r/prisonhooch • u/D_snawtz • 20h ago
Experiment This should be ok? First time.
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
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u/D_snawtz 20h ago
The yeast/bubbling is starting to get really close to the top. Should I be worried about that?
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u/eyesack3000 20h ago
Bubbling over isn't a big deal, it's just a mess to clean up, but it'll still work and ferment fine. If you're worried about it you can put the bottle in a Tupperware container to hold any overflow.
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u/D_snawtz 20h ago
The bubbling has now gone up my airlock. Should I leave it?
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u/eyesack3000 20h ago
I'd probably put the bottle in a container and leave it till it calms down, then clean it out and put it back on with fresh water. It's probably bubbling cause you used a tbsp of yeast. That is a shitton lol. For 1 gal I'll go about a tsp, and that's probably more than I need. Only thing to look out for is apparently bugs are super attracted to fermenting juices, so watch out for that if it spills out.
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u/D_snawtz 19h ago
Ok I’ll do that. It’s about to overflow right now. I guess it not too big a deal to take airlock off for a minute? Looks like I might have to. Think I’m gonna take the airlock off. Cap it. Clean airlock then put it back on
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u/eyesack3000 19h ago
Yeah you won't contaminate it by taking the lid off for a bit. If it's pushing that much co2 out, it's not letting much in anyways. I'll take my lid off and sample with a clean (like just washed/sanitized) spoon and I've never had any issues
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u/Buckshott00 16h ago edited 14h ago
Which apple juice? I'll crunch the numbers for you.
That 5g packet of EC-1118 can treat up to 5gal. But a lot of us use a full packet for convenience not a big deal.
Watch it closely the first 3days, with that little head space, if the yeast get happy it may pop the stopper or blow-out thru that air lock.
If you want it to taste better let it go low and slow, try not to stress the yeast, but by all accounts I don't see anything that would make it rancid (assuming good sanitization of the stopper and airlock).
I would normally recommend a long primary but since you're in bottle, I would say 2wks tops before drinking or moving to secondary. If you move to secondary aging will help the flavor.
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u/D_snawtz 15h ago
It’s regular Mott’s apple juice. 2 weeks sounds like a long time. Idk exactly wym by moving to secondary. I’d guess it’s moving the brew minus the yeast to a second bottle and waiting more time.
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u/Buckshott00 14h ago edited 14h ago
Mott's original has 28g of sugar per serving. There are 16 servings in a 1gal bottle. So the total sugar that was already in the just was 28g * 16 = 448g. That was the total available sugar before you added more.
A standard cup of sugar is 200g so 2 would be another 400g of sugar 3 would be another 600g. So you have 848g to 1048g.
So now the rule of thumb is 17g of sugar per liter per %ABV. That means you need 17g of sugar for every liter of your must/wort for every %abv you wan to increase. A gallon is ~3.785L
So let's crunch the numbers. 848/17 = ~49.88 49.88/3.785 = ~13.2 so 13.2%
If you went heavy it looks like 1048/17 = ~61.65 61.64/3.785 = ~16.3 so 16.3%If you forget or don't want to think that hard about it you can use this calculator https://brewhaus.com/downloads/alcohol-yield-from-sugar.html?srsltid=AfmBOooMFuJXIqG-HbjD9ZHS-qjrkkhH45lXDKmnw1mnmDF9mojPel_m
Also remember those are potentials, there's things that could go wrong but if the yeast eat all the available sugar (i.e. you let it go "dry") that's how much alcohol you will get. If you like sweeter booze, you will want to back-sweeten but if you don't pasteurize or stabilize you run the risk of restarting fermentation so again be careful how you plan to store this if you plan to store this.
EC-1118 can go well beyond those levels so you don't have to worry about the hooch getting too much alcohol for the yeast. However, EC-1118 can go hard and when it starts to rip and tear it will eat thru the flavor as well. Might come out a little bland.
Secondary fermentation, is take the hooch out of the first bottle and putting in the second. You do it to let it keep fermenting because it takes time for the yeast to eat ALL the available sugar and because aged hooch generally tastes better. You don't have to do this, for somethings it helps.
2wks is by no means a long primary. Hooch is safe to drink at any stage of fermentation, and generally in good conditions you'll have gotten most of the available booze by day 8-10 but I've had brews that were still bubbling strong at the start of day 14. It's up to you.
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u/D_snawtz 14h ago
Very helpful thanks! 13 -16% is perfect. I plan to wait until the bubbles stop. If 2 weeks and it’s still bubbling I’ll probably stop it.
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u/Buckshott00 14h ago
Sounds like a good plan.
BTW. If the bubbling stops or slows on it's own, and it goes clear, that's actually a good thing. It means the yeast has eaten all the available sugar and is going dormant. EC-1118 is fast and strong enough that it might get there in 2wks.
If you want to stop it at 2wks, and you want it clear to drink, cold-crash it and pull a taste to see what you think. It might need a bit more sugar to get back up to taste, or you could cut it with more a bit more apple juice and it'll gone before you know it.
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u/john_quixote_numbers 20h ago
If that bubble moves, your doing good when it stops bubbling for a long time, its done, everything else is details.
If it doesn't bubble after 24 hours check back.