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Est. 5th Feb 2021
so, what's the whole process like? well, as i mentioned earlier, yeast eats sugar, farts co2 and makes alcohol as a by-product. your job is making sure they have a safe environment to have a party in.
mix 1 cup of sugar per 2l (2qrt) of liquid. dissolve the sugar in some of it. pour into a fermentation jug. that can be a plastic bottle. funnel it in. don't top it quite up, leave some space at the mouth, it will foam up. add a levelled teaspoon of dried baking yeast per 2l. close and shake. label it and put in a dark, warm place. now just make sure it won't explode and in two weeks you got a nice* hooch.
*ymmw
get the tools mentioned in primer and sterilize them. either with boiling water or the bleachy mixture described in primer. except the hose, the hose can wait. sterilization is important to keep out all nasty bugs. we only want the nice bugs in, ie yeast.
also keep ingredients at hand so you don't need to wander about.
dissloving sugar in the liquid either by
when you heat it up, be aware that hot liquid may damage the plastic bottle. and make always sure that you pitch yeast in only when it cools down from "hot" to "warm." otherwise you kill it and won't get anything. so i suggest adding yeast very last.
here's suggested order of putting things into other things:
storing sounds boring but it's important too. the bottle/jug/bucket/jar with sugary liquid and yeast need to be in dark and warm place. room temperature is just fine. a bit warmer is finer. warmer means faster. but faster is not always better. if you go too fast, it'll start tasting like ass. or it'll start "producing off flavours."
second, and more important thing is the co2. remember when i said the yeast farts co2? yeah, turns out it farts a lot of it. and if you just close the bottle shut, it will get so pressured, it'll 'xplode. i'm not kidding, it's an earth-shattering kaboom! and you really wanna avoid having to clean that up. but if you leave it open, it's gonna spoil. there's a thing called "air-lock" - a one-way valve, like inside your sink, that lets air go out but nothing can get in. no oxygen, no bugs, no mould, no nothing. but you don't strictly need that, you can experiment with the lid. just leave it on just before the threads start to engage, that's when you let it. you can notice that if you squeeze the bottle, air can wheeze out. the best thing you can do is to check it every now and then, like once a day is fine. just touch the bottle to see if it's overpressured. if it is, loosen the lid a bit.
you'll notice it'll foam-up during the first few days, that's perfectly fine. nothing to worry about.
it's done when there's no more bubbling going on inside. that's when either:
if it's the second, it'll start taking the ass-wise taste. but if you put just a little bit of sugar in, it'll make less booze than it could. so it's a balancing act. i aim for good taste, sacrificing some of the potential but that's still resulting in usually 6-10% hooch. and there are means to increase the alcohol content afterwards. legally dubious methods, mind you.
now you can do it yourself!
when there's no more bubbles coming up, the hooch is finished. there will be a layer of gunk at the botttom, that's mostly yeast. and you can use that for another batch right away! pretty cool, innit? you best "cold crash" ie, put the bottle in the fridge for a few days, so it clears out and all the gunk sits at the bottom. now you rack it.
that's a way of moving the hooch off into another bottle without the layer at the bottom. for that you have the hose. look up siphoning fish tank water, it's the same. or car fuel. i just use one regular hose, simple.
now it's either ready for drinking or aging.
good luck, have fun.