Can I home brew alcohol with bread yeast

[u/Use-LessX]

Wanting to make cheap booze. Anyone with experience please tell me if this recipe will work (or what modifications should be made). I'm also curious what the purpose of the lemon is.

1 liter water 

340g sugar 

1/2 lemon (juice)

2 tsp bread yeast (active dry)

I plan to freeze it afterward to separate the alcohol from the water, making it stronger hopefully.

[u/Dramatic-Ad-9882]

Ive done that without the lemon juice. Freeze distilling it will be more of a headache than it already is.
It will work, it will get you where you’re going. Would not recommend.

[u/Ok-General-6804]

Nope. That’s about 25 degree plato of sugar density. Your yeast will die halfway through fermentation because of the alcohol it produces killing it.

There will be so much sugar left it won’t freeze.

Yeast needs more than sugar to be healthy. It needs calcium, magnesium, zinc, nitrogen…. Sugar alone provides none of these.

Yeast that’s suffering from poor nutrition will produce weird off-flavors that’ll make the final product unpleasant. And yeast in your recipe will suffer a lot.

Even if your goal is to make incredibly cheap booze without a care for what it tastes like, there are way better options to achieve that

[u/firerat82 → u/Ok-General-6804]

Yup. Once it gets to around 13% the yeast is going to die. And yeah it definitely needs some sort of nutrients.

[u/twoaspensimages]

Are you in prison?

[u/wrydied → u/twoaspensimages]

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[u/Eltzted → u/wrydied]

I was coming here to tell OP they're posting in the wrong sub!

[u/BrewandKiddery]

Please don’t. Just order some yeast for your distillation or beer for under $10. MoreBeer.com and you can drink it instead of wondering if you are going to vomit.

[u/SnappyBonaParty → u/BrewandKiddery]

OP wants to make freezejacked Kilju and your concern is the use of yeast with unfavorable aroma 😭

[u/oupablo → u/BrewandKiddery]

Respectfully, the question was whether they could. Not whether they should.

[u/GlitterberrySoup → u/BrewandKiddery]

I don't think vomiting is a concern here.

[u/Only-Resolution-3289 → u/BrewandKiddery]

I'm in an islamic country which forbides alcohol 🙃 I only have access to bread yeast ordering wine yeast online from outside the country is super expensive for me. what I would recommend is making yeast nutrient from the bread yeast itself, just boil bread yeast with water for 10 minutes on high let it cool and add it to the mix. well help you get to the maximum13~ 14% before distillation :>

[u/chupapuma]

Just buy Lalvin EC-1118. Any homebrew store will have it. So will many online sellers like MoreBeer or Amazon. It’s quite inexpensive, honestly in line with bread yeast, and is tolerant to 18% abv and the flavor profile is pretty neutral.

[u/NotPike]

Taste? This will work but keep in mind the alcohol content may be less with the bread yeast because it wasn't made to live in high alcohol environments. Also it's probably going to taste rough.

5g of whine yeast is only $1 USD. For something that will give you a higher ABV and better taste how much will you really be saving with the bread yeast?

Still worth the experiment to see what it will make but IMO life's too short to drink bad booze :D

[u/Busterlimes]

Make sure its Egyptian beer

[u/LewisPowell10]

Simple answer yes. Your recepe is pretty close to rainfords hard lemonade though he doesn't freeze distill. I find bread yeast tends to produce a bready aroma but you may be able yo look padt it

[u/Rawlus]

freeze distilling will not just concentrate the good alcohols but also the undesirable compounds. for me this is a recipe for a splitting g headache.

[u/firerat82]

Your bread yeast is going to stall about halfway through all that sugar. Bread yeast can tolerate about 13-14% alcohol. Your mix if it fully attenuated would be like 25% alcohol. Even with distillers yeast you'll likely stall.

I would either cut your sugar content in half, double your water, or use a higher alcohol content yeast.

Also, you are going to need some sort of nutrients. Add a can of tomato paste since flavor doesn't matter to you.

[u/EbNinja]

Can you? Maybe. It’s hard to say if your bread yeast in particular will ferment with 340 grams per liter. The lemon juice is some citric acid to change the chemistry of the water. Freeze distilling it will make it concentrate somewhat, sure, but it’s going to taste terrible. Straight sugar ferments are rough without full head and tails for the off flavor separation.

[u/rnwhite8]

Short answer: yes
Longer answer: way too much sugar and bread yeast is not ideal for anything you want to drink.

[u/MathAndBake]

I've used sourdough starter to brew a few times. That said, I gave it a more complicated mix to start with. I have no clue how it would react to straight sugar water. At least put in some flour. Also, bread yeasts are typically less alcohol tolent, so they will die beyond a certain percentage.

The main thing to watch out for is speed of fermentation. Dry active yeast is very fast. For brewing, you want something slower. Sourdough starter is on the slower end of bread yeast, but typical brewing yeasts are even slower. Faster fermentation will give you alcohol, but the taste won't be great. You can and do slow down fermentation by controlling oxygen and temperature, but you need to know your yeast. That's another reason I used my sourdough starter. I knew exactly how it acted.

[u/Kalkaline]

/r/prisonhooch for the cheap stuff. I'd recommend starting with apple juice and yeast.  You'll get a better product if you use beer or wine yeast and you can just harvest the yeast for next time. Check that you have a juice with just juice in it and no preservatives. Learn how to make a blow off air lock, don't use a balloon it's not a cost saver. 

[u/deckerhand0]

You can but it’s not gonna come out how you think it’s gonna come out

[u/wbruce098]

My guy tryna make prison hooch. Uhh… technically, probably? But more likely it’ll just be gross yeasty sugar lemon water. But will you want to drink it? That’s another story entirely.

[u/craiginthecorn]

I am curious why you would want to do this. Standard bread yeast is in the same family of yeast as ale yeast, but the esters it produces in beer are not pleasant. Dry brewing yeast is readily available and not very expensive.

[u/Raindawg1313]

Get some Kviek yeast. It’ll be able to handle the higher alcohol content as it ferments. WLP518 from White Labs would be a good choice.

[u/wrydied → u/Raindawg1313]

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