I'm currently fermenting two containers of wine that are supposed to make two "bottles of wine" each. One is sugar wine and one is grape wine.

I followed the warpbreach method and was wondering what the alcohol content should be, and how would I go about strengthening it to about 20%?

Does anyone happen to know a basic scientific formula for the amount of sugar, (optional grape juice), yeast and water to form ~20% alcohol content?

Alcohol is toxic to yeast. At a certain % the yeast starts dying.

I think there are certain strains of yeast that are alcohol tolerant, but I'm pretty sure that won't be enough to get your drink up to 20% alc.

What you really need to do is distill it.

Search for the homebrew thread.

You need to either distill to 20% or just get a yeast that can tolerate higher amounts of alcohol, look for turbo yeast on ebay. Some yeasts can stand up to around 23-25%.

Personally, I don't drink. But I did used to brew that crap in my closet. Sure, you can get turbo yeast, but thats harder for a teenager not very dedicated to the project just lazily looking to get drunk. The yeast you get in the baking aisle will begin to die in their own feces-infested environment (your delicious "wine") when it reaches about 12% ABV. But using either kind of yeast, you would still have to at least let it settle and siphon the so-called-good stuff off the dreg's.

So, I would suggest making 2 or 3 gallons of the basic 'sugar wine' using normal yeast, and try freeze distilling it after the roughly two weeks of fermentation. Look this up, because I don't remember the exact process, and you shouldn't trust me anyways. The freezing point for alcohol is lower then that of water. You can put 2 liter bottles half full of your 'wine' in the freezer, and then once theres a big chunk of ice floating in the bottle, pour out whats still liquid. If done right, this will be around the proof your looking for, but wont be able to produce the higher proofs which require a still.

Really the best way to raise alcohol content is to distill it. But, if you didn't know that's one of the ways to do it... Well I wouldn't recommend distilling. A lot of people blew themselves up back in the days of prohibition trying to distill alcohol. And although it is completely legal to brew your own alcohol if you're 21, it is ILLEGAL to own distilling equipment without a license. Or maybe it's just illegal to use it without a license, I forget which... Either way in this case it'd be illegal and probably dangerous.

Either way in this case it'd be illegal and probably dangerous.

My grandpa has told me tales of his dad brewing moonshine back in the day ... well, I'm not sure when, but I'm assuming during prohibition. He even went to jail once for a month or something. lol.

Anyways, if you're going to make moonshine, don't forget about the methanol.

Or once you are done you could just "Jack" the wine. If you've ever heard of Apple Jack. That means putting it in the freezer, and once some of the water portion has frozen, remove it, and you're left with a higher octane wine.

You can always fortify your wine by adding vodka....
But I'm guessing that's not a reasonable solution at this point.

how bad does the fermenting in jugs smell when you use a ballon for a cap? i remember my dad making wine in my old house but that was 4 years ago and he did it the same way they do in stores.

Search for the homebrew thread.



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