(Part 2) Top products from r/prisonhooch

Can you please provide more information about the process you undertook?

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I'll paste my go to guide that was given to me by a member of this sub:

I like high ABV hooch, and I have a couple of rules of thumb for grams per liter or cups per gallon, the easiest one to start with is probably 3 cups of sugar per gallon for a 14% ABV hooch. You can adjust up or down from there, so 2 cups per gallon is around 9% and 1 cup per gallon is around 4%.

A little tip if you want to push your yeast to high ABV brews: 'step feeding' is where you start with about half of the sugar then add the rest after your yeast is well established and bubbling away. If your sugar concentration is too high to start with the fermentation can either take a very long time to start or not start at all.

So, a basic recipe would look like this:

1. 1 gallon - just go to Walmart or whatever grocery store is convenient and pick up whatever is cheapest (as long as it doesn't have preservatives, most don't)
   
   
2. pour out about 4 cups of the juice to make room for all the sugar you're going to add
   
   
3. add 2 cups of sugar, cap it, and shake vigorously until it's all dissolved
   
   
4. add a packet/teaspoon of yeast. If you have fancy cider/wine yeast then use that, but bread yeast will work just fine. Add whatever you have for nutrients. Boiled yeast and fruits or tomato paste/ketchup, just give your yeast a little something to chew on. Cap it and shake it again to get everything intermixed.
   
   
5. loosen the cap just enough for air to escape. You can rig up a balloon air lock (or even a real airlock) if you really want to, but I've never had an issue with just a loose cap. put it somewhere that's not too hot and not too cold. mid-70s F is ideal.
   
   
6. You should see lots of bubbles after a couple of days. Let it bubble away until there is noticeably less activity: time to step feed.
   
   
7. Add two more cups of sugar syrup and shake until it's all dissolved. Your yeast may or may not be able to tolerate eating all of this. Baking yeast might die off as the alcohol content rises.
   
   
8. You should see some renewed fermentation... just let it sit with a vented cap until you're not seeing any more bubbles and pour yourself a little taste. If it's still sweet, then the fermentation is stalled and it's probably as strong as you're going to get with the yeast/techniques being used. If it's really dry then you're all set, but you might want to back sweeten it before you drink it. You can add a little simple syrup or other sweetener to taste.
   
   
9. Move it to the fridge for the 'cold crash'. Let all the sediment fall to the bottom then either siphon it to another container (vinyl tubing is dirt cheap at most hardware stores) or gently pour it off while doing your best to not disturb the layer at the bottom. You can do this a couple of times until no more sediment falls to the bottom.
   
   
   Alcobase Extreme 23% Turbo Yeast 16.4 oz. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008Y0NWX0/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_mAEBDb2KZ3Y8Fó

Fantastic post overall!!!

> Remove balloon and slowly pour into separate container, careful to leave dead yeast at the bottom of container

Use a coffee filter if you're going this route. Otherwise, using a siphon or puncturing a hole near the bottom of the container is much more effective.

> 64 fl oz bottle Great Value 100% juice

Are you sure this doesn't have preservatives that may affect the wine? It's definitely usable, but perhaps Welch's or an organic brand would produce a higher-quality yield.

> 1 packet Fleischmann's Baker's Yeast

While baker's yeast works well, consider that real wine yeast is just as cheap, and is on Amazon. Wine yeast produces a better yield, and if you can get it for the same price as baker's yeast, I highly reccomend it.

Basic chemical nutrient mixes are fairly cheap, but you can also use things like tomato paste or fruit purees. Some people use raisins, but everything I've read says that they make really mediocre nutrients. Probably still better than nothing.

Distillation isn't practical for me, so I haven't experimented with turbo yeast/high ABV hooch, but if you're determined to hit maximum ABV you might need some equipment to aerate your brew. This page has some info about the science behind aeration from a beer brewing perspective.

Whatever you decide to try, take before and after readings with your hygrometer and let us know how it comes out!

'Super wine yeast' plus yeast nutrient from the same company. I think using something a bit more... sophisticated might produce a better flavour but it is really fast acting and tolerates high alcohol levels.

First bubbles usually occur about half an hour after adding it and within a day or two (took slightly longer this time because it was colder) it is foaming like crazy with a bubble in the airlock about every 0.5 seconds. It's become even faster now than it was when I filmed this 5 hours ago.

The price of both of them seems to have gone up by £1 since I ordered though so there may be better options at the moment.

Haha alright, I talked to someone here about drinking lemon extract, I can't vouch for it personally (very alcoholic according to the label, he said it worked pretty well) but it could be worth a try if you aren't worried about gagging a bit

Rice by itself won't ferment much because most of the carbohydrates are undigestible starches. The way sake is made, is that you cultivate a special mold on a portion of the rice which produces enzymes that convert the starches to sugar so that the yeast can digest it.

You can buy a bag of this cultured rice online, and if you mix that with some cooked rice (cool it first so you don't destroy the enzymes), you will produce sugar from rice which can then be made into alcohol.

https://www.amazon.com/MIYAKO-Malted-making-Pickles-Isesou/dp/B004FH67ZQ/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=koji+rice&qid=1568574737&s=gateway&sr=8-3

You can definitely get cheaper heating belts than that, I have one that I paid around £7 for. All it does is supply heat, you wrap it around your container and there's no temperature control or anything so you have to monitor your brew's temp manually (easy if you have a floating thermometer or stick on thermo strip) but it does the job. Mine looks something like this

Not really, sorry... Stay away from Orange Juice. Apple or grape. If you follow the water directions for the juice and add some decent yeast, you'll be fine. I learned all I know about making apple cider from this: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00F0XW3QG/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1 worth getting the kindle version.

Also, theres some recipes floating around this sub, too.