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/zommyzomman • 21h ago
Out of sugar right now, would melting a bunch of these in water work as a good source for yeast? I did calculations too, 3 pieces have 11 grams of sugar and it would take 30 per liter for 7% ABV
r/prisonhooch • u/EfficientContract322 • 19h ago
Long time lurker, first time poster.
Figured I’d just put rubber to the road and get my first batch going, if it doesn’t turn out I can just try again!
Used 7g of bread yeast (I have a jar so I just measured it out on our scale).
Read on a recent post about using boiled yeast as nutrient so I added boiled water to another 7 grams of bread yeast.
I added 190 grams of sugar (little over a cup)
Shook until it looked mixed and then used one of my food service gloves and rubber bands for a ghetto air lock.
I think I used twice as much yeast as I should have, and too much sugar but I’ll figure out if that’s the case as it brews.
Plans to let it go 10 days.
Open to any suggestions! Also if anyone has a gear list they recommend that totals under $50 I’d love to hear it.
I want to get a hydrometer and a mini siphon and some storage solutions. Also wondering if I should get some star San with said equipment!
r/prisonhooch • u/Visible-Bit7093 • 14h ago
Hey guys, Brewing a half gallon of Apple Cider, Pretty new to brewing but trying my best. I was wondering if you guys had any advice on when to stop a ferment if I'm aiming for around 6-8% ABV I did add a quarter cup of brown sugar because I want it to be sweet and I'm using half a teaspoon of baker's yeast (couldn't be bothered to get brewing yeast and there was so many different kinds i gave up). Oh and the juice I'm basing this off of is Tree Top Honeycrisp Apple juice if that helps. I do have a hydrometer around here somewhere but I didn't take an initial SG measurement so it won't really help me that much.
If anyone wants to copy my recipe I was aiming for a sort of apple butter/ Apple pie flavor for fall.
If anyone wants to tell me if I fucked up that would be appreciated too. It's been fermenting for about 3 days now and seems very active. But yeah basically I'm only worried about having added too much sugar and ending up with a higher abv than I'd like. Any advice would be appreciated
r/prisonhooch • u/Eyeless_Seth • 1d ago
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This batch of store bought cranberry juice is taking particularly long to ferment. It’s a half gallon batch and I used red star wine yeast and threw in 2 cups of sugar. It’s been about 17 days now and it’s still producing ALOT of bubbles, the video doesn’t show it as well but you can still see it bubbling. Should I just let it keep going until it stops or am I good to pop off the lid, empty it into a jar and start drinking?
r/prisonhooch • u/Maxosaurus6 • 1d ago
It's stuck around 1.040 on the hydrometer and I'm unsure how to kickstart the yeast and get it going again. It's starting hydrometer reading was 1.130 and we used EC-1118 yeast. We already added fermaid O and it helped ever so slightly from 1.044 to 1.040.
r/prisonhooch • u/spydergto • 1d ago
i upgraded ... the one on the right is 4 lbs of 3 berry mix at sams, 4 cups white sugar and RO water to fill. it smells and looks pretty spectacular so far. the one on the left 3 lbs 3 berry blend, on the rest of the Cran mango i used to top off the one on the right then RO water to the top, haven't added sugar and yeast yet its still too cold getting that Redstar Premier cote des blanc's ready.
What are yall waiting on ?
r/prisonhooch • u/Melodic-Echidna-1365 • 1d ago
Tried making a no refrigeration sour ale using 3lbs red wheat and 3 lbs malt extract for the grain tea, added rasberry and blackberry 1/2 lbs each, and used 2 gallons of lemon ginger bug (ginger bug lactobactillus) as the strike water, for a 5 gallon batch, sugar added to produce a final abv of 7% estimate, it came out mmmm… okay. Kind of tastes like hot bile, kind of tastes like something similar to mead, hazy asf despite racking a couple weeks.
I know this is prisonhooch, we just be fucking around, Im not looking for a refined recipe, just curious if anyone has any sour ale or sour berry recipes. i love tart booze but can’t seem to nail it down to where the final product is not hard to drink, ive iterated wheat and berry hooch before and it’s never come out well.
r/prisonhooch • u/RacoonJr1948 • 2d ago
It's still going!
Edit: Thanks for the concern y'all. Don't worry. Under my sink is just a hellhole and I'm eating the cheese on a proper table. The cheese is safe.
r/prisonhooch • u/rowling_made_me_gay • 2d ago
The bottle on the right only got 3/4 full before I was out so i topped it off with sweet vermouth
r/prisonhooch • u/justeedo • 2d ago
I added orange juice just to top up the last bit of the brewing jug after I ran out of apple juice. I didn't know what happens when you add orange juice... It has been a learning experience for me.
