How to Make Insanely Cheap and Simple Grocery Store Alcohol (No Equipment Needed)
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- čas přidán 3. 07. 2024
- Today I'm teaching you how to make a cheap and easy walmart mead! This recipe can be slightly adjusted to be turned into a wine or cider if you swap out the honey for table sugar! Check out the recipe and steps to make this mead below:
Mixed Berry Mead Recipe:
3 Pounds of Mixed Berry Blend (Great Value brand)
2 Pounds of Clover Honey (Great Value Brand)
A 1 Gallon Jug of Water
1 tsp of Bread Yeast (Sub our wine yeast for a better result)
1 tsp of Boiled Bread Yeast (For Nutrient)
Pasteurize it (put it into bottles and heat it up to 140F for 15 minutes)
6 oz of Honey to Backsweeten
Mixed Berry Wine Recipe:
3 Pounds of Mixed Berry Blend (Great Value brand)
2.5 Pounds of Table Sugar
A 1 Gallon Jug of Water
1 tsp of Bread Yeast (Sub our wine yeast for a better result)
1 tsp of Boiled Bread Yeast (For Nutrient)
Pasteurize it (put it into bottles and heat it up to 140F for 15 minutes)
1/2 Pound of Sugar to Backsweeten
Steps to make the mead:
1.) Gather your ingredients and sanitize all the equipment with brewing sanitizer or regular soap and water (make sure to rinse it well)
2.) Dump halve the water jug out into another container.
3.) Put your honey (or sugar), mixed berry blend and yeast into the container.
4.) Refill the bottle up to the gallon and shake vigorously! Poke a hole at the top of the cap to let the C02 have a place to go.
5.) Put it away to let it ferment (it will bubble up)
- You might have to "punch the cap" to allow the c02 to escape (very important! If you mess this up it could explode)
6.) Once it starts to clear up and you see a layer of stuff (sediment) settle at the bottom. Rack it into a new container (like a jug). Then rack back into your first container.
7.) I would let it set for a week or so. When you are ready - put it into bottles by slowly pouring it in without trying to add a bunch of oxygen. Don't cap them yet!
8.) Pasteurize by filling a pot with water (place a towel or ceramic plate at the bottom of the pot). Put your uncapped bottled into the water and put a tin foil cap on each. Place a bottle with some in then middle and put a thermometer into it. Heat the liquid up until it reaches 140F and hold it there for 15 minutes or 150 for 5 minutes)
9.) Once it's been pasteurized you can let those bottle cool and then cap or cork them!
10.) Enjoy!
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you don't pasteurize or stabilize the mead/wine (with potassium sorbate and metabisulfite) your mead will referment. This means that it will continue to ferment and create carbonation in the bottle - which if it goes too far, will create a bottle bomb!.
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0:00 Introduction
0:16 How Simple This Booze Is
0:32 Recipe
0:50 Ingredients & Sanitizing
1:35 Starting the Booze
2:55 Fermentation Starting
4:10 10 days Later
4:33 Moving the Booze
5:10 How to Backsweeten Safely
6:15 Tasting It
8:43 How to Make it Better
9:43 Using Wine Yeast Instead
10:00 Comparing the Two
10:45 A Better Process
13:25 Wrap Up - Jak na to + styl
I like the full commitment to the "level 1" no equipment. The side by side comparison to having basic equipment illustrates how the same recipe can improve with learned skill and technique.
I've always made mine in a jug like this, but my next batch will be my first bucket brew! A little change, but it's an exciting step up for me. Glad I found your vids! c: Much love, everyone!
Excellent video! This is the ultimate ‘start to brew’ video: how to start with no investment in equipment at all, just the ingredients. It explains what the results ‘graduate’ towards a better brew even though the first results are already good. Not all brewers start with an experienced brewer at their side and a basic kit. Most of those beginners end up with a less than stellar result. A lot of beginners don’t know how to move on towards more advanced methods.
