Spirit and liqueur making

[chirsbrown]

Has anyone tried making spirits and liqueurs? What is the best system to buy? What sort of strength does the average strength come to for vodka, whisky, cherry brandy, and ameretto? Any tips?

 

[Moley]

Using the Alcotec Turbo yeasts it is possible to quickly ferment an alcohol base. I believe this is somewhere in the region of 20-25% abv but I've never done it myself. That alcohol is then charcoal filtered and flavoured with spirit essences such as your whisky, cherry brandy, etc.

The kits, yeasts and essences are available online or from any decent homebrew shop.

I've even seen some sort of ‘shots’ kit on sale in Tesco, but haven't stopped to read the box.

Do a web search for Alcotec spirit kits or Alcotec 48.

 

[chef2323]

I many moons ago made kits called Prohibition ( legal) they came out ok and about 20ish %

 

[LewisA]

I got a kit for Christmas (Spirit Base Kit) and in all honestly I wouldn't recommend it.
Plus the spirit essences are ok at best, some are just toilet water :sick:

Spend the money brewing more beer or more wine :) :thumb:

 

[ish1349]

I just brought 2 prohibition whisky kits. I have read reviews of blind tastings with your bog standard Supermarket brands and the prohibition kits came out on top.

 

[ingypingy2]

I made a Prohibition Peach Schnapps kit many moons ago when I was a younster! If I remember rightly, it ended up about 20% and was very tasty!! Certainly kept us entertained over Xmas and New Year back then :)

 

[Duncs]

I've made a few of these using the AlcoTec yeasts if you control the temperature correctly, you can get up to 23% abv but I usually get around 18%. Once the sugar is fermented out, you can use the Activated Carbon but I normally don't bother, just use campden tablets and stabilizer to kill off the yeast and wait for it to clear on its own. The Liqueur range of flavours is good, each bottle of this makes 1.25 litres of liqueur, I buy 5 of them for a demijohn and add sugar until it's the right sweetness for my wife.

 

[cumbrian brewer]

i have just finished a peach snaps prohabition kit it finished about 20% have not tasted it yet only bottled last weekend, so will give it 3-4 weeks to condition.

You can get vodka brandy cherry brandy wiskey style kits but dont think they finish much over 20%

I also did a honey meed kit and this taste very nice when young so looking forward to spring to taste it properly :

 

[brews-brothers]

A friend of mine makes the prohibition kits. They are ok but still have a yeasty flavour. I am enjoying amaretto and mint chocolate flavours as the strong flavour is overpowering the yeast flavour.
We get the flavours online, you can get lots of different ones.

Would not make them myself but can drink the odd litre or two.
Personally I dont think they are any where close to the real thing.

 

[calumscott]

Well, I do have a question about silly ABV brewing which isn't destined for straying across *the* line...

Sake. Usually into the low to mid 20's%
RIS's. Again, high teens to low 20's%

Brewdog we know use "other methods" for TNP, Bismark and End of History...

...but they have this new (and some would argue gimmicky) concept Ghost Deer which they claim to be, at 28% ABV, the strongest ever fermented beer. It is suggested that a variety of yeast strains are used along with drip-feeding sugars.

So who would like to hypothesise how one might get a brew beyond 25% using ONLY fermentation?

 

[shocker]

Many of the older winemaking books have instructions for making liqueurs with various ingredients based on strong fermented sherry type wines and/or bought spirits . There are plenty of flavourings available.

re The fermenting of above 25% "drinks" - I would think it only a matter of time , from the outside it looks as though there is a lot of money being pumped into the development of this market and I can only assume there is an equal amount of research . The isolation and refining of yeast strains and accompanying chemicals should in theory be able to lead to ever higher ABVs.....as far as I know , that is ! :hmm:

 

[calumscott]

That's what I reckoned...

...when I was doing microbiology at school, just going on holiday for a couple of weeks and chucking all my petri dishes in the fridge resulted in the creation of a new mutant thermophobic chromobacterium lividum so deliberate heavy-duty brewing should, in theory, produce yeasts more and more resistant to high ABVs.

The thing that puzzles me though, is that we've been brewing for thousands of years - we've been selective breeding birds and mammals for hundreds, if not thousands of years, yet yeast strains have stopped at the mid 20s...

...could be that the invention of distilling made it just not worthwhile pursuing when you can get the quick "enrichment" that way without the years of painstaking culturing and experimentation I guess?

There's always the risk too that an alcophilic (I made that up, I've no idea what an ethanol loving microbe would be called) yeast might produce off-flavours or nasty by-products too I suppose.

 

[RobWalker]

On this subject, from what I gather stills don't just ferment the sugars you put in them like the fermentation we are used to does. You get a much cleaner product than one you would get from racking off - rum comes out unflavoured, the flavour is lifted from the bourbon barrells that it ages in.

Now - please don't respond angrily if that's incorrect as that is ALL I know about it - hahah. My point is that if you were to make something 20%ish, you'd want to take a lot of steps to round off the crap flavours - wine filtering, degassing, ageing, etc. There's a reason the best whisky is aged for decades - it'd need some research to see what would at least be the best introduction to it, nevermind what's the most viable.

I'd be interested in trying something if anybody's up for it, maybe we could organize a small swap to see end results. The idea of having a nice coconut rum or something on ice in the summer is very appealing, and I can't imagine it'd taste too different mixed with coke, you'd just need double the amount - that and having the ability to make low strength "spirits" under your belt is bound to score some brownie points :p