I suppose this is as good of a place as any to tell this story...
Jail House HoochAs I have mentioned elsewhere, I had to do a little jail time this summer. I was classified as minimum security (I know, I get no respect), so they put me in a dorm. I thought dorms were supposed to be fun. Anyway, it was a 12'x25' room packed with 8 men, and there we spent 23 hours a day. One of my "roommates" jokingly referred to himself as the "hoochmaster". They split up the dorm he was in previously, because they were caught. I guess he was the guy who knew how to do it the right way, and he was put in our dorm.
We were given 2 4oz cups of juice every day. It varied between grape, orange, fruit punch, lemonade, and whatever. Everyone involved saved their juices for about two weeks. We were given two packets of sugar every morning for our coffee, and we could buy sugar through the commissary once a week. They saved and bought sugar to add to the juice. That's what heightens the alcohol content. For the yeast, they saved up the bread from their bologna sandwiches. Who knew that would work?
They scammed an extra trash bag off of one of the COs, and added the juice. The bread was added little by little, and the sugar was mixed in little by little as well. The bag was tied off. It didn't take to long for the yeast to start doing it job (converting sugar into alcohol). When that happens, you get gas as a byproduct. They had to periodically "burp" the bad. This had to be done strategically, because when you release that gas, the whole room smells like a mixture of feet and wine for about an hour.
Since the idea is to get the concoction in your belly as soon as possible (and for the hooch to be as strong as possible), they incubated or "cooked" the hooch through the simple expedient of leaving it under the running shower for an hour at a time. Rinse and repeat for about 10 days.
I was just an observer. After smelling that swill for as long as I had, you couldn't pay me to drink it. It was split between three of the guys. According to them, it went down great, and it got them buzzin'.
It was just really cool watching the process. I had never brewed my own anything, but I was familiar with the fact that it is important to safeguard against foreign bacteria. The wrong bacteria can ruin a batch. According to the hoochmaster, they got lucky. He says that only about one batch in 5 is drinkable.
Glad I could share one of the things I learned
