# How do prisoners make alcohol in jail? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 17, 2004, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584 "2004-04-17T23:16:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2016, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/21 "2016-07-09T04:17:04Z")
Man…is the need for alcohol \*that \*desperate? ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2016, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/22 "2016-07-09T16:22:32Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Man…is the need for alcohol \*that \*desperate? Yes. That’s what alcoholism is, a desperate desire for it. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2016, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/23 "2016-07-09T19:12:14Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Man…is the need for alcohol \*that \*desperate? > [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > Yes. That’s what alcoholism is, a desperate desire for it. Quoted for impact and example of truth. People will attempt to eat rocks for hunger–and a pathology can be as _essential_ as any instinctive life force. As a personal aside, as shocking to me, perhaps, as this is to **Velocity** , is learning about the desperate and almost unthinkable ways the mentally ill will endeavor to end their lives. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2016, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/24 "2016-07-09T19:21:14Z")
> [@jaykay197575](#): > > Right…you get a 5 litre tub, easily available from the cleaners, collect about 15 oranges, again easily gotten when they have the fruit option at mealtimes, about 1-2 kilo’s of sugar and yeast or marmite, easily gotten from the kitchens. squeeze all the oranges into the tub, add the marmite or yeast and half the sugar, fill ip[ up halfway, and cook it every night using hot water in a mop bucket, after 4 days add the rest of the sugay and fill container right up, remember to spear holes in the lid or it will explode, give it another 6 days of cooking at night time, then drain and drink…it gets u rat-arsed but the hangover is hardcore…also when youve drained, keep the dregs at the bottom and just add more oranges and sugar to kick it off again…hope this helps I have never heard of cooking brew. Grains are cooked only in the begaining to extract sugars. The only other reason for cooking is to distill the alcohol after the yeast has quit working. ---
**Author:** ![Gilbert1984](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Gilbert1984](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gilbert1984)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2016, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/25 "2016-07-12T11:05:53Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > [Pruno](http://www.blacktable.com/gillin030901.htm) The original article contains this epic quote (epic to speakers of English English as opposed to American English) “the Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center in Santa Clarita Valley – hatched a scheme to let inmates pick grapes at a winery and shag golf balls at a local driving range.” I didn’t know it was physically possible to “shag golf balls”. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2016, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/26 "2016-07-12T16:19:28Z")
> [@D.E.S.K.Top668](#): > > [THIS](http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000373.php) is a funny, yet informative, article about the production of prison wine and a review of the result. > > Peace - DESK Thank you for this by the way. Very entertaining. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2016, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/27 "2016-07-12T23:55:36Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Zombie notwithstanding, why are you cooking it? Or do mean merely warming it up a bit to speed up fermentation? Considering their only source of heat is the hot water tap in their cell, they aren’t so much cooking it as heating to aid fermentation. > [@Velocity](#): > > Man…is the need for alcohol \*that \*desperate? You don’t know the half of it. A cop at one of those anti drug seminars explained some of the bad shit people were doing for a high or to get drunk. Take a foot long loaf of french bread, trim the ends to make a cylinder, pour a bottle of liquid shoe polish through the bread, drink what comes out at the bottom. > [@Gilbert1984](#): > > The original article contains this epic quote (epic to speakers of English English as opposed to American English) > > “the Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center in Santa Clarita Valley – hatched a scheme to let inmates pick grapes at a winery and shag golf balls at a local driving range.” > > I didn’t know it was physically possible to “shag golf balls”. Yeah, I caught that one. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/28 "2016-07-13T00:21:53Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > Considering their only source of heat is the hot water tap in their cell, they aren’t so much cooking it as heating to aid fermentation. I was wondering because hot water from a tap (around 50C) gets into the yeast killing territory. I guess if you just dunk it in that water, you’ll be fine and speed the process up. Might affect the flavor negatively a bit but, well, flavor is not what we’re going for in prison hooch, after all… ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/29 "2016-07-13T00:30:08Z")
So, we’ve established that: 1. people will go to great lengths to alter their reality, if only for a little while 2. fermentation is a basic principle that can be practiced just about anywhere 3. **jayjay197575** doesn’t know what it is talking about 4. When given a choice, the red is preferable to the white 5. zombies like hooch too ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/30 "2016-07-13T10:04:23Z")
> [@usedtobe](#): > > Fermentation vs distillation. Remember that **distillation** is just concentrating the products of **fermentation**. So while yeast mainly produce ethanol during anerobic digestion, they do also produce some methanol. The problem is that methanol is rather toxic, and the concentration provided by distillation is enough to make the end result lethal, if the early fraction (containing most of the methanol) is not discarded. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/31 "2016-07-13T16:25:49Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > …You don’t know the half of it. A cop at one of those anti drug seminars explained some of the bad shit people were doing for a high or to get drunk. Take a foot long loaf of french bread, trim the ends to make a cylinder, pour a bottle of liquid shoe polish through the bread, drink what comes out at the bottom… What part of the precipitate of shoe polish gets you high? Real question. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/32 "2016-07-13T17:28:13Z")