Thank you! Even though I’ve been brewing for years I love this kind of video: solid advice, and an excellent way to get more people into the hobby.
:) Thank you for watching!
Good video. I think recipes like this are important because we all basically started somewhere like this. I know, for me, it was Joe's Ancient Orange in a milk jug with a balloon for an airlock. What's good about this video is it shows some pretty good next steps for where to go after you make your super cheap beginner wine.
out of curiosity, how did it turn out?
@@roland4240 firewater but not bad after a year or two. Like most starter wines XD
What a great video. It's nice to show the simplicity of brewing every now and then.
Thank you for watching!
Great job! I started my first batch of mead yesterday and have been looking at new techniques. Keep up the great work!
I love it! Let me know how it turns out!
Love your videos, man! This is great. I've got some friends who enjoy my mead, but assume mead making is more difficult than it is - I'll share this with em' in the hope that can start brewing their own meads instead of drinking up all of mine!
I hope we can get more people into the hobby!
Thanks for the video.
I make this all the time. Its surprising how good it tastes for what it is. i dont use cheese cloth I just set the lid on as loose as possible. The last batch was a $2 off brand grape juice. I did get a little fancy with the yeast. I used rc212
And go ferm and step fed it some dap .
I make lots of 46 ounce test batches this way in a used glass juice bottle. I cold crash and just leave it on the lees and pour gently. Doing that size its ready to drink in a week. Its a good way to play with dif honeys without breaking the bank.
This was a fun switch up to your usual stuff. One quick note for the future though, when you pasteurized and saw the bubbling, it wasn’t the yeast releasing it really. CO2 solubility decreases with temperature, so bringing it up to pasteurizing temps simply is a way of force degassing the drink
Very true! I should have corrected that!
This is a great idea for people with no equipment, they will get the bug and buy a fermenter! Cold water and unscented chlorine bleach is a great sanitizer also, must do follow up rinse. I really enjoy watching your vids, your knowledge of mead making is impressive and extensive. Thanks for sharing.
I hope it gets people fired up!
Thanks for sharing and making this video.
Many of us took a long time to start brewing because it was an intimidating process that seemed so complicated.
Haven't made a bread yeast brew other than Sathi clones in a while, might just give something like JAOM a try.
This is the way that I started brewing. I made a traditional mead and I added raisins because of someone else’s recipe. It actually turned out REALLY good and I ended up drinking almost all of it in one night. It was only a half gallon but still I was well beyond just drunk lol. It just tasted so good. After that I made another one without raisins and I prefer with raisins a lot more. But the second one was still quite good. Even with bread yeast it came out to about 14% and cleared out pretty well. I found that bread yeast leaves quite a bit of sediment and the 71B that I usually use leaves a lot less but still works it’s way through all the sugars very well. I like this style of ‘beginner’ brewing or ‘brewing on a shoestring budget’ a lot too. 👍 👍
P.S. another way I believe would be a good way to level up is to get a couple wine glasses for tasting and smelling your wine. Really taste it and smell it and see if you think it’s missing something or has too much of something. Drinking and brewing wine or mead is more about the experience than just drinking it. Use as many of your senses in it as you can.
Ok giving it a go now, and well might as well do some juice ciders since I went to the store.
Great Vid ! Thanx 🖒I brew w/ bread yeast for almost a year before switching over to wine yeast.So much better😅
It definitely works way better than normal bread yeast!
Fun video. Always fun to see what happens.
Thank you for watching!
Great video thank you! ☺♥
Thank you for watching!
There is an old guy on here, you've probably seen him, who brings home a couple plastic gallon jugs of juice and adds sugar and bread yeast to then and he's done. I think he leaves the caps loose to let CO2 escape. Its been a while since I watched any of his videos. When I decided to start making homemade wines I was watching everyone's videos to learn. I didn't learn anything from him but he is entertaining.