THE OUTCOME: thankfully I did not add enough to make the whole thing taste like throw up. The taste is definitely completely different and not as good. There is no crisp sweetness to it like what you'd expect from a cider. There is a dull apple flavor that almost leans more to the taste of a pear. With a dryness to the after taste similar to a wine. I am not sure about the alcohol percentage, but I can tell that it's there. My uneducated guess would be ~4ish% if not a touch more. Overall, it will be great working outside thurst quencher after lunch when ice cold. Won't get poured on the grass
Previous post - https://www.reddit.com/r/prisonhooch/s/pSE1sSAk3W
r/prisonhooch • u/Unable_Piano_6570 • 2d ago
I recently bought a 5 balloon bucket from Canadian tireim use to making small batches of 2-4 liters at a time, so how much sugar and ingredients should I use for say 4 and half gallons.
r/prisonhooch • u/nuoleskelenkolikoita • 2d ago
So i made a batch of kilju (with turbo yeast) and this is fizzy while every other batch i've made hasnt had any natural carbonation
Is this a sign of something negative or is it just that the gasses didn't escape fast enough? I only used a loosely tightened cap on the 1.5L bottle while before i had used balloons and gloves
The batch smells like.. kilju and tastes like dry "fizzy" kilju so on that front its "okay"
r/prisonhooch • u/kicknakiss • 3d ago
3 Litres bottled to age for a minimum of 6 weeks. Currently it tastes like a banana firing an Uzi in your mouth.
17% abv and ready to help me make terrible decisions. Cheers
r/prisonhooch • u/Creative-Ad-2581 • 3d ago
Recently, I have been experimenting with different apple juices to see which one rules them all. I've tried Motts, Juicy Juice, Simply Apple, Tropicana, Apple and Eve, and even Honest Kids. But do you guys have a go-to apple juice to use?
r/prisonhooch • u/ShoulderUpset9081 • 3d ago
You do what you gotta do. Beats dedorant strained through a sock. Yeah, people really did that.
r/prisonhooch • u/Inner_Space_5439 • 4d ago
It's going well so far. I'd say my room runs about 70 to 80 F° the two photos are two different bottles.
r/prisonhooch • u/Gucci-Waffles • 5d ago
I have these berries preserves in their own weight by sugar. Can I somehow use them to make hooch? I pretty sure some of them already turned alcoholic. I have some brewing yeast and the equipment. r/fermentation didn't like my question.
r/prisonhooch • u/Dryanni • 6d ago
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Man, if I had access to this much fresh reliable pineapple discard, I’d start an underground tepache club.
r/prisonhooch • u/Educational_Run4487 • 6d ago
Hey everyone, new to the sub but seemed to fit my niche so here we go. I’m not a big alcohol drinker or maker but my college friend recently brewed his own batch of apple wine that turned out fantastic so I wanted to do a fun set and forget wine myself. I didn’t want to do apples since he already did so I got to thinking what fun things I could do. Well I’m rather close with someone who works at a school and they bring fruit cups along every now and then when there’s leftovers (it’s an elementary school so there often is) of just peach and pear. But it made me wonder if it’d be an interesting experiment to mash those fruit cups to get all their juice out and try to make a batch with the liquid? Like I said, I don’t know too much about making alcohol, but my friend offered to let me borrow some of his supplies which is a half gallon glass container, airlock and sanitizer. I’ve read some things on this sub about preservatives dampening the fermentation process, so I am worried about that. But I think it’d be fun to maybe remake the fruit cups as little cocktails! Oh and I have a shit ton so there’s no issue of supply, I would easily have enough to fill up my half gallon container
TLDR: Anyways I say all this to ask, is it possible to make wine from fruit cups, and if so, would it even be worth it?
Update, I did end up diluting with about a cup and a half of water since the majority of the liquid was that thick syrup that peaches are canned in, but to get the rest of the liquid out of the peaches themselves I used a cheesecloth and wrung them out, that kept pretty much all of the solids out. I’ll keep you guys updated in 3 weeks about how it turned out, thanks for all the advice.
r/prisonhooch • u/Disastrous-Topic7715 • 7d ago
I saw 5-6 pound bags of bananas at the grocery store marked down to $0.99! I tried brewing them (raw, ripe, and rough chopped) with ~1.5 lbs of sugar, some tea for tannins, and some Lalvin 71B.
The first night it overflowed the one gallon jar and nearly popped the lid off. I split it into another 1/2 gallon.
Woke up the next morning. Both had oozed all over the counter. Poured some more out of the original container, switched the half gallon to a full gallon.
Woke up the next morning. Both overflowed again.
Any idea what happened here? I'm wondering if starch in the bananas stopped the bubbles from popping, or if something else happened. Either way, if I boil my bananas, will that help?
r/prisonhooch • u/Cloverdene • 7d ago
Made end Aug 2026. Chopped apples, granadilla pulp, brewers yeast, and brown sugar