> [@Gilbert1984](#): > > The original article contains this epic quote (epic to speakers of English English as opposed to American English) > > “the Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center in Santa Clarita Valley – hatched a scheme to let inmates pick grapes at a winery and shag golf balls at a local driving range.” > > I didn’t know it was physically possible to “shag golf balls”. To clear up any confusion among non-Americans, shagging balls means retrieving balls after they’ve been hit out into a field. It started as a baseball term. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/33 "2016-07-13T19:39:55Z")
Well, a rich gal will drink good pineapple juice And a poor gal will do quite the same. Yeah, but my gal she drinkin’ old shoe polish You know she’d get drunk just the same - _My Gal_, The Lovin’ Spoonful Shoe polish often contains ethanol and methanol to speed the drying process. It’s something you drink when you’d rather be dead than sober, like kerosene or sterno. ---
**Author:** ![skdo23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@skdo23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/skdo23)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/34 "2016-07-13T20:59:18Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > You don’t know the half of it. A cop at one of those anti drug seminars explained some of the bad shit people were doing for a high or to get drunk. Take a foot long loaf of french bread, trim the ends to make a cylinder, pour a bottle of liquid shoe polish through the bread, drink what comes out at the bottom. I’ve heard stories of soldiers doing the same thing w/ Aqua Velva during WWII. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/35 "2016-07-13T21:27:00Z")
> [@si\_blakely](#): > > Remember that **distillation** is just concentrating the products of **fermentation**. > > So while yeast mainly produce ethanol during anerobic digestion, they do also produce some methanol. The problem is that methanol is rather toxic, and the concentration provided by distillation is enough to make the end result lethal, if the early fraction (containing most of the methanol) is not discarded. My understanding is that typically the stories you hear about people going blind or dying from illegal spirits is because they’ve been cut with antifreeze or industrial methanol, not improperly distilled. I’ve researched this before and it seems that even if you don’t discard the “heads,” you’ll at worst suffer from a nasty hangover and the amount of alcohol you would need to drink to get methanol poisoning would kill you before you reach that point. ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/36 "2016-07-14T08:36:31Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > My understanding is that typically the stories you hear about people going blind or dying from illegal spirits is because they’ve been cut with antifreeze or industrial methanol, not improperly distilled. I’ve researched this before and it seems that even if you don’t discard the “heads,” you’ll at worst suffer from a nasty hangover and the amount of alcohol you would need to drink to get methanol poisoning would kill you before you reach that point. Yeah, there isn’t too much detail on how much methanol you can get in fermented beverages, and I did search. I would suspect that when distilling a large batch of mash directly into a jug, the “heads” could well be collected into a single jug that might have sufficient methanol toxicity. But I also know that the bigger risk for drinking moonshine was distillers using piping with lead in it, or car radiators with glycol residue, even if they did not cut the product with methanol. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/37 "2016-07-14T15:50:54Z")
I imagine that this is part of why cheap-ass wines like MD20/20 are so bad. They skip the expense of removing the head or tail of the distilling run and pass the misery on to the consumer. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/38 "2016-07-14T16:08:11Z")
> [@Hypno-Toad](#): > > I imagine that this is part of why cheap-ass wines like MD20/20 are so bad. They skip the expense of removing the head or tail of the distilling run and pass the misery on to the consumer. Wines are not distilled. ETA: But, wait, is Mad Dog fortified? So, maybe, but I would suspect that cheap grain spirits industrially distilled would be careful to keep the methanol content down. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/39 "2016-07-14T17:26:59Z")
Not to hijack, but is it common for alcoholic criminals to emerge from prison de-toxed, due to being deprived of alcohol? ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584/40 "2016-07-14T18:54:06Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > …A cop at one of those anti drug seminars explained some of the bad shit people were doing for a high or to get drunk. Take a foot long loaf of french bread, trim the ends to make a cylinder, pour a bottle of liquid shoe polish through the bread, drink what comes out at the bottom… > > > [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > > > What part of the precipitate of shoe polish gets you high? Real question. > > > > > [@Atamasama](#): > > > > > > Well, a rich gal will drink good pineapple juice > > > And a poor gal will do quite the same. > > > Yeah, but my gal she drinkin’ old shoe polish > > > You know she’d get drunk just the same > > > > > > - _My Gal_, The Lovin’ Spoonful > > > > > > Shoe polish often contains ethanol and methanol to speed the drying process. It’s something you drink when you’d rather be dead than sober, like kerosene or sterno. Thanks. So it’s not the precipitate, it’s the solvent…and, FTR, the separated components were trapped by baguette-filtration, meaning they weren’t precipitates by definition, and I was unwisely showing off some misunderstood fancy vocabulary. So I learned _two_ things. Three, if you count learning there is even such a thing as bread filtration. ETA: Four, counting the song reference. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-prisoners-make-alcohol-in-jail/240584.md?page=3)