I just passed the 3yr anniversary of my first mead I ever made. It was a traditional mead with just some random grocery store honey and it came out dry and not very good. With age though the honey character really came through and it even seemed a little sweet. Grocery store mead is 100% a great option for some cheap alcohol. Might take a little more time to age and become a great product but it's absolutely worth doing.
I never realized that wine could be pasteurized after back sweetening. I will definitely try this because I don't like to add the sulfites to my homemade wines. Thanks for sharing really enjoy your videos.
I’m happy to share!
i used bread yeast for my last 2 meads and they come out way better then when i used D47 yeast
Cool video! For a first try, if you want to make things even simpler, I would skip the fruit and use more honey (then you don't need to back sweeten, deal with pasteurizing etc) - 1.5kg in 1ga will get you to ~1.020 at the end. I would leave it for longer (2-3 months) at which point it should mostly clear. It's hard to transfer a clear mead by pouring, so buy a tube for $2 and siphon if off (like gasoline from a car)! Fruits make things complicated because they tend to foam up and make a mess, so another thing you could do is defrost your fruit and squeeze out the juice in a cheese cloths. Cheers!
Great video. One piece of equipment that could also make things easier for a starter would be a bucket for the primary. I know that something with a good seal and a hole for an air lock would probably fall into your 'level 2' category, but they could also just put sufficient cheese cloth over the top of any clean bucket and keep it there with an elastic to stay in "level 1" if they wanted. Keep up the great work.
Keeping with the Walmart theme you can go to the bakery in Walmart and ask for empty buckets. They are buckets that were used to store icing and the small ones are 2 gallon. My Walmart charged me $1 for two buckets with lids
@@ittos90 The grocery store near me gave me buckets. It's just trash to them.
some Walmart's have a decent hardware section, get about 3 feet of vinyl water hose and wash with hot water and baking soda to remove the weird flavors
you can use that as a siphon
Looks delicious. I think this is going to be my next batch. Have you ever considered putting together a recipe book for people to purchase? Thank you
I have but I'd like to get more of my recipes down before I do that!
This is ALMOST IDENTICAL to my first mead! I made it out of frozen strawberries, clover honey, that same yeast, and a gallon of water. That was a long time ago but it was actually a pretty good mead. Not the worst I've made.
I brewed that way in Kuwait. Mostly mead and cider. I found out that bakers yeast isn't bad as long as you keep the temperature regulated. The good thing about Kuwait is no preservatives in the juice.
Your videos have inspired me to try making mead.
----- Day 1 ---
- most of a 3 kg costco liquid honey (so about 6 lbs)
- 8 litres (approx 2 gallons)
- SG = 1.090 (PABV =12%)
- 1/2 pack of Lalvin EC-1118 Yeast (hydrated)
----- Day 10 ---
- appeared to be done fermenting
- racked to a new container
- SG was 1.040 (1.090 - 1.040) * 131.25 = 6.5% ABV
(i was expecting the SG at this point to be lower and the ABV to be higher)
- added 6 oz pure maple syrup + 1 orange sliced up (with the peels)
- fermentation started again later this day
------ Day 13 ----
- added a cinnamon stick broken in two pieces
------ Day 16 ---
- Racked to 2 x 1 Gallon Jugs (eliminated the orange fruit)
- kept the cinnamon sticks in to the 2 jugs
- SG 1.028 (abv = 8%)
- did a taste test, quite nice
My fermenting seems to be stalling, or perhaps i'm just too impatient. Should I be adding nutrient to make it start again ?
Any constructive comments would be great.
I would say that you probably wanted to let the mead go a little longer before you racked it! Yeast nutrient will definitely help it ferment faster. You can try to add more nutrient but your yeast colony is small. You could always take a small amount of that brew and blend it with some water in a bottle of sorts. Pitch some new yeast into that bottle and let it start going (this is a yeast starter). After a few days pitch that yeast into the stalled mead and you should see it start fermenting again!
