholic liquid of beer/wine strength. It is perfectly legal in most counties to ferment any kind of sugar. What IS illegal is distilling the alcohol to concentrate it. You can produce wine, mead, beer, kvass, koumiss, etc., up to the limits mentioned above. (Koumiss is fermented milk. Not for the faint of heart)
In all forms of fermentation, the yeast eats sugars and excretes alcohol as a waste product. The alcohol is the yeast poop. But no organism can live in it’s own poop. Alcohol will kill yeast. Different yeast strains have different tolerances to alcohol, but most will start to die at around 10-15% alcohol. Special strains can take the concentration even higher, but 20% is about the limit. But the concentration of sugar has to be high enough…it doesn’t matter how hardy the yeast is, once they’ve eaten all the sugar they can’t make any more alcohol. If the concentration of sugar is higher than the tolerance of the yeast, there will still be sugars left over, and the beverage will be sweet. If the concentration of sugars is lower than the tolerance level, the yeast will eat it all and the beverage will be dry.
The OP is a little confused, in that WATER of course can’t be fermented. But pure sugar water can definately be fermented into alcohol, if you add yeast or allow it to capture wild yeast. Whenever I make hard cider, I just let the freshly pressed apple juice sit in the refridgerator for a few weeks. The natural yeasts from the cider mill are enough to innoculate the apple juice.
The one thing to watch out for is that alcohol is itself food for bacteria. Acetobacteria eat alcohol and poop acetic acid. If your brew gets contaminated with acetobacteria you’ll make vinegar instead of alcohol.
But of course, none of this will produce vodka or rum. For that you must distill the alcoholic brew. Alcohol has a lower boiling point than water, so if you gently boil the brew you can collect the alcohol vapor, and leave behind a lot of the water. You can do the same thing in reverse, since water has a lower freezing point than alcohol. Just leave your apple cider outside in winter. The water will freeze, leaving a concentrated alcohol residue. Distilling at home is definately illegal, and so is jacking cider. If you want to produce alcohol at home, stick to brewing.
PKbites-- if you have the inclination to try an additional experiment, could you do a second batch with dextrose instead of sucrose? I’d be interested to know how much of a taste difference there is. I’d be interested in the difference between bread yeast vs cheap beer packet yeast, too.
Okay, I thought vodka came from potato sugars. Putting in a spoonful of white, granulated sugar sure wouldn’t make vodka, right?
Vodka can be made from any sort of material that contains sugar. Potatoes, beets, grain, sugar, whatever. But it has to be DISTILLED. You can’t brew a batch of vodka. You can brew an alcoholic mash from sugar that can be made into vodka, if only it were legal to make vodka at home, which it isn’t.
It is quite easy to make a cheap, prison-cell alcoholic beverage out of pretty much any thing that has any sort of sugar. Dried fruit, sugar, honey, cookies, milk, bread, juice, applesauce, whatever. It will probably taste like crap, but it is possible and legal. But it will only be as strong as beer or wine. My brother has made mead using specially hardy yeast that was VERY strong…about 20% alcohol. But that’s not even close to the level in Vodka, Whiskey, or Rum.
I didn’t know that at all. Thanks, Lemur866.
A couple of points. Vodka is usually fermented potato mash. But ordinary Vodka is essentially pure ethanol and water, so it matters very little where you started. Second, if you want a cite for the legality of a state passing alcohol laws in conflict with the federal read the US constitution, the repeal amendment (I think it is the 21st) that explicitly gives states the right to regulate alcohol inside their borders, the interstate commerce clause notwithstanding. And of course, Congress could permit state law to override federal law, but in this case there is no choice. Finally, many years ago, I would take gallon jugs of sweet cider, top them up (so there would be little oxygen) add sugar and ordinary baker’s yeast and leave them by a radiator for about 48 hours and then refrigerate it. I made some very respectable tasting cider that way. Be sure to put the cap on loosely since a fair amount of C02 comes off. Actually, I put a cotton plug and then a loose cap. Perfectly legal in IL at any rate.
I can’t speak to what other countries us, but here in the U.S., vodka is almost always made from grain.
I had the idea that homebrewing was legal in all 50 states now, but I guess I was wrong. Home brewing of beer appears to be illegal in Alabama, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah. The status is unclear or complicated in Louisiana, Maine, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, and West Virginia. It is permitted in the other 37 states. For an overview of state laws, see http://www.beertown.org/AHA/Legal/list.htm There are some quirks. Okalhoma appears to permit making wine or fermented cider at home, but not beer for some reason.
Home distilling is illegal everywhere in the U.S. (and so of course we won’t discuss how to do it, nor web sites or books that do). But home distilling is legal in some countries, like New Zealand.
