xiphias: (Default)
[personal profile] xiphias
So, I brew soft drinks sometimes. Well, I guess technically, they're "small beers" -- beer-like beverages with only trivial amounts of alcohol, too little to get you drunk in any practical way. The carbonation, though, is from fermentation, rather than whatever the thing is that they do to most soft drinks and seltzer.

So, I've got this one recipe which doesn't even deserve the name "recipe" it's so easy.

Costco sells these bottles of ruby red grapefruit juice -- "Apple and Eve" brand, "Made in the Shade Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice Cocktail." Notice the "cocktail" bit there -- they've got a whole BUNCH of high fructose corn syrup added, making it too sweet for my tastes. Lis likes it that sweet, though.

When you buy it from Costco, you get two 96-ounce (three quarts, about 2.85 liter) bottles. I leave one unmodified for Lis, take the other one, open it, drink one glass of juice from it (that's not strictly necessary, but it adds a little airspace to the top of the bottle, which can be useful), and sprinkle a pinch of bread yeast in.

Then I seal it up, put it on the counter, and wait. Yesterday was a heat wave, so it was nearly ready today. Usually, it takes longer.

The longer you leave it to ferment, the less sweet it gets. The yeast will eat all the sugar, leaving it tasting like fizzy unsweetened grapefruit juice. Or you can drink it at any point before then.

And that's the easiest soft drink I make.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-10 03:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pekmez.livejournal.com
ooh, that's brilliant. Is the alcohol negligible enough for a kid to have a glass of, or do we need to leave one unmodified for her (and then add seltzer to make it fizzy?)

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-10 03:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] xiphias.livejournal.com
Depends how sensitive the kid is to alcohol. If there is an actual alcohol allergy involved, then it's a Bad Idea. However, for most people, it should be fine. "Small beer" is the historic term for it; things with similar alcohol contents were called "near beer" during Prohibition, and even today, things with alcohol content that low are allowed to be sold to and consumed by minors.

Does your kid get a bit of wine with Kiddush? If so, this should absolutely be fine. I grew up on Manischewitz in preference to grape juice whenever I could get it, so I'm in favor of not worrying TOO much about how much alcohol small children get, but you're the parent, so it's your call.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-10 03:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pekmez.livejournal.com
nah, no allergy involved. She likes licking wine and beer off my fingertips, and we're not overly crazy about keeping her away from it (though she *is* only 2 and a half and maybe 30 lbs if that). but she doesn't get wine with kiddush because we don't like manischevitz, and are usually too wiped out on friday nights to open and consume enough of a bottle of real wine to be worth it. She probably would if we had wine instead of grape juice in the kiddush cup though.

I'll have to try it when she's not around and see how strong it feels to me, and then let her have a little bit. This sounds more like as fermented as the stuff her great-great-aunt makes in Croatia by fermenting some tiny tree flowers from a particular plant in water for a while, which I never even considered as potentially alcoholic.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-10 03:48 pm (UTC)
ext_22388: (fabulous)
From: [identity profile] elgoose.livejournal.com
That looks interesting! I think I'll have to try it.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-10 04:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] oneironaut.livejournal.com
I do essentially the same thing with apple cider all the time (recreating the self-fermenting apple cider experiences of my youth). It's a little touchy; the line between pleasantly fizzy and soured is fine. If I'm paying close enough attention to catch it at the pleasantly fizzy stage it never sticks around long enough to go bad, though.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-10 04:51 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] xiphias.livejournal.com
The problem is that it's nearly impossible to get non-pasturized apple cider these days.

Apples naturally have a certain amount of yeast on them so they ferment quite nicely on their own. However, the pasturization kills that yeast, and the bread yeast isn't quite right. I understand that champagne yeast is better, but I don't have any.

The reason cider is always pasturized, of course, is worries about e-coli infection, especially when using "drops" -- apples that fell to the ground on their own. Those ferment the best, but also can pick up bacteria. The thing is -- the bacteria they pick up tend to be very susceptible to alcohol, so taking non-pasturized cider and fermenting it is perfectly safe. It's just non-pasturized SWEET cider (also known as "apple juice") that's a problem.

I don't know of a place to reliably get unpasturized unfiltered apple juice with its natural yeasts intact.

But I did find out, from this really cool book that Lis got me, that "jacking" is the process of concentrating alcohol by allowing your beer or wine or whatever to freeze, then removing the water ice, and that "applejack" was originally jacked cider.

I am going to have to try this at some point, making my own alcoholic cider, then jacking it.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-10 06:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] desperance.livejournal.com
I didn't know that, about applejack. I have done that same freeze-distillation thing accidentally, though. To gin. The result was - whoo, yeah. Dizzy now, just remembering.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-10 07:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] oneironaut.livejournal.com
The produce section of Whole Foods has apple cider (the conventional stuff, not the organic stuff) that has apparently been through some incredibly slipshod pasteurization process and will ferment, unopened, well before its sell-by; however about three times in four this is some kind of foul-tasting bacterial fermentation and not enjoyable fizzy yeast fermentation.

I knew about freeze distillation, and now that you mention that you, who I believe know more about booze than any other person of my acquaintence (and I've known a few bartenders, not all of them in my capacity as a former bouncer), learned about jacking from a book, I wonder how I picked it up, because I don't think I've ever read up on the subject. Maybe from fiction. I had the impression that the scumble of the Discworld was applejack, but Wikipedia claims otherwise, so my acquaintence with the process apparently precedes my reading of whichever book Nanny Ogg's Suicider is mentioned in. I have definitely seen one example in fiction: in Neil Gaiman's American Gods a shaman consumes some mushrooms and then jacks her own urine to create a hallucinogenic drink.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-10 07:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] xiphias.livejournal.com
I know about alcohol through reading and through friends. You'll notice that several of the people commenting on this have done, will do, or often do this. I learn about these things from them.

I knew about the process before -- I just didn't know the verb, and therefore hadn't understood the connection between the process and the booze.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-10 07:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] oneironaut.livejournal.com
I thought bartenders picked up knowledge of alcohol via some kind of weird osmotic process unavailable to non-bartenders! Nothing makes sense anymore!

I just didn't know the verb

Oh, I see.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-11 01:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] felis-sidus.livejournal.com
I understand that champagne yeast is better, but I don't have any.

How about making sourdough starter from grapes, then freeze-drying it, as a substitute for the champagne yeast? I have instructions, if you want to try it.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-11 09:57 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Bolton Orchards or one of those big apple places out west have had an auger press running during the fall in previous years. Baskets or boxes of apples were dumped in, plastic jugs were located below and the process looked very direct. Maybe we could go in the fall?
Duzzy

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-11 12:48 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kelfstein.livejournal.com
My grandmother used to make root beer at home with Hires extract, sugar, water and yeast. I loved it. After reading this I found extract on the internet here:
http://shop.zatarains.com/zatarains%AE-root-beer-extract-p-1586.html

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-11 09:59 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
My grandfather used to make root beer also. He had a tendency to put in a little extra suger, perhads to get a little alchohol, and experiences blow ups from time to time, sometimes initiating a chain reaction if ajacent bottle were also overpressurized. Made the cellar smell wonderful.
Duzzy

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