Great video, except for the use of dish soap, reach for the bleach instead. It is the only non brew shop sanitizer we recommend. Even Charlie Papazian will endorse the use of 1 to 2oz of original non-consented bleach in a gallon of water. Soak for 30 minutes and dry just like when using Iodophor. loved your use of microwaved yeast as a nutrient and pasteurizing though.
Oh, and to make a long comment longer, cold crashing will help greatly in keeping the sediment out when pouring instead of racking. The cold will help knock anything out of solution and keep it firmly clumped on the bottom during the pour. Cheers.
Not a huge fan of Walmart, but I think I could re-create this with ingredients from the food co-op.
Matter of fact, the co-op sells honey in bulk and frozen fruit. Yeast? I have some that I bought at the local brew shop.
Even better, it's about time to start another mead.
11:30 for starting gravity.
I'm planning a similar recipe and was having a tough time trying to find a reference brew (I'm not good at the batch builder calculator lol).
That should be a pretty high ABV brew by the end!
Fruit Juice instead of frozen fruit should cut down on sediment and filtration needs.
i use bread yeast nuked in the microwave as well for extra yeast food
Bread yeast gets a bad rep, but I really like it.
I Denmark our yeast seems to be very uniform works very well for brewing
I have a reverse osmosis water filter I used for aquariums. It removes all minerals and heavy metals from the water. Could I use this for making mead?
You can definitely use that!
Make apple butter Mead next!! For the science
First time I see you use dead bread yeast as nutrient in your
vids. Would love to see the effects of it in terms of does
it serve its purpose and how does it
contributes to floculation. :)
I might have to try that as a test!
Why should I use honey?
What if i start with bread yeast and then add champagne yeast later when it comes in the mail ?
That should be fine!
I found one method: someone said just simply mix yeast, sugar, and raw oranges and let it ferment in a cupboard at like 70 degrees for 2 months, does this work?, they call it prison style white lightning
I got a question off topic. Been trying to make a super simple Brut style Mead. Was curious if I can just add more honey and upgrade the yeast.
If I made a Mead using 4.5lbs of honey per gallon, to bump up to 1.15 - 1.20 and just use 1118?
Will 1118 have any problems starting with that much gravity?
I plan on using GOFerm, and the MMM staggered nutrition regime with fermaid k, and dap
EC-1118 is a good yeast for restarting brews and for high gravity things! It should start brewing quickly in that high of a SG. I would give it a shot!
I'm wondering if you could flavor mead with a extract? I have sum strawberry extract. Just wondering 🤔😀
You can definitely use an extract!
If you didn’t bottle and you moved the liquids off the solids and wanted to let it go longer but you only had half the bottle full is that a problem?
Leaving oxygen on the brew for longer than a few weeks will definitely be rough for it!
If you backsweeten, which reading do you use to calculate the alcohol level?
So you take the Original gravity reading and subtract it from the gravity reading (pre backsweetening). That will give you the ABV! When back sweeten and pasteurize you add sugar but the yeast don't ferment any more. So the ABV isn't affected.
Use a balloon with a small whole in it as a make shift airlock
Coulda used a spaghetti strainer with the cheesecloth
Would this recipe minus the fruit make a decent basic mead or do the berries help cover up any "off" flavors from the cheap honey and bread yeast?
The berries can definitely hide errors, but it omitting the berries and just doing honey and water would still be great!
Wouldnt you lose alot, if not all, the alcohol when heating the brew, whitout a cork, to 60c for 20 minutes?
If you boil it or exceed the temperature, you will begin to boil the alcohol out. But at 60C you’re still under the boiling point.
I missed the purpose of the back sweetening, does it just make it taste sweeter or does it increase alcohol level?
It's to make the brew sweeter! If you backsweeten while the yeast are active, they will re ferment (which would increase the alcohol)
I always see bread yeast vs D47
I need to see a d47 vs 71b
Can you use the bread yeast to carbonate like beer? Or should you kill it off always.
