Moonshine

DrStrangelove

DrStrangelove

Active member
I'm taking a 100-level Chem class at my college to satisfy the second portion of our sciences requirement. I'm sure all of your school carry classes that are geared toward helping non-science people fill science requirements, but this one is incredible. It's called Caveman To Chemist. Each week we have two different projects where we take fairly ordinary materials and create cool stuff.

This week we started our alcohol project.

That's right, I'm making moonshine for a class project.

You can buy books at any age in any book store that will teach you how to do this, so there shouldn't be any problems with me sharing it in the forums. The way we do it in class is incredibly easy.

I'm going to update this thread with instructions and tips over the next month or so as I go along, and if anyone else wants to try this, feel free.

Oh, and just to cover my own ass, DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU'RE 21! There, I said it.

If you're 21, this is completely legal in most places. The final product I'm making right now is like a honey wine or champagne depending on carbonation, but you can use roughly the same process to make all different kinds of wine or beer. I won't tell anyone how to distill the final product to make hard liqour though, because that IS illegal pretty much everywhere I can think of, and I'm pretty sure it'll get the thread taken down.

-Knox
 
Yeah, anyone can buy a kit, but the way we do it in class is kit-free. It's made with about 3 dollars worth of stuff you can find at any grocery store. Super duper easy.

It shouldn't smell too bad though, I started my first batch yesterday and my roommate who is also in the class started about a week ago and so far the only horrible smell was when we first mixed in the yeast...that stuff is disgusting smelling. Like sour milk.
 
Alright, fuck it, here's the first set of instructions, I got super bored after just 10 minutes of studying my map for Russian history.

SUPPLIES For 1 batch (2 liter bottle size):

1 - 2 liter bottle (this can be anything, but if you get soda, make sure to wash it out before you start. soda contains preservatives, which will kill the yeast before they can finish fermenting the honey)

1 - bottle of honey. needs to be between 12 and 16 ounces to make 1 batch

1 - packet of ACTIVE DRY yeast

Optional:

1 - can of V8 or similar tomato/vegetable juice (all natural is best)

Alright, it's incredibly easy. Wash out your 2 liter bottle and fill it about 2/3 with water (it doesn't have to be purified or anything).

Take your bottle of honey and pour it in. 12 ounces will give you a "dry" booze, which will be on the low end of the alcohol content scale (8% roughly). 16 oz will give you a heavier alcohol content, between 12-15%. This is about as high as you can go without distilling. Do NOT add more than 16 oz of honey, the yeast will die before they digest it all and you'll have a bunch of condensed honey left over.

Ok, open your yeast packet into a cup of WARM WATER to activate it. It'll activate pretty fast. If you want to make sure it's active, pour a little sugar or leftover honey in and it'll start foaming. Pour two or three spoonfuls of the yeast into the bottle with the honey and water.

Now, add some of the V8 if you want. It won't make the final product taste like tomato, it just helps the yeast out. For some reason they go totally apeshit for V8, or at least that's what our teacher told us. You can also squeeze in a lemon, they like that too apparently. Add more water as necessary, fill the bottle up to about 3 or 4 inches from the top. DONT fill it all the way though, there needs to be someplace for the gasses to college as the yeast do their work. Shake the whole thing up to get the yeast going, then put the bottle on the floor someplace and wait.

Alright, this is pretty much all you're going to do for about a month. HOWEVER, there are a couple important things to remember, so read on unless you want the bottle top to pop off and spray gross yeast-honey water everywhere.

Yeast release gasses as they digest the sugary honey, so you will need to twist the top EVERY DAY to release the pressure, otherwise the bottle will burst (dramatically). DO NOT LET OXYGEN BACK INTO THE BOTTLE though. In the presence of oxygen, yeast produce vinegar when they digest sugar. In the presence of CO2 they produce ethanol (drinkable alcohol). That means that any time you let air into the bottle, they'll start making vinegar again.

You can get around this by twisting the cap until you hear the gas begin to hiss out. Once the hissing stops, screw the cap back on again, that way oxygen won't go back into the bottle.

Alright, I'm on day 3 right now, I'll be back every couple days with tips and updates and whatnot. The bottles will feel really tight when the pressure is building inside of them, that's a good way to make sure the yeast is working at first. MAKE SURE you release the gas every day.

That's it, I'll make sure to post steps at least a week before I do them, that way anyone who wants to do this at the same time will have plenty of time to get ready for the next step.

Good luck,

Knox

 
Also, I said 2 or 3 spoonfuls of yeast, but you can pour in however much you want. They'll reproduce on their own in a couple days, but go ahead and dump 'em in if you feel like it.

If you use the V8, half a can is plenty.
 
ohhhh man i thought i knew what you were talking about, but i was actually thinking of the guy from "unwrapped"

remember? he was on double dare or something...such a creep
 
that guy is a creep from "unwrapped". alton brown is a freakin genius. and he's hilarious. it's amazing how you can make a cooking show into a comedy show and learn alot of useful information at the same time. i like his yeast characters. hehe. "WATCH THEM GROW!"

