textfiles/uploads/alcohol.txt

                                                                     
                                                                     
                                                                     
                                             


			    H O M E M A D E  
			     A L C O H O L 

				Version 2
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			        By: Zero

			zerotextspy@yahoo.com

			    June 22nd, 2011
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	INTRODUCTION
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	In this file I am going to present to you the simple method(s) for making 
drinkable alcohol; this is so easy a kid could do it. There isn't much to introduce 
here, as everyone on Earth (well, almost everyone) knows what alcohol is, and the 
effects it has when it is consumed. So let's just get right to the alcohol production.

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   INTRODUCTION TO VERSION 2
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	After researching the home production of alcohol quite a bit, I decided to 
expand this file a bit more for further education. Many things remain the same; the 
first "fermentation" recipe stays the same as in the July 19th 2008 file, but with a 
few added twists to increase yields of alcohol, give more options, etc. What is 
primarily different is the recipes for Beer, and higher alcohols; ex: distilled 
alcohols. You will read how to build a basic distillation apparatus for distilling 
higher alcohols.

	Please take note, though, that while it is perfectly legal to brew your own 
alcohol, it is completely illegal to distill your own alcohol. This is a crime, no 
matter how you look at it. Now, as to whether or not that crime is enforced, or not, 
is another issue. But be aware that distilling alcohol is (for some reason), illegal. 
This is not the case in New Zealand, as far as I am aware.

	Thank you Jason Scott of textfiles.com for hosting all of my files. I'm glad 
to see that you are still keeping the spirit of textfiles alive.

	Take note that this file was written in Windows Notepad, and therefor is under 
the "FIXEDSYS" font. If you transfer this file over to scribd (where I've seen quite a 
few of my files land), or to any HTML website, be sure to change the font to "FIXEDSYS" 
to save the ASCII art rendering, and keep the file looking the same.

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	  BEGINNING
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	You should probably have a few things before you start. Through this document 
I'll explain, as you need them, what you'll need. A few things that would be a good 
idea to have, though:

	*-Basic Mechanical Skills
	*-Food Grade Buckets and Containers
	*-Cleaning Supplies
	*-Sugars (can include fruits)
	*-Supply of Fresh Water

	Take note that if you are serious about making alcohol, you will read this 
textfile, and then get on google and start searching. There are hundreds of books and 
websites way better than this textfile that will give you way more in depth 
information. This textfile is legitimate, all of these things do work; but it is the 
bare-bone starter for someone who is just messing around.

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    A BASIC ALCOHOL RECIPE
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	We make ethanol (drinkable alcohol) by the fermentation of sugar using yeast. 
In this recipe, you will need three basic ingredients:

	*-Sugar
	*-Water
	*-Yeast

	Lets start with the yeast. You will go to Wal-Mart, or wherever, and go to the 
flour/sugar/cake section to find typical Baker's Yeast. You will find two items, either 
the yeast in small packets (sold as three packets each), or a small container of yeast. 
I suggest buying the packets. If you would like, though, you can order yeast off of the 
internet that will be better. The thing about baker's yeast is the bread taste that it 
has with it (this stuff is used to make bread), but it is tolerable and will work. If 
you order the yeast off of the internet, search for any yeast used to make high 
concentrations of alcohol; this is called "Turbo Yeast." Turbo Yeast ordered online is 
exceptionally cheap; a little over $1.00 per packet. When you use turbo yeast, you can 
potentially produce 18% alcohol; thats 36 Proof alcohol. 

	The sugar is easy; just get a cheap bag of sugar. You'll only need a few cups 
per gallon of alcohol you make, so just get a big bag and make a crapload of alcohol; 
simple as that. You can substitute normal white sugar with brown sugar, as well. If you 
substitute with brown sugar, then you are adding a different flavor. This may be 
suggested for those wanting to experiment. If you distill the brown sugar alcohol, you 
will have a rum, of sorts.

	Water is not extraordinarily important. If you have decent tap water in your 
house, then this will due just fine. If your tap water is suspect, or if you would like 
a "cleaner" tasting alcohol, then just buy a few gallons of drinking water (these are 
like 80 cents each). Also, you will need the 1-gallon jugs anyway, so you may as well 
just buy the gallons of drinking water and use the water they have.

	For the materials, you will need only a pack of balloons, and the gallon size 
jug(s). When it comes to the gallon size jugs, I suggest  using the drinking water jugs 
of course, but if you are forced to use a milk jug, then be certain to clean it out 
using bleach and hot water; you are going to be fermenting sugar in here for a few 
days, so you definitely want to make for certain that you don't get any crap bacterial 
growth in them. Things must be clean; period!

