Making alcohol on board... preferably drinkable

demonboy

demonboy

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Possibly illegal, potentially dangerous and a lot of fun!

Anyone got any recipes? I vaguely remember one involving a melon (or was it a pumpkin?), ladies tights and lots of sugar, but I don't know the details.

This is a proper liveaboard question - no Boots brewing kits allowed!

/forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif
 
Not sure if you mean fermenting to covert sugar to C2H5OH or distillation to spirits? Here in Italy they sell 95% pure alcohol for 'drinking' -- yes I MEAN 95%, not 95 proof spirit. i.e. over twice as strong as regular spirits. I think they pour it over certain fruits, etc., possibly for preservation? Flammable! I also saw a small still in a shop in central Rome last week....beautifully made out of coppery metal, taps, bits, pipes, a small spirit stove to drive it. It's the sort of thing you'd like on your bar as talking point in a larger home. Looked functional to me.

Fermenting is very simple to do but very difficult to do well enough to produce drinkable results (unless you are a tramp who will drink anything). Best look up winemaking and beemaking links.

The legality varies, I think. Here in Italy many people make their own wine from fresh grapes and other fruit -- maybe stills are legal as well? However, home distilled is very dodgy as you can get some poisonous higher alcohol esters carried into the spirit that can cause major problems - including blindness. In the UK home brewing is legal but, these days, fairly uncommon compared with the peak popularity in the 1980s? Any hint of a still and you'll have the counter-terrorism lot pay you a visit at 3am (any law you break these days is called 'terrorism' so they don't have to follow normal procedures). Stills in the UK even for distilling water have to be licenced.
 
Its not legal in uk but you are unlikely to go blind. In prohibition times, with no quality control two major impurities got into bootleg booze - methanol becuase it was cheaper to steam distill wood pulp (this was just fraud) and lead, from poorly made soft-soldered copper joints (incompetence) . Both of these are bad for you, and were bigged up by the anti-bootleg propaganda.

If you were to use a glass still from a lab supplier, run it slowly, discard the first runnings and not try to extract more than about 4 or 5% (or more if you are certain the alcohol is actually in there) of your feedstock you would be fine.

But it not legal so this is not a recommendation. Don't do it.
 
Sounds good, but re the OPs question - how do you make the vodka? Seem to remember something to do with potatoes and gizzards of immersion heater
 
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I vaguely remember one involving a melon (or was it a pumpkin?), ladies tights and lots of sugar, but I don't know the details.


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Funny, we were talking about that in your old watering hole just last night. Large marrow, cut top off and scoop out seeds. Fill with demerara sugar, put top back on and pin with matchsticks. Put marrow in tights, hang in airing cupboard with bucket underneath. Marrow slowly disolves, drink liquid in bucket, pass out, take two aspirin in the morning! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
I've done the marrow trick.. Tip- don't forget it!

The liquid in the bucket was in our case, like sticky syrup - I think it would have needed further dilution and fermentation, if it hadn't been spread about 1/2" thick all over the shed floor after the bottom had dropped out of the marrow. What a mess!

Here's a description and some discussion of the pitfalls too - Marrow rum

An amusing description of the ongoing process on page 2 -
"It's still got a bit of a head on it, smells like the pub toilets on a friday night, and is a murky, muddy-puddle colour. The sort of muddy puddle you get outside the cow shed after a week of rain. One which might not have much actual mud in it, if you see what I mean.

Despite all this, and in the name of human advancement and science, I pulled out a teaspoonful to see what it tasted like.

Rough, I think would be an appropriate word. Not altogether unpleasant, though. Or at least not if you are used to being strung up by your fingernails and thrashed with barbed wire. Comapred to that, not altogether unpleasant.""


If you google Marrow rum there are lots of variants
 
Another vote for Marrow Rum, I did it for a couple of years when I made my own beer,wine and spirits.

You will, however, need a splash of Coke in it. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

If I was attempting it in a boat, I would hang it in a well sealed cockpit locker. The pungent smell of fermenting marrow could get tedious over a couple of weeks.
 
Do you want to make hard spirits or wine?.
As a student we used to make "mead". You put a couple of teaspoons of honey in a screw top lemonade bottle (going back a bit you know!!) a squeeze of lemon and a pinch of yeast.After a couple of days you screw up the top.
At the end of the month you can drink from those bottles which have not exploded. Excellent!!!
 
@ Saltwater - actually I make my own lemonade in the summer using lemon rind, sugar and the sun to ferment it, so this could be a viable option. Would that work? I'm not a chemist so I don't know what chemical reactions are going on to create the alcohol.
 
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Fermenting is very simple to do but very difficult to do well enough to produce drinkable results (unless you are a tramp who will drink anything). Best look up winemaking and beemaking links.

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When working in the Sahara in the 80's, I used to run about 30 crates of beer every 2 weeks. 2 x plastic dustbins, water/sugar/concentrated hop extract/yeast and Bio-malt for flavour. Fermentation in that heat lasted about 10 days, strain and bottle into a Bengashir bottle, like a 1 ltr Grolsch bottle, add a teaspoon of sugar and leave for another 7 days. Looked and tasted like any decent lager however, alcohlol content was usually in the 10-13% range.
Sitting outside in the early evening, watching the sunset with an ice-cold frostie in hand was bliss.

Others also used to run stills and with a triple run through, produced excellent spirit at around 95% alcohol. Once through is definitely not pure enough while 2 is acceptable. Of course the more runs the less volume produced.
As has been stated there are certain temperatures at which different products are produced. First run off is water, second run off is Methyl Alcohol(BAD,BAD,BAD!), third run off should be Ethyl Alcohol, which is the good stuff. Test by setting light to a spoonful, and it should burn with an almost pure blue flame. Hence it was given the name of Flash in Libya. In the middle East is was more colloqially known as Siddiqi, meaning friend.
 
lol... now I didn't think this would be the topic of my second post.

PRISON HOOCH
1 x sock
1 x 1/2 full screw top bottle with fresh orange
2 x slices of brown bread
6 sachets of sugar
1 x cup of warm water

Now I was told this recipe by an ex con and I've never had the displeasure of trying it but I'm assured its bloomin awful.

Put the bread in the sock, and mash it in the water for a few minutes squeezing out the water then discard the bread. (this is where your yeast is coming from)

add 3 sachets of sugar to orange juice bottle and top up with warm water until nearly full.

Squeeze the bottle a little then screw on the cap tight and shake well.

Leave to stand somewhere warm until the bottle sides pop out then add the remaining sugar and repeat. keep unscrewing the lid every day to let the pressure out or it will explode.

Keep doing this until it stops fermenting. Fermentation will only happen until all sugar is converted or the alchol level kills the yeast which is only around 15% I think but its well below the going blind level.

You can reuse the yeast by just adding more juice or splitting it between more bottles to create larger amounts.

Like I said never tried it, but keep meaning to when I have a minute for fun!

Andy
 
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