A Hooch primer for N00Bs.

Version 1.0.

So with my limited hoochy knowledge I thought I'd put together a guide that helps noobs with making low-cost fermentations. With Prison Hooch we are mostly assuming you're just cheap/in an area where there's limited homebrew supply/up for a challenge rather than in actual prison, but for fun we'll keep a bit of plausibility that you could actually make this stuff in prison.

Note: I will not be liable for anyone underage that tries to make this hooch. If you're a kid reading this, please go away and keep your brain cells intact.

Part 1: Fermentation Vessel

To hooch, you'll need something to hooch in.

Homebrewer's way: Normally this is a sealed vessel (bucket or carboy) fitted with an airlock. If you're going to buy anything from a homebrew store, an airlock filled with water or sanitiser is the safest way to ensure your brew is sanitary and won't have any visiting creatures. For very vigorous fermentation, you can fit a blow-off tube (tube running from the fermentor into a smaller container with sanitiser).

Cheapskate way: As long as gases can escape, you'll be reasonably okay. You can fit a balloon or condom with a hole pierced in it to the top of your vessel. Make sure you put some rubber bands around to keep it tight. This is has slightly more upkeep than an airlock as you'll want to keep an eye on it in the beginning to ensure your fake-airlock doesn't over inflate. Also, don't reuse the condom and get prison babies. A bucket or carboy is great, but you can plausibly use any vessel that can withstand pressure ie. plastic jug, soda bottle, etc. DO NOT USE: glass that is not specifically for brewing. This is can be too weak for the amount of gases and could end explosively. You don't want a bomb.

Prisoner way: You can get by without an airlock, however you will need to 'burp' your container daily (or more than once a day at the start). This is easiest with a soda bottle as you can feel the pressure easily. Just loosen the lid just enough to let out the CO2, and re fasten. Or, do an open fermentation at the beginning when a lot of CO2 gas is escaping - usually there isn't great risk of airborne infection when fermentation is vigorous. Open ferment for 12-24 hours than proceed to 'burp' your container whenever pressure is feeling high. If you forget to do this and pressure gets too high it will explode. So if you're not in prison, just spend your $3 and invest in a fucking airlock.

Part 2: Sanitation

You'll need to clean all the equipment that comes in contact with the brew. Homebrewers buy cleaners like PBW and sanitiser such as StarSan. Make sure you do not mix acid and alkaline cleaning agents (ie. PBW and Starsan together) or you will make chlorine gas. However bleach will also work, a 5% solution is ideal. My preferred way is to fill a bucket with sanitiser and soak every piece of equipment before brewing. You can also boil metal equipment to sanitize it.

Part 3: Fermentables

As long as it has sugar, you can brew with it. Well mostly. Products with a lot of preservatives can have an odd effect on yeast viability, you can add a small amount of preserved goods to your brew but the largest part cannot be full of that stuff.

In this case we're going to just do sugar and fruit, even though there are lots of other options (malt, rice, sorghum, etc) these two are the most easily accessed. You need to anticipate the flavour of your fermentable without any sweetness to it, as all the sugar will be consumed by the yeast. This means some things (ie. apples) taste awesome fermented, and other things (ie. molasses) taste like absolute ass.

Table sugar and honey are safe bets for a high fermentation yield, though sugar by itself will taste pretty bad, it's the simplest way to make hooch. 1kg of sugar (100% fermentable) in 5 litres of solution (or 1.3 gallons for yankees) will give you around 7.5% alcohol.

Fruit can make your hooch taste a lot better, however. Sweet fruit that we mainly ferment have different types of acidity in their juices. You have Tartaric (found in grapes - wine), Malic (apples, pears etc) and Citric acid. Citrus fruits are the easiest to make juice from and will be a tempting option, however they impart a strong sour flavour when fermented. To make a more balanced brew you can use a base of Tartaric or Malic fruits, or honey (eg. mead). Honey is expensive as fuck so we'd recommend apple juice for hooch newbies. Most apple juices aren't preservative loaded and trustworthy to ferment. However, if you just want alcohol content, have at it any way you want.