	The materials can - and should - be altered. The above (the plastic gallon jug,
 and balloons) are for the most basic thrown together setup. For someone wanting to 
have a little more success, I suggest buying a 5 gallon plastic pail - these can be 
bought at Wal-Mart, Lowes, Home Depot, or virtually anywhere. They are typical white 5 
gallon plastic pails that have a lid. This will be used for fermenting your alcohol 
instead of a 1 gallon plastic jug. They allow for more head space, better fermentation, 
and more control. 

	The balloons are used to keep air from entering into the container; they are 
useful, but not the best. I suggest that you buy an Air Lock. You can find airlocks on 
Ebay, any brew shop, or any online brew shop for about $0.75 cents per air lock. All 
they do is keep air from entering into the container by using a water barrier. I 
suggest you have one of these; they are worth it. To use it, simply drill a hole in the 
lid of your container, and slide the air lock into the hole. When the air lock is 
filled with water, it will allow air to escape, but not allow air to come in.

	To start, add 3 1/2 cups of sugar to the gallon sized jug. Next, fill it with 
13 cups of luke-warm water. Now, in a sauce pan (pot), add 1 cup of luke-warm water, 
and dump a packet of yeast in it. Do not stir the yeast; it will disturb it. You want 
to activate the yeast, so just let it sit there for a little while to hydrate. You will 
begin to notice that the yeast is foaming and bubbling. Once the yeast has dissolved 
completely into the cup of water, you can stir it a little bit, and add it to the 
gallon jug with the sugar and water. 

	Note that the above procedure is meant for the gallon sized jug. Scale this up 
times 4 if you are using the plastic pail. So you would use 14 cups of sugar, and 
3 1/4 gallons of water.

	Put the cap on the jug, and shake the living crap out of it to get all of the 
sugar and yeast dissolved completely in the water. You should notice immediate foaming 
action. Now take the cap off, and put a balloon over the top of the container; secure 
it with tape. Now poke about 5 very small pin holes in the top of the balloon. Now 
it's time to wait.

	If using the plastic pail, instead you should pour the yeast into it, then stir 
it with a large wooden spoon to give it some air to work off of. Once it is stirred 
very well, put the lid on with the air lock, and let it work.

	When you are making alcohol, a by-product is carbon dioxide. This carbon 
dioxide needs to escape from the jug while also not letting oxygen in. Oxygen is 
damaging to the fermentation process, so the balloon protects everything from oxygen 
while also letting the carbon dioxide out safely. In a few hours, you will see the 
balloon inflate and hear the carbon dioxide coming out. Put the jug in a good place 
(like in your closet), and allow it to ferment for about 7 to 10 days. This time is 
not specific, but you can judge when the fermentation is done by viewing if the 
balloon has deflated. Once the balloon has deflated a lot, and is no longer putting 
off any gas, then your alcohol is ready.

	For the plastic pail, you can judge when it is done by how many bubbles come 
out of your air lock per minute. When it stops blowing bubbles out, it is done. 
Remember that you do not want your ferment to be too hot, or too cold; this will kill 
the yeast. If it is really cold in your house, then insulate the jug, or bucket, with 
something to keep the warmth inside. If it is superiorly hot inside your house, then 
stick the bucket in the coolest place in the house; like the kitchen. Do not 
refrigerate; this will stop the yeast's action.

	You should notice at the bottom of the container some sediment; this is just 
yeast leftovers that taste like bread and will make you fart (it's true). Simply pour 
the strange smelling sugar wine into a new container, and leave the yeast behind. If 
you want it to taste better, let it sit for about a month. It is perfectly fine to 
drink, though. The concentration of alcohol is low, but drinking it serves as no
problem whatsoever.

	If you used the turbo yeast, then there will be no bread smell, or taste, at 
all. Remember that a good tell of whether or not the alcohol is done is whether or not 
you can taste a sugary substance, or a bitter substance. If the liquid tastes sugary; 
then it did not work. If it tastes bitter; then you made alcohol.

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         BEER RECIPE
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	Beer can be somewhat more difficult to make; but it is not beyond your 
limitations. It requires a few more ingredients - all of which can be bought at a brew 
shop, at your local grocery store, or online. There are plenty of kits available 
online, or even at some grocery stores that will give you everything you need to make a 
fairly respectable beer. If you want to do this from scratch, though, then follow this 
recipe. Note that this is the most simple recipe for beer I could come up with. It does 
not require buying any grains or doing anythign extensive; just a simple old style beer 
recipe. Enjoy this one.