Good_Eats_008.jpg


anywho...i totally derailed this one.
 
whatever, im not gonna have anything else to say about it for like a week while this shit matures, we might as well turn it into a thread about:

1. how badly i want to kill rachel ray

2. how hot the girl from Everyday Italian is (kill me, she's married)

3. how anthony bourdain has done more drugs, smoked more cigarettes, and made more good food than most people in the history of mankind

sorry, i just like food network...
 
i love the food network.

yes, rachel ray AND sandra lee need to die. people who match their kitchen's to their clothing have a serious problem.

giada is really, really pretty.

nigella is really pretty too.

i love ina. he food is sooooooo good.

and paula deen is annoying. YA'LL. YA'LL. YA'LL.

 
yea its really easy to make, why do ya think all the hicks down south still do it. but if you get caught making it your fucked cause its a fedral offence that carries a mandatory minimum. Not only that but if you make the wrong kind of alcohol (your trying to make ethonol) you can go blind from drinking it, and its really not hard to do it incorrectly. but good luck and hope none of the kids you told to try this go blind
 
Thanks hollywood, you're exactly right.

READ THE FIRST POST moron, it's legal to do the fermentation part in every state, you're just not allowed to distill it.

If you do it wrong, you'll only make vinegar, and last I checked, that won't make you go blind...ethanol is the only type of alcohol that yeast can produce anaerobically.

Trust me, it's not illegal and you won't die.
 
Yeah I mean anything you make in your garage can be called "moonshine," but this is gonna be more like bum wine and less like bathtub gin.

Think Night Train and Steel Reserve, not Diesel and McCormick's.

We're building stills in class later this semester, so I'm gonna try to make some home-brew vodka. I'm a little scared to do it though, so I might not, I haven't decided yet.
 
yeah, it doesnt make your house smell bad, it depends how you make it, distilling it isnt hard, you get the raw material and basically burn everything off and collect the vapors and theres your product.
 
well thats just beer to me, a few of my friends dads make beer like that

the only moonshine is distilled and its just straight alcohol, if ya get a friends that works in a winery they can probably steal it for ya because once its distilled then it is left to age and thats how they make wiskey, its sucks to drink but it doenst take much
 
Well I go to school down here in VA and all the hillbilly kids make it over the summer sometimes. Tastes like it's mad of gunpowder or something. Whatever, for the time being I'm just gonna home brew this shit and see if it gets me drunk. I mean, I'm 21, I can buy booze legally, this is just interesting. Something fun to do for a little while I'm stuck in school and none of the mountains are open yet.
 
hahahaha maybe, it's be cool to start a liqour company or something, but for now it's just a diversion...plus i have to do it for class, so whatever

if it's any good though ill keep working on the technique to see if i can make it better
 
i believe so. but i bet it is good if done correctly. but i learned this the other month on Good Eats. You really need to clean the containers before you begin. Clean them good.
 
you wont tell us how to make hard liquor, because it is illegal and the thread might get get taken down? welcome to newschoolers, you have a lot to learn
 
anybody know how it tastes before I go and make about 20L of this bum beer in my atic? oh and does it matter what temp it is stored at?
 
Yep, almost all of my posts are in this thread, big deal. I just made a new username the other day cause I got tired of my old one when I was bored.

Anyway, yeah, takes about a month until you can drink it. You just have to wait until the mixture gets fairly clear and the old yeast start to settle at the bottom. Then you can start "racking," which I'll get to later.

So far I'm about 4 or 5 days in and the main thing I've noticed is that you NEED to keep releasing pressure from the bottles. The yeast in mine are really going at it, and I've purged the gasses like 3 times today already. The bottles get really tight and I'm afraid of what might happen if they're left alone for too long. I don't want my room to be covered in sick yeast-water when I come home one afternoon...
 
It tastes like cheap, hard wine or champagne, depending on if you add carbonation tabs at the end.

No it doesn't matter what temp you store it in, just make sure you check on it regularly to make sure the pressure in the bottles isnt getting too great.

And I'm not worried about the thread getting taken down if I tell people how to make a distillery and distill hard liqour...I'm worried that someone will do it wrong and get hurt, and I don't want to have that on my conscience. The recipe above can't make dangerous alcohol, but improper distilling can create toxic booze that can seriously injure or even kill you. If you want to learn how to distill somewhere else, be my guest.
 
racking is the process you go through after about a month or so of fermentation...it basically deals with transplanting the fermented alcohol to different containers in order to filter out any remaining particles that may still remain in your booze...until you have something that's pure and drinkable that you can put in a glass container and store in your fridge

it takes about a day or two
 
like 2 weeks in and the only issue so far is that you have to release the pressure like twice or three times a day. they get SOOOOO hard from all the gas building up inside

i went to DC last weekend to fuck around and didnt loosen the cap on one of them. it would have exploded if my roommate hadnt released the gas...i feel like i need to hire a babysitter for them or something

anyway, ive been taking a few pictures, ill put them up in like a week maybe...right before i start the final step.
 
Another way to release the carbon-dioxide is to have a "bubbler". Basically, it's just a tube going from the top of the bottle into a cup of water. That way the carbon dioxide bubbles up, but no oxygen can go in. You can buy them of off homebrewing websites or make your own our of a hose or tube and a glass of water.

Just make sure that it's completely air tight, and that the end of the tube is fully submerged by about two or three inches.

There, that eliminates the need to unscrew the top every day.
 
yah..want strawberry flavored? throw a few strawberries in the bottle. cherry flavored..a few cherries in the bottle. peach flavored..a couple peaches in the bottle
 
pretty sure we could post how to make meth or a grenade launcher or hell i could probably post the anarchists cookbook and not have it get deleted.
 
anarchists cookbook has been around the block...fuckin thing used to freak me out though when i was like 12 or 13, i thought the FBI was going to track me down for reading it
 
yaaaaaah dude that's an incredible idea

the only better one we've come up with so far is putting big baloons on the top, but that only buys you like an extra day or something...your idea is a million times better, thanks

and yea, you can put fresh fruit or fruit juice in it to flavor it
 
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