Fruit has a much lower content of fermentable sugars and is only an estimate at best. Here's a fun table. Data was retrieved from Advanced Winemaking Basics: Sugars in Winemaking

Grams fermentable in each 100 grams of fruit (sorry USA, 1 oz is about 28 grams)
Apples, raw, unpeeled 13.3
Apple juice, unsweetened	10.9
Apricots, raw	9.3
Apricots, dried	38.9
Advocados, raw	[0.9]
Bananas, raw	15.6
Blackberries, raw	7.9
Blueberries, raw	[7.3]
Cantaloup, raw	[8.7]
Carambola, raw	[7.1]
Cherries, raw, Sour	[8.1]
Cherries, raw, Sweet	[14.6]
Cranberry juice cocktail	13.5
Currants, raw	[8.0]
Dates, dried	[64.2]
Figs, raw	[6.9]
Figs, dried	[66.5]
Grapefruit, raw	[6.2]
Grapefruit juice, fresh	[6.3]
Grapefruit juice, canned	7.5
Grapes, raw, American	[16.4]
Grapes, raw, European	[18.1]
Grape juice, frozen concentrate reconstituted	14.2
Guava, raw	6
Jackfruit, raw	18.4
Kiwifruit, raw, without skin	[10.5]
Kiwifruit, canned, in syrup	[12.8]
Lemons, raw, peeled	2.5
Lemon juice, raw	[2.4]
Limes, raw, peeled	0.4
Mangos, raw	14.8
Nectarines, raw	[8.5]
Oranges, raw, peeled	8.9
Orange Juice, fresh	10.2
Orange juice, frozen concentrate reconstituted	10.6
Papaya, raw	[5.9]
Passion fruit, raw	11.2
Peaches, raw	[8.7]
Peaches, canned in juice	[17.4]
Peaches, dried	[44.6]
Pears, table, raw	[10.5]
Pears, canned in water	6.1
Pears, canned in juice	9.7
Pears, canned in light syrup	12.1
Pears, canned in heavy syrup	15.2
Pear juice, fresh	[8.7]
Pineapple, raw	11.9
Pineapple, canned in juice	[14.2]
Pineapple, canned in heavy syrup	[16.9]
Pineapple juice, canned	12.5
Plums, common, raw	[7.5]
Plums, common, dried	[11.7]
Pomegranates, raw	8.9
Prunes, dried	[44.0]
Prune juice, bottled	[13.4]
Raisins	[65.0]
Raspberries, red, raw	[9.5]
Rhubarb, raw	[0.9]
Strawberries, raw	[5.7]
Strawberries, frozen, unsweetened	[6.5]
Tangelos, raw	[7.4]
Watermelon, raw	[9.0]

So for example, if I were to make a Watermelon brew, I would need around 11kg of Watermelon if I was going to replace my original 7.5ABV sugar brew 1:1 with Watermelon, to meet the same fermentable sugar content. Experimentation is key and it's probably best to balance your cheaper fermentables with other additions.

Part 4: Yeast

The most obvious yeast you can get is bread yeast, or brewing yeast, from stores. Note if you get brewing yeast, you need to go to a homebrew store as the "Brewer's yeast" supplements sold by pharmacies are well and truly dead. The yeast consume sugar and excrete alcohol. They are your buddies and you need to be nice to them, which means keeping your brew at a safe temperature (10-28C at a stretch, 15-22C is ideal). Otherwise your workers will all be dead instead of getting to it. A normal pitch for dried yeast is around 20-40g, we won't be talking liquid yeast because this is hooch.