No, but it wouldn’t have hurt. It was too cold for the bread yeast to ferment it fully, so I’m sure it would have just been yeast kool-aid with a kick. It probably has some methanol in it, but no more than any other home brew, and not enough to be a worry unless you distill it and drink the foreshots.
The flavor probably won’t be very good, especially if it’s dry. Dead yeast, water, and alcohol.
There’s a processing plant north of here, in Muscatine, where they ferment corn. Then they distill it, and sell 100% alcohol to beverage companies who then dilute or flavor it for vodka and such.
Something they do makes the whole town reek, but they do a lot of other corn processing there so it could be another process.
…they distill it, and sell 100% alcohol…
I assume you mean they sell 95% alcohol. My understanding is that is impossible to get 100% alcohol by distillation alone–it requires further, more expensive procedures.
Gary brings me to an interesting question: Is there an effective purely artificial way to turn sugars into alcohols? Say it isn’t even sugar to ethanol. Say it’s sugar to methanol or another alcohol type (the names of which I’ve forgotten).
Do we currently need yeast (or another microorganism) to create any kind of alcohol?
Mods, please feel free to edit/delete this post if it violates board policies. I’m pretty sure the statute of limitations has passed on this.
Back in 1981, when I was a lowly college freshman, my roommate and I conducted the experiment Hayduke Lives!! described in the OP. We liberated a bunch of sugar packets from the dorm cafeteria, mixed them with water & baker’s yeast, and fermented the mixture in cheap champagne bottles (because they had plastic corks).
To allow for the release of CO2, we poked a small pinhole in the plastic cork and kept the bottles submerged in a wastebasket full of water; that way, excess CO2 would bubble out, and that which didn’t bubble out would keep the water from coming in.
So far, so good – up to now, we’re legal (I was 19 at the time, which was the legal drinking age then, and my state allowed home brewing). But we didn’t stop there 
We paid a visit to the chemistry department, which at the time sold lab equipment over the counter. After spending about $20 on a large flask, some glass and rubber tubing, and a few stoppers, we constructed our own still.
Then, one Saturday afternoon, when everyone else on the floor was at the big football game, we distilled our sugar/yeast mixture (which looked like Mountain Dew, but smelled like rancid urine). We managed to produce a pint or two of rather strong alcohol (strong enough to burn).
It tasted rather like Everclear, with a strong rubber aftertaste from the surgical tubing we used to connect the glass bits. We drank about half of it, but the rubber taste was rather hard to hide, so we saved the rest for use later that evening.
My roommate, who was more than a little drunk (mostly on beer, not our stuff), took the unconsumed alcohol and wandered the halls of our dorm. When he found a room with a light on and a closed door, he poured a bit of the hooch under the door and lit it – fortunately, the dorm rooms had tile floors. He met quite a few people that evening, including one who, 5 years later, was the best man at his wedding 
Great story 3way. Wasn’t college fun?!
I don’t think you will get as much alcohol as you think. Just as man does not live by bread alone, yeast does not live by sugar alone. The maximum percentage of alcohol you can get by fermentation is as stated before about 18% under ideal conditions. Without proper nutrition the yeast won’t be able to convert much of the sugar into alcohol. Your mileage may vary, but I would guess you will end up with a sweet nasty brew. I’ve been brewing beer at home for years. It’s fun and can be as easy as boiling water. If your interested, I’d recomend ‘The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing’ by Charlie Papazian.
Enjoy
Another experiment for pkbites…
Use champagne or wine yeast instead of normal brewers yeast. This should give you a higher alcohol content, as the wine yeast can withstand higher alcohol content (12 percent) than larger yeast (5 percent).
sugar, water, wine yeast —> mmmmm 
Wow! Thanks for all the responses, guys!
Alright. The bottle was swelled up like it was going to burst, and even the Oztop wasn’t allowing enough pressure to escape, so I had to crack it open. Spelled like alcohol, though alcohol really should have no smell.
Tasted like…:eek:
Well, it tastes like sugar that’s been steeped in watered down alcohol, really. I would estimate it at about 30 proof (15%) alcohol, give or take. The yeast I used wouldn’t have fermented any higher than 18% or so anyway.
I can make wine at that proof, and it’ll taste much better this shit!
I’m dumping it out.
There’s your answer Hayduke. Sugar water can be fermented, but…blech!
Why would you want to?
Aren’t you underage, anyway?:rolleyes:
>>There’s your answer Hayduke. Sugar water can be fermented, but…blech! Why would you want to?<<
Because that makes the mash for the still - of course this is not legal for us to do - I should shut up now as TMI has angered the admin staff in the past!
What I made was not illegal (not in this, or most states, anyway). It was nothing but “sugar wine”. Neither Hayduke, nor myself mentioned anything about distilling it. Nothing but 100% legal activity being discussed here.