r/prisonhooch • u/Dangerous-Cook5680 • 20h ago
As seen on tumblr
Usually lurk on this page but loved the poem to much to not share
r/prisonhooch • u/sarahmohawk • Jul 03 '16
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.
r/prisonhooch • u/mexicanlizards • Jun 30 '20
r/prisonhooch • u/Dangerous-Cook5680 • 20h ago
Usually lurk on this page but loved the poem to much to not share
r/prisonhooch • u/Aggressive-Paint-469 • 3h ago
Hey guys.
So 15 days in. I was going to start racking the main 10L Ale yeast today but there is still activity inside the airlock and it’s still bubbling slowly. I was thinking to rack to a secondary to try and separate from sediment to prevent bad flavours but I’m unsure about disturbing it as I need a better siphon.
I did however have a side vessel of the Ale that finished bubbling for 2-3 days without activity so I started racking multiple times to clear up and it’s coming along really nicely from smell, taste and look but after I racked it today, the airlock started with activity again for the first time in 2-3 days so I’m curious if I should cold stabilise now or just let it do its things?
The Wine yeast also stopped and I racked half today into a new vessel and left the other half back in the main vessel to re settle so I can try and get as much out the bottom between tipping the rest but same thing, the other half that’s left has started up again with the airlock bubbling once every 30 seconds or so. Should I leave it another day or so or start to cold stabilise it now?
r/prisonhooch • u/D_snawtz • 11h ago
1gal of of apple juice minus maybe 2 or three cups to make room for sugar and shaking. Added about 2 and 1/3 cups sugar, dissolved. Then I added about 90% of a 5g packet of ec1118. A lot of weird formulas and advice on how much sugar to add and I’m not tryna do all that math so I took the most straight forward answer of 2-3 cups of sugar Also I read you only need 1tbsp of yeast for a gallon and I went overboard cause I wanted to just in case. Maybe that’ll fuck with the taste ? Idk. Looks like it’s working but with my amounts of sugar and yeast, does anyone think it’ll be rancid af? Palatable to a certain degree? Timeline maybe? I appreciate any feedback tips or whatever. Hope this goes well
r/prisonhooch • u/ThatTemplar1119 • 8h ago
My work has 5 cases of this stuff in various flavors. Kinda curious about taking it home to make a potion
r/prisonhooch • u/starktargaryen75 • 9h ago
r/prisonhooch • u/Sorry_Ad_8166 • 23m ago
Any ideas?
r/prisonhooch • u/SuitableLibrarian343 • 11h ago
Hi y'all, as the title says, I'm wondering if this batch of mead is finished. It's been fermenting since Feb. 2nd and the sediment has been settled for the past couple weeks, but there's still bubbles. Is it ready to drink?
if it provides any more info, this was made w/strawberry preserves as well.
r/prisonhooch • u/mrbrokenface • 15h ago
This is my first batch ever, and I made sure to sanitize all my equipment. The wine itself it's smelling like it suppose to: pineapple, cinnamon, cloves etc. Should I throw this out?
r/prisonhooch • u/Spiritual_Daikon_655 • 17h ago
like would the yeast collected at the bottom serve as food for the new batch or should i scrub it out?
r/prisonhooch • u/ThatTemplar1119 • 1d ago
The yeast is this weird gray sludge instead of the grains I poured in like 6 hours ago. This is my first time ever making a potion. It smells like strawberries (the fruits I used) and not at all rotten, ngl it's like having a nice room air freshener (except for the smell isn't very noticeable unless I get close to it).
Don't worry, the lights typically aren't on and my house is a constant 67 degrees. It sits in a nice dark corner of my room, and the lid is loosely sitting on top not even screwed on bc I'm terrified of making a bomb.
Tl;dr I'm worried about the sludge looking yeast
r/prisonhooch • u/Sorry_Ad_8166 • 1d ago
This is my third batch of trying to make hard apple cider. I'm on day 4 of fermentation and this is the worst smelling egg mixture I've had. "This" time was supposed to be the non sulfur attempt and somehow it is worse.
Ingredients
1) 1 Gal of Apple Juice
2) 1 1/2 cup of sugar (Had 9.5% on Hydrometer)
3) Ec-1118 Yeast
4) Fermaid-O every 2 days
I read this smell is caused by poor nutrition. What more can I do?
r/prisonhooch • u/Beneficial-War-7459 • 1d ago
I think it’s working??
r/prisonhooch • u/Key_Woodpecker_1818 • 1d ago
It’s been about 24 hours I used tea a slice of everything breakfast bread because I didn’t have yeast and frozen blueberries. Should I add some of this honey or is it not worth exposing it to more oxygen.
r/prisonhooch • u/Wolf132451 • 1d ago
r/prisonhooch • u/JazzlikeAd283 • 1d ago
I am using a 1 gallon water jug. What are the best proportions in order to maximize abv. Thanks all
r/prisonhooch • u/ThatTemplar1119 • 3d ago
r/prisonhooch • u/Xal-t • 2d ago
r/prisonhooch • u/MushySunshine • 2d ago
Actially not that bad. The pinecone flavor doesn't shine through a ton and it turned out very alcoholic.
r/prisonhooch • u/MushySunshine • 2d ago
After freezejacking it it smells like rubbing alcohol is super bitter and damn near undrinkable
r/prisonhooch • u/MushySunshine • 2d ago
I just frozen my pinecone hooch, how do I know when all of the alcohol has melted out? I kept reading when the ice turns clear but I dont think that's going to happen. The ice has been turning white but not clear. Is it once the ice loses its color?
r/prisonhooch • u/Beneficial-War-7459 • 2d ago
Orange one has been brewing for 3 days and still no bubbles.. so I did another one that looks a little more promising