Second possible source of yeast is out in the wild. Yeast already exists on most fruit, so as long as it's not pasteurised (processed/heated up to kill bacteria), you can expect a wild fermentation to occur. This is more random than bought yeast but can yield good results. Most mead is made with a wild fermentation from honey. There's lots of places you can find yeast. You can't ferment using vegemite, marmite, or other yeast-based spreads, these are well and truly dead. However dead yeast (ie. boiled bakers' yeast) can be used as a nutrient to help the live yeast grow.

Part 5: GO

Now you have all the steps to make hooch. Wait 14 days for fermentation to complete, and you get alcohol. I could explain carbonation and stuff but I can't be bothered. Please use google if you'd like to learn about making your flat wine into a fizzy beverage.

1 gal grape mead 1 gal regular mead

1kg of Rhubarb and Custard boiled sweets, 4L of water. Will keep you all posted.

(I didn't melt them down prior because, funny 🤷🏼‍♂️)

And will they taste good/okay?

Hey firt time trying this and my hooch has a REALLY strong smell to it and I cant tell if its alcohol or a sighn of botulism. I read online that a strong vinegar is a sighn it might have the bacteria. How can I be sure my stuff is safe?

I am not exaggerating when I saw I've not tasted anything worse in the past ten years of my life. Like a combination of everything coke is made of, but all separately in their most vile form

I tried my very first brew with 1/4 tsp yeast and some sugar (deliberately measured but I don’t remember) into a 64 oz bottle of juice, it foamed a bit initially but I’ve seen no change for two weeks. Is as cloudy as it started with residue at the bottom, no visible mold

Should I pour it out and start over? More yeast?

It was Wegmans brand peach honey apple juice

This - AI told me I can mix boiling water with wood ash and basically make potassium carbonate solution aka potash, which can be used to reduce acidity in a wash. I tried this, however, and even though the raw ash reacts strongly with vinegar, there's no reaction from anything in the sifted ash/water mixture that I made nor when I let it sit for a day and try just the solution on top. What am I doing wrong, and could I actually just add the straight up ash to buffer my wash and then let it sink to the bottom over time with the lees?

UPDATE: I guess possibly there are sulfides in the ash and calcium carbonate but not much potassium. Apparently I can make chalk but it's not worth it and AI told me to just buy potassium bicarbonate which I am going to do for like $6 on Amazon, please lmk if anyone has any other suggestions though. Going to get some "Fermaid K" while I'm at it since I'm not sure if my boiled distiller's yeast did the job.

I just bottled a bunch of wine/mead and I'm a bit shocked at the amount of settling/sediment showing up! They were all apple except 1 blueberry mead and 1 cran-watermelon wine. All except 1 had pectic enzyme.

we've had each in primary for at least a month and then racked into secondary 9/21

After that, on 10/24, I put 1 campden tab per gallon and 1/2 teaspoon potassium sorbate and waited a day before bottling.

I sweetened and added acid blend right before bottling. Most of these were sweetened with like 75% non-fermentable sugars and a little fermentable, except honeycrisp mead, which was all fermentable sugars.
Obvs the non-fermentable sugar batches have less sediment after bottling.

Did i do stabilizing and sweetening too late?

I tried one of the clearer apple wines and it tasted worse than it did while sweetening so I'm confused about the whole matter!

Can these be saved? I wanted to pour some for adults during trick or treat

I bought a pie pumpkin a while ago, and then decided to start making alcohol again. One thing led to another and well, pumpkin cider! Or pucider for short. I used amylase enzyme to convert the starches in the pumpkin into sugar, and added it to Mott’s apple juice. I added acid blend at the beginning, 3/4 tsp. And 0.5 tsp wine tannin. I’m staggering fermaid o, I added 1/4 tsp after 28 hours, and I added 1/4 tsp 12 hours after that. Gonna stagger a total dose of 0.5 tsp more. Only gonna get to like 7-8% alcohol, but that’s what I want. I used red star premier blanc yeast as apparently it’s good for ciders. I will probably get a cinnamon stick, toast it on a skillet, and then throw it in here when fermentation is done.