You can! I would just make sure to use the right amount of sugar so it doesn’t bottle carbonate too much!
Thanks
I neglected to pasteurize some cider that I back sweetened. About 2 weeks later I had exploding cider bottles. Lesson learned.
Oh no!!! Yeah… you definitely won’t make that mistake again!
@@ManMadeMead I grabbed some safety glasses and a bottle opener and took the whole case out back and started popping tops. I swear some of the caps flew 20 or 30 feet, propelled by a stream of foaming cider.
i made this before but it was wine and used sugar and champayne yeast
Whats the best/safest way to thaw frozen fruit for mead?
I just leave mine out to thaw on the counter! As long as you use it once it’s thawed, you’re good! Mine is always in a gallon freezer bag though.
@@ManMadeMead Yeah I am Doing a Hibiscus cherry viking Blood mead soon sooooo Wish me luck was looking up fruit meads to figure out thawing lol
This might be a dumb question but I try to keep my sugar intake down so my question is, after the fermentation is the sugar completely broken down?
It is but the caloric side is still there. Mead is pretty high in calories because of the alcohol
@@ManMadeMead shit really? I mean I guess that's prob pretty obvious if I just think about it for 2 seconds.. 😅 I've been having a glass or two of wine every night for about a week since I pulled a muscle from doing yoga and was wondering why I felt so bloated and fat the past few days 😅😮💨 I just filtered out my first bottle of home brew today to try out btw.
My first mead finished fermenting monday night but I sat just to make sure and tuesday I checked the SG and got 1.030 the OG was 1.124 and I put that bad boy into the refrigerator to cold crash it. I'm hoping its decently clear by sunday, I'm not back sweetening but I'm wondering if I can warm the mead up to room temp and store a beer bottle or two for a year. I have ordered stuff my two more meads!!! I'm doing wildflower honey and I'm going to mix in rose petals the second one I'm doing a white oak spiral with orange and apples just to try it. Any advice for the two meads I'm about to attempt?
Both of them sound great! I haven't done much with wildflower and rose. But White oak, orange and apples works well!
@@ManMadeMead I was trying to make a mead that has a very smokey taste almost a bourbon or a whiskey
@@ManMadeMead wait!!! Can you please make a video with some rose petals?? Little backstory my fiance (Lisa) loves rose wines I told her I was making her a rose mead for our wedding later this year and I'm going to make around 10 gallons for the wedding and have a few wine bottles set to the side to age for every anniversary we have. I'd greatly appreciate you making a rose and wildflower mead if not I understand just an idea lol
what you should have said for the 2 things to change is buy an airlock and get a simple length of tubing so you can siphon which you can buy from the pet section of walmart near the aquarium supplies. For your next video just do it on cider so they can buy the bottle of apple juice that is already in a 1 gallon carboy. I would also like to add that as long as its not thin plastic yes rising with boiling water does sanitize perfectly fine and if you leave it in boiling water fora little bit it will STERILIZE 100% there is a big difference between sanitizing and sterilizing for everyone reading this comments information.
Before I knew about oxygenation, well before I knew anything about brewing I made a 5lt batch of traditional *mead* using red gum honey, whooo, don't use eucalyptus honeys, once the sweetness goes in fermentation you are left with a eucalyptus/menthol flavour in the mead, not good at all, but I just poured it into the bottles with a funnel, now I know to use an auto syphon lol
I’ve never used it but now I feel like I have to so I can experience that!
you must be Australian
I used a jug with a bubble air lock, some fruit blocked it and it shot off, lol.
Oh no!! Haha
Great content as usual, but I can tell us, I would not trust bread yeast in a brew.
I was a little shocked by how well it did in this one. I think it really only worked because the berry flavor was so dominant. I definitely wouldn't ever try a traditional with bread yeast!