You will need:

	*-4lbs Sugar
	*-1 Packet of Beer Yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp of baker's bread yeast)
	*-2.2lb Can of Premier Malt Extract
	*-Fresh Water
 	*-2 five gallon food grade buckets
	*-Airlock
	*-Bottles

	First off, you want to build your fermentation bucket. This bucket is nothing 
special, just a typical food grade bucket. Drill a hole in the top of it big enough to 
fit your air lock. What is an airlock? It is a device that allows air to escape, but 
does not allow ay air in. It's the same thing as the balloon method used in the simple 
recipe I gave earlier. It works like so:
	

  |        |
  |~~~~~~~~|
  |       <--------Water
  |   ||   |
  |   ||   |
  |   ||   | <---Plastic Container
  \   ||   /
   \  ||  /
    \ || /
     \||/
      || <---------Air Tube

	It is simply a small container that holds water. Inside the container is water, 
and a small tube. The small tube allows gas to pass through it, bubbling through the 
water and escaping; but not allowing any outside air to come into the tube. Genius, 
right? Just google search "Airlock" in regards to fermentation, and buy one for $1.

	Anyway. Once that is built, begin making your beer mixture. Do this buy pouring 
your malt syrup, sugar, and 1-2 gallons of water inside a big crock pot on the stove. 
Heat this to boiling until the syrup and sugar are completely dissolved. Once 
dissolved, pour the mixture into the five gallon bucket. Fill the bucket with cold 
fresh water until it reaches near the top - leave about three inches from the top. Once 
that is done, follow the instructions on the yeast packet, and add the yeast to your 
mixture.

	Attach the lid to your bucket, with the airlock attached to the lid. Within an 
hour or two - or maybe a little more - you will notice the airlock bubbling. The 
fermentation has started, and you now wait about seven days. Keep the bucket away from 
light. After seven days, siphon the fermented contents of the bucket to a new clean 5 
gallon bucket. Cover the bucket with the airlocked lid, again, and let it ferment for 
another 7 days; or until the airlock gives 1 bubble every 2 minutes.

	Next, sterilize your bottles. Do this in the best way you know how; you want to 
make sure they are clean inside and out. You can use plastic coke bottles to do this; 
there's nothing wrong with it. You can buy glass bottles and a bottle capper; but that 
costs money and you may not want to spend that money for this cheap of a beer.

	Next, make a mixture of 1-1/4 cup of sugar, and 4 cups of water. Clean and 
sterilize the first bucket you used, and siphon the beer from the second bucket back 
into the first. Add the water and sugar (this will prime it so it has carbonation). 
Make sure you mix the sugar-water and brew evenly! Once this is done, simply siphon the 
beer from the bucket into your bottles; beer bottles or soda bottles, it doesn't 
matter.

	Wait 7 days for the beer to carbonate. The reason you added that last bit of 
sugar and water to the brew is so the yeast could have a minimal amount of leftover 
sugar to eat at, and create carbon dioxide; which is what carbonates your beer. Waiting 
7 days will allow carbonation to take place inside the bottles. After 7 days, you can 
chill the beer, and drink it.

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         CONCENTRATION
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	Your new alcohol isn't exactly that concentrated; it might have 9% alcohol by 
volume at best. If you want to take advantage of the alcohol content, you can 
concentrate it with varying methods. You may have heard of distillation, which requires 
that you heat the alcohol to a vapor, and recondense it by itself to yield more pure 
alcohol. There are many methods to do this, which I will not cover due to the fact 
that I am aiming for ease. Simply do an internet search for "alcohol distillation" to 
find out how this is done; it's not that hard.

	If you would like an easy way to concentrate your alcohol, though; simply put 
it in the freezer. That's right, putting your jug of alcohol in the freezer will allow 
you to freeze the water, leaving behind a more concentrated form of alcohol. Simply put 
the jug of sugar wine in your freezer for a while, allow a lot of the water to freeze, 
then pour off the liquid, which should be a higher concentration of alcohol. Discard 
the water, of course.

	Now for a practical concern; larger amounts. Due to freezer space, you can't 
throw a bunch of jugs in there at once. I suggest making 1 to 2 gallons of homemade 
alcohol every day for 7 days. Label them for each day that you make them, and stick 
them in your closet as you make them. After about 7 days or so, when the first batch 
is done, simply put it in your freezer for a while and pour off the more concentrated 
alcohol. The following day, do the same thing with the next batch. Once you have done 
all of the batches (7 to 14 gallons), you should be left with *at least* a gallon or 
two of more concentrated alcohol. Take the concentrated alcohol, and put it in the 
freezer one more time in a final attempt to remove some of the water. Pour off the 
alcohol leaving the ice, and you should have a very good amount of some fairly decent 
concentration of drinkable alcohol - maybe upwards of 25-30% alcohol if you have done 
everything right.