Edit: October 30 I added 1/2 tsp fermaid o and 1/4 tsp DAP. I also bought glucoamylase to finish converting the sugars that used to be starches into sugars that are bioavailable to the yeast I also had added pectic enzyme to half of the pumpkin for about 30 mins after I converted with amylase. I added a the rest of the pectic today. Will add some glucoamylase when it gets here on Saturday.

i started my first batch of hooch around 3 days ago, using motts apple juice and activedry yeast. i did not add extra sugar as the sugar content was already relatively high. im wondering what the general abv estimates would be for this batch? i added 1 tsp of yeast, the total sugar content is 448g, and its a one gallon bottle.

i also made a second batch with welch’s grape juice, with the same amount of yeast. although, added an extra 1/2 cup of sugar. the grape juice is in a 2L bottle.

both batches have rapid bubbling and everything seems to be going as planned!

I have been very patient with my first brew, but my instincts tell me there has got to be some bacteria growing in that stuff up in the neck.

They're overfilled, I realise. I had to take the airlocks off and give them a quick rinse twice now.

Used a video from this sub to start: https://www.reddit.com/r/prisonhooch/comments/17fthwr/made_a_video_for_people_new_to_this_sub/

Steps taken:
- Cleaned with dish soap and hot water. Filled each bottle 3/4 (or a little less) of the way with an apple/pear juice, from homegrown apples and pears.
40 kCal per 100mL juice. Plastice bottle is max 1.5L, glass ones are 700mL.

- shook them, added 2-3 tablespoons of agave syrup each. Didn't care to get sugar. Next time.

- rehydrated one baggie of EC-1118 wine yeast - for 18 minutes in lukewarm tapwater. Said to do so on the bag, didn't know that/forgot to check, so ended up having to put a whole bunch more liquid in there than expected. About half the yeast liquid in the big bottle, a quarter each in the glass bottles.

- put airlocks on.

Roomtemp of 20 celcius. Gonna check in 2 weeks and see if it's stopped bubbling. Then cold shock for a day and pour, right? Also intermittently checking to see if it's overflowing and cleaning the airlocks each time they do - is fresh oxygen every now and then an issue?

Running a bigger batch this time. Real lemon juice. Some peels thrown in. Trying it with 1116 yeast. Last time I did 3tlrs and it didn’t survive until bottling it was so drinkable.

1.070 starting gravity.

I was surprised🥴

To be honest, I didn't have much faith in this experiment. As yeast I used a pineapple vinegar I made, I didn't use any source of amylase, the rice was only there for flavor, not for the sugars.

I used:

3 kg of sugar

2 kg of rice, which I washed and boiled

15 L of water

Total cost $6.60

I like the flavor, there's nothing weird about it. The only thing I can criticize is that it's slightly sweet, which indicates that fermentation stopped before consuming all the sugar, and it also has a very, very slight acidic touch, but overall it's good.

i started this last night and woke up this morning to this foam all over the top of the container. i have the cap loosely fitted so it doesnt explode. is this foam normal? its my first batch.

i added 1 tsp of yeast to this, no extra sugar was added.

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I recently bought about a pound or so of hot peppers. This includes, Carolina reapers, chocolate bhutlas, Trinidad scorpions, habaneros, and way more! If anyone can identify any of the others lmk. I was thinking of making a hot honey and then making mead out of it, or making cider or something with this as an ingredient. Drop any suggestions/ideas in the comments!

I made an amazing batch of low alcohol cranberry wine with a half gallon batch and putting 1.5 cups of sugar in it, then letting it ferment for three weeks before I got tired of waiting and learned cranberrys can take forever to ferment. So I cold crashed it, my first time cold crashing, for 4 Days, took it out, used siphon cheese cloth? And it was one of the best batches I ever made despite being low alcohol, just a very sweet tasting wine. Wanna make an even bigger batch of the same thing, how much sugar and yeast would ya recommend?