@@ManMadeMead So much for my idea. I was going to try making a traditional with bread yeast.
Bread yeast works just fine! I started brewing with bread yeast. A lot of old timers only use bread yeast, so it’s tried & true, but as Garrett said, it just doesn’t flocculate as well as wine yeast & genre tops out at 12%.
r/prisonhooch rep
I appreciate you!!
Air locks are so cheap. Buy a pack of a dozen or 2. A racking wand is also a must. No pun intended
I love your channel and follow it and but it would be good if you could have a a conversation with grams and liters for your overseas overseas veiws but I still love you feed and information
I’ll try and do that!
Gallon jug apple juice, 2 pounds sugar, 1 pack bread yeast. 10-12% in 6-7 days for about 7 bucks 👍🏻 now that's cheap
Personally I would and have dun ( all amounts by mass )
1- frozen fruit juice 1 part concentrate to 8 parts water
2- honey + sugar 1 part honey to 8 parts water and 1 part sugar to 8 parts water ( only add the sugar after 4-5 days of fermentation )
3- cinnamon and vanilla extract , 1 part cinnamon to 25 parts water also after 4-5 days of fermentation and 2 to 6 drops of vanilla extract per gallon
4- Champagne Yeast
5- let age for 14 days minimum after fermentation stops
6- filter and consume after the 14 or more days
I definitely think that works! However, it's a little more tough for beginning brewers to start with something like this. My method a little more low risk and simple!
@@ManMadeMead I think for the novice there are some advantages
1- not having to deal with fruit solids
2- the decreased cost of both the fruit juice over frozen fruit ( about 35% cheaper at my Walmart ) and also subing some of the honey that is expensive for sugar that is much less expensive make it less of an upfront cost
3- it should give a higher ABV ( the yeast can tolerate a higher ABV if you can get it ) which will make a more stable product in my experience and the cinnamon will cover some of the flavours that people not experienced in home brewing might not be used to
PS I live in the bad part of town and have introduced some of my neighbours to home brewing as an alternative to purel and Listerine using 2L apple juice bottles with bred yeast , sugar and cinnamon with a condom air lock ( its ready to drink in about 4-5 days ) . Its probably the better alternative to the alcohol subsidies ( not letting the perfect solution stop the good solution )
If you're using fruit in the primary, the "yeast nutrient" isn't really needed in my opinion.
I would sort of agree! Some fruit can add more nutritional value than others. I think adding some nutrients in general is a good safeguard to avoid any issues!
You are getting closer to the $10 donation, only three face touches and 5 um's. In this video.
That is quite an improvement, over your early videos.
Hair flick?
One step closer!
how the freak is 2lbs of honey cheap...
$26 for two bottles..... I don't find that insanely cheap. I guess my definition of insanely "must" be different. 😊
I got 3 out of it! I'm sure there are ways to cut corners. This did also include the cost of a whole thing of bread yeast - which you really only need to buy once!
crystal geyser is garbage water
Welp.... it's what I had! Haha
@@ManMadeMead I'm sure the alcohol made it better 😂
15 y/o's everywhere rejoice
Or if you want to be really smart, use a container larger than the amount of ingredients you're using!
Very true!
After watching this video I stopped at our local Walmart, i was surprised to see a completely empty shelf. Not one container of honey, any size, any type. Bare shelf. Spooky
Really?? That's wild!!
this is some broke college student type brewing lol.
Some people have to start somewhere!
This is a recipe for disaster
Have you tried it?
@@ManMadeMead Not with this recipe. Any little thing could cause it to go bad. Even just unclean containers can ruin it. Also, bread yeast is absolutely horrible to use for making alcohol. It is not alcohol tolerant at all so your alcohol, content will be very low. This is barely beyond converting raw sugar with low alcohol yield yeast. Not worth it and potentially dangerous bacterially.
Kind of annoying- we need a 3rd button, like, dislike, annoying.
I agree completely! :)