diy - DIY & Electronics

I herd that if you do it wrong you can go blind for a few hours

>>1249
Do you have a source on this?

>>1250
I think he's talking about a rumor that started in moonshine because of lead pipes

>>1248
I'm pretty interested in this. Could you post a step by step guide on what you did? You know, measurements, timing and specific items used?

>>1252
I'll be honest, I didn't have any sort of measurements or timing for most of this. But it's something that people did before written language was a thing, so it wasn't too hard to make something alcoholic. I'll try to detail it in a following post.

>>1253
1: Buy an S-Bend Airlock off amazon (I got "Twin Bubble Airlock and Carboy Bung (Set of 2)" for ~$7), some Champagne Yeast ("Red Star Pasteur Blanc Champagne Yeast 10 Packs Dried Yeast" on amazon for less than a dollar), and some grape juice (96oz Welches 100% Grape Juice from Pick n Save). Make sure the juice does not have artificial flavorings!

2: Set all this stuff on your counter. Unscrew the top of the grape juice, pour some out.

3: Measure out about a gram or so of the yeast (1/5th the 5g packet) and pour it directly into the juice. It will float at the top, but will sink after a bit.

4: Put the bung (the rubber stopper thing that comes with the airlock) in the mouth of the container. Take the airlock, add water to the "Max Fill Line" marked on the body of the airlock, and then fit the airlock into the bung. Make sure the only way gasses would escape is through the airlock.

5: Wait. After about a day or two, the water in the S-bend should start displacing and bubbling a bit, showing that the yeast is eating the sugars and releasing both gas and alcohol as a byproduct. You should be able to see small bubbles rising from the bottom to the top of the container during this time. Don't worry about it too much though, just let it sit.

6: After about 9 days of sitting, the 96oz container of grape juice turned into pretty decent wine. Just take the S-bend and bung out of the top and put the cap back on, and throw the container into the fridge. Or leave it out. It doesn't matter too much. It's ready to drink whenever you want to.

Feel free to taste-test the wine during any point during this. This is hardly a science, and more just throwing things together and seeing what works. Good luck!

>>1254
Other notes:

- I brewed this under the sink in my suite, and it didn't have any noticeable smell. Nevertheless, if you're trying to be discrete, just put an air freshener somewhere nearby.

- As long as you minimize the amount of time the juice/yeast are exposed to the air, you should be fine. It's pretty fool-proof as long as you are relatively careful.

- Look up how fermentation works chemistry-wise. It might help you understand how to do this a bit better.

Sorry if any of this is badly written; I'm pretty drunk on a couple glasses of this wine. Good luck all!

I didn't even read the article, so I don't know if this helps or not, but just looked up Egyptian beer, because I remember in World History where they'd make art/hieroglyphics with Egyptians drinking out of the same pot or whatever with really long straws.

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/zymurgy/pharaoh-ale-brewing-a-replica-of-an-ancient-egyptian-beer/

>>1248
>since I'm pretty nerdy and socially awkward like most of us
>like most of us
>most of us

Wait a second, lainon! You have an opportunity here! Try to find other people like you who want some but don't have any and start selling it in small quantities.

>>1248
I just made my own wine, too.
Not because i couldn't buy it (legal drinking age is 16 here) but because I recently started beekeeping and therefore had enough honey.
Just add water, yeast and an airlock.
Wait for a few month (you can have a taste every now and then) and when your satisfied with your mead put it outside in the cold to stop the bubbling (kill the yeast).
You should now have a decent mead. Enjoy!

>>1248
Add some cinnamon to the cider or some other spices, perhaps ginger. Try mixing the cider with a little bit of peach juice pre fermentation

>>1249
>>1250
>>1251
sry how can you not know about methanol?
you get problem with that soykaf when you make hrd alcohol. not with wine as far as i know.
next time you should not sleep in you chemistry class in school

How do I make my cider sweet? I used like 360g of sugar, sweet apples (mostly McIntosh), some water & bread yeast for 3L of apple juice IIRC. Is it yeast's fault?

>>1249
It's incredibly difficult to fuarrrk up winemaking to that level. The biggest mistake that people make is trying to drink the stuff before it's actually fermented, and not filtering off the yeast, before they try to drink the stuff.

>>1248
OP, never, ever, ever, use off-the-shelf juices for winemaking. Those juices are a lie, the actual fruit content is not what you think it is. If you're going to make this stuff, find a local place to get cheap fruit, and either juice, or boil, or whatever, the physical fruit. But don't use store bought juice. Ever.

My favorite kind of brew is a ginger beer. Basically, it's a kilju recipe, but with grated ginger added. Theoretically, you could probably use powdered ginger, but I wouldn't. Fresh is always going to be 10,000x better, when it comes to brewing. If you 'harvest' it a little early, you'll get a nice little low-alcohol sodapop.

Also, go for turboyeast, if you can. Good on you for getting s-bends, most people just unscrew the caps a little bit, and call it good.

>>1346
Get a turboyeast, bread yeast takes forever, and tastes like ass. Without knowing exactly how many apples you used, though, we can't realistically tell you what the problem was. But, most likely, it needs more sugar. Remember, a lot of the sugar in the water is going to get used up by the fermentation process. The best brew for beginners is going to be kilju. Once you master Kilju, you can move onto other brews.

But do the kilju first. I've been using this recipe for years.
http://textfiles.com/uploads/hybrid-3.txt

>>1347
Isn't it true that yeast processes all the sugar it can find to produce alcohol and then dies from it? If that's the case, to get sweet cider I'd have to use a kind of yeas that dies fast, right?

Also, fair enough, I'll try doing kilju & stop using brewer's yeast (especially that I already have some cider yeast and I didn't use it 'cause it needs 3 days to produce yeast potion from it)

>>1353

Yeah, at a certain point, the alcohol itself is going to kill the yeast. Whether that happens at 4% or 10% or 18% depends entirely on the specific type of yeast that you're using. The yeast really is the most important part of the process. Get the right yeast, and treat your yeast with respect, and you'll get a good brew, and fast. Pick the wrong yeast, and treat it like shit, and you'll get sugar water.

If you want something sweet, you kind of have 2 options. You can either use a yeast that can't really deal with a lot of alcohol, and then use a "normal" recipe, or you can use the regular yeast, and the regular recipe, and then just add more sugar. The yeast will always convert the same amount of sugar, every time, because the yeast will literally, physically, die, once that amount of sugar has been converted. If there's extra sugar in the mix at that point, it's going to be tasted.

Of course, you can also just say fuarrrk it, and add the sugar in later.

>>1354
So if you, for example, buy 12% cider yeast (if it's specified, mine is just 'cider yeast'...) that'll make precisely 12% cider and any excess sugar will be added to the sweetness of the drink?

>neurosuggesting making your own alcohol without a recipe

kids nowadays will do anything.

>>1355

Yeah, that's pretty much how it works with my Ginger Beer, so I imagine that's how it would work with your cider. But, and this is a bit but, 12% ABV is kind of a lot, for cider. Spicy (as in cinnamon/ginger) might be better than sweet, for that.

>>1347
OP here, thanks for the tips and the textfiles link. I'll have to look into that.

http://homedistiller.org/
Has a lot of info. Also check out the forum.
Discussions on vacuum distillation are quite interesting.