Harnessing Wild Yeast: How to make your own Fruit Alcohol (Hooch)
By Adriaan Van Duuren, apprentice 2021
Fruit alcohol, or what we like to call hooch, is a great way to use an abundance of seasonal fruit and transform it into a tasty alcoholic treat. With a community of 15 plus people here, we can drink a fair amount of alcohol, and being able to make it ourselves allows us to know the ingredients, process, who is benefiting from it, and save a lot of money!
This blog is going to explain how to make a fast and simple hooch with basic/cheap accessories that everyone normally has or can buy. I will use my banana hooch that I made here at the Ranch as an example, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t use different or multiple kinds of fruit that are local to your place.
Equipment
· Cutting board
· Knife
· Kettle
· Air tight food grade container
· Bubbler
· Strainer
· Siphon (optional)
· Airtight bottles
Ingredients (makes 5 liters)
· 1000 ml fruit
· 4500 ml water
· 500 ml sugar (we use locally sourced sugar known as tapa dulce)
Instructions
Making a Batch of Wild Yeast
First, we need to create a small batch of wild yeast to be able to make sure our hooch will have a good taste and smell. You can use store bought alcohol yeast, but making your own is more fun, creative, and can bring different flavors to your beverages! Yeast live where there is sugar! Yeast will convert the sugars into alcohol. Different ingredients will create different flavors and aromas in your yeast and your batch of alcohol, which is why it is important to try out different yeasts in a small quantity. Take a small container and put chopped fruit, water and some sugar in it. Here are three different examples of the wild yeasts I made in order to test what would give me the best flavor.
1. Dried banana with water and sugar syrup
2. Ripe banana with water and sugar syrup
3. Ripe banana, lemon juice, water and sugar syrup
After three days of daily stirring, I tasted the mixes and decided to use the first mix with the dried banana to cultivate my big batch of banana hooch. The sweet smell and honey like taste was what I wanted.
To know your wild yeast is ready, things you're looking for are: the pieces of fruit are floating to the top, you can see the liquid is starting to get bubbly and active, and it's still sweet but not as much as the beginning.
Brewing
Before we can start brewing a big batch of hooch we need to chop the fruit into smaller pieces and put them in the fridge for two days. I'm doing this to give the fruit some more time to ripen and create more natural sugars.
We then begin the brewing process by putting our fruit in the big airtight container that we want to make our hooch in.
Pour 1000 ml of hot water from the kettle on to the fruit. Make sure that all the fruit is surrounded by water to kill the non cultivated yeasts. Seal the container and let the mixture cool down until you can comfortably put your finger in it.
Add the rest of the 3500ml of water, the liquid sugar, and your batch of wild yeast (be sure the overall liquid temperature is not above 110 degrees Fahrenheit or it will kill your yeast). If you only have crystalized sugar available, boil it in a little bit of water to liquify it. Stir this mixture and seal the container air tight. Put the bubbler in a hole on the lid and make sure that no air can escape from the container except through the bubbler. Let your brew ferment for 4 days while stirring gently everyday. After four days strain the pulp and store the liquid in the airtight bottles. Let the hooch carbonate for one day in the closed bottles and then put them in the fridge for two more days. Now you should have a fruity and sweet carbonated hooch to drink and show off to your friends!
Tips and Tricks
If you forgot about some stored bottles of hooch or just made too many of them, don't panic! After one to two weeks your alcohol will turn into vinegar and you can use it to cook with. Store your hooch in the fridge if you want to keep them for longer, but with enough time the hooch will turn to vinegar in the fridge. You can store in the freezer for a longer lifespan. ATTENTION!!! Make sure there is enough air in your bottles when you store them in a freezer or your bottles will explode from the pressure.
Thank you for reading this blog and I hope you enjoy drinking your hooch!
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Happy brewing, happy microbes, enjoy!