	If you would like, at this point you can add flavoring. Simply add any extract
flavoring that you would like to add. Go to Wal-Mart, or wherever, and buy a small
thing of rum extract, or whatever you want to add. Adding a bottle of this stuff to
your alcohol will give it a better taste.

	Do not be confused; you're definitely not going to be making quality alcohol
using any of method here, but this stuff is drinkable.

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         DISTILLATION
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	Distillation is a semi-advanced process that is not unique to alcohol. I will 
explain it in as simple terms as I can. Lets talk about water, first. Water boils at 
100degC. When you boil water, what happens? It turns into steam. If you boil water in a 
pot, it creates a steam that goes all over. What if you were to close the top of the 
pot, and attach a tube to it? Then the steam would flow through the tube, right? 
Finally, what if you were to bend the tube, and you were to make it really cold but 
running cold water around it? Bingo! It would cool that steam back down while inside 
the tube, and it would flow out as water. This is called a condenser.

	The same goes for alcohol. When you make alcohol, you get all kinds of things 
out of it. You don't just get ethanol and water; you get all the byproducts, too. But 
lets just act like when you make alcohol, you get three things: Ethanol (drinkable), 
methanol (poisonous), and water. Lets also act like 10% of your mixture is alcohol, and 
the other 90% is water. All you have to do is separate that alcohol from the water; you 
do this through distillation. Heat the alcohol/water mixture, and since alcohol boils 
before water does, it will be the first thing to come through the condenser; therefor 
you collect a higher purity alcohol just by boiling it and routing that alcohol where 
you want it to go. Easy.

	Stills can be built out of anything. I am not going to give you step-by-step 
instructions on how to build one; just a basis for you to build one. First off, you 
need a metal container that you think is large enough for your needs. You will choose 
either a stainless steel, aluminum, or copper container. The requirements for the 
container are as follows: it must be sterdy, it must be capable of accepting heat, it 
must be water tight, it must not be corroded, and it must allow you to seal and alter 
the top of it. The container is simply a sealed pot that has a hole in the top. Easy 
enough.

	Next, you have to build your condenser. I suggest you google condenser designs 
because there are hundreds of them. Refer to the following ASCII art to see how a basic 
condenser works:

               IN	       OUT
               | |             | |
         ,-----| |-------------| |-----,
         |         Cold Water          | 
     ----------------------------------------
     ----------------------------------------
         |         Cold water          |
         '-----------------------------'

	The tube on the left side, that is where alcohol steam comes in. While in the 
center of this tube, the alcohol steam is cooled from water surrounding the tube. On 
the right side of the tube is where alcohol liquid comes out. This design is tilted at 
about a 45 degree angle to allow gravity to work the alcohol down into it's collection 
container.

	Condensers are most easily built from copper. Go to the local plumbing store, 
and start playing with copper fittings until you come up with a design for a condenser. 
Also, since you are going to have to solder the copper together to get a perfect seal; 
you MUST use SILVER SOLDER only. Do not use any other solder besides plumber's SILVER 
SOLDER. Why? Because all other solder has lead in it, and will poison the alcohol.

	The next step is assembling the still. It will look something similar to the 
ASCII art below:

       O
       |   <--Thermometer
       |       
       |________
      /| ______ \
     /  /      \ \/\========== Water Out
     |  |       \   \
     |--|       /    \
    /    \      \     \ <--- Condenser
   /      \      \     \
  /        \      \     \====== Water In
 |          |      "-||-"
 |          |        ||   
 | Fermented|           <---Alcohol Out
 |   Mash   |
 |          |
 (__________) <--Stainless Steel or Copper Boiler
  [+][+][+]
     Heat
  [+][+][+]

	You can see that the fermented mash goes into the large container. It is heated 
from the bottom, and then flows into the condenser. The alcohol is collected after the 
condenser.

	Take note, when you are distilling alcohol, you must discard the first 50ml of 
liquid; as this contains methanol. Methanol boils at a lower boiling point than 
ethanol, so it will distill first. This goes for all alcohol; methanol is always 
present no matter what; but it can be easily avoided as long as you simply discard the 
first 50ml!

	Will you go blind? No, just as long as you discard the first 50ml; real simple. 
Even if you didn't discard the first 50ml, you probably wouldn't go blind, you would 
just get a really bad hangover from drinking your high methanol content ethanol. Avoid 
methanol.

	To use your still, simply put in an alcohol mash you made. The recipes above 
will work for this still. If you want to make a vodka; then do the first recipe I gave 
you earlier. Distill it, and you will get a vodka from it.

	This textfile is just a starter. If you are genuinely serious about distilling 
alcohol, I highly suggest googling it, as there are hundreds of books and websites that 
cover distillation in great detail.