How to make Alcohol at Home (Ethanol)

In this video, I'll be showing you how to make ethanol by the fermentation of sugar. This method is extremely similar to brewing wine or beer, but it differs in several ways. The process is tailored to gaining the most ethanol possible with the fewest contaminants and in the least amount of time. You can drink the ethanol that is produced, but even if you clean it up with activated charcoal, I don't think it's going to taste very good. My interest in ethanol is as a solvent so once the fermentation is over, I'm actually going to distill the alcohol and concentrate it. In a future video, I'll show you just how easy it is to build your own homemade pot still and distill your own alcohol. I will also produce a separate video discussing the dangers and the myths surrounding home distillation of alcohol. You're going to need a few things all of which can be bought at your local brewing store. You're going to need water, sugar, yeast and an airlock. The amount of water, sugar and yeast that you buy and use depends on the amount of alcohol that you plan to make. Also, the water that you use should be distilled to prevent the introduction of other microbial content. I recommend using about one packet of yeast for every two liters. Because we're fermenting just sugar, we don't really need to use any yeast nutrient packages. The yeast nutrient packages prevent yeast from getting stuck in their fermentation process. However, because we're fermenting just sugar and we're using high alcohol tolerance yeast, we really shouldn't have a problem with getting stuck. Your best option for yeast is going to be K1V-1116 or the EC-1118 both made by Lalvin. Some of these yeasts advertise that they can get alcohol percentages of up to 18%, but that's rarely attainable. Always assume that you're probably in a cap out at about 15% if you're lucky. Just for terminology purposes, fermenting just sugar is referred to as a sugar wash. So first you're gonna have to start off with a bowl and a scale. You're going to want to use about 0.25 kilograms of sugar per 1 liter of the total volume of your final wash. Remember that adding sugar to water changes the volume, so it's important to note that it's the 1 liter of the final wash and not 1 liter of water you plan to use. If you want to do a 4 liter wash like I did in this video, I only used about 3.4 liters of water to do it. However, my final projected volume is 4 liters so I weigh out about one kilogram of sugar. I don't show this step but before you start you should clean and sterilize everything you plan to use using sodium metabisulfite which is readily available at your local brewing store. So once you've done sterilizing everything including the pot you plan to boil the water in, add about two liters of water. The amount of water you use obviously depends on how much sugar you have Once the water is hot start adding your sugar. Keep the heat on with a lot of stirring and keep adding your sugar until it is all fully dissolved and the solution is nice and clear. It is okay the solution is a little bit cloudy as long as there's no evident undissolved sugar. If there is still a little bit of sugar left over even though the water is pretty much boiling, you can add a little bit more of the distilled water. Once all the sugar is fully dissolved remove the pot from the heat and allow the solution to cool down a little bit The next step is to transfer the sugar solution to the fermentation vessel But if it's too hot it can either crack the glass or melt plastic Once the solution is cooled down until it's warm or only slightly hot to the touch, using a funnel add it to your fermentation vessel. You can see here that I spilled some over the side, so be prepared for a nice sticky sugar mess. It is very important that you let the sugar solution cool to room temperature before proceeding to the next step. Next. you need to prepare your yeast according to the instructions on the back of the packet. I used twice the amount of water as it said to use on the back of the packet because I plan to rehydrate two packets of yeast in the same container. Again, this container that you're rehydrating the yeast in, it is also important to have this one sterilized as well. A lot of the yeast packets say to use water that is about 40°C. I use a thermometer to ensure accuracy, but it's probably completely unnecessary. I'm fairly certain that you can get away just using lukewarm water. Just be certain not to make it too hot because if the water is too hot it can kill the yeast. After both packets have been added, stir the yeast suspension and allow it to sit for about 15 to 20 minutes. It's extremely important that you don't let the yeast sit here for more than 45 minutes. This is why it's important to cool your sugar solution to room temperature before proceeding to this step, because you can't add yeast to hot water. To test if your yeast is alive and working, sprinkle some sugar in and mix it around. If your yeast are alive and working, it will start producing quite a bit of foam. Now your yeast are ready to add to the sugar solution. And now using a funnel, pour your yeast into your fermentation vessel. I added about 500 milliliters of water off-camera prior to adding the yeast. After adding the yeast you should top off the wash to the volume that you want. Next, using a sterilized spoon or stick, mix the suspension thoroughly. The final important last step is to add the airlock. Add the appropriate amount of water depending on the airlock design that you chose. The airlock let's CO2 out, but doesn't let air in. This maintains an oxygenless environment for the yeast to live in. It is extremely important that the environment that the yeast is in is oxygenless. Otherwise, it won't produce alcohol. You could optionally monitor your alcohol fermentation by measuring the specific gravity of the sugar solution, which is useful if you're trying to obtain a target alcohol percentage. However, we're looking to try to get the most alcohol production as possible which is going to be near the end of the fermentation. The easiest way for you to monitor this fermentation is to simply monitor the production of CO2 gas. After an hour it should speed up to be this quick or even faster. Near the end the CO2 production should almost stop. So for a week or two, store it somewhere dark and cool and check on it later. After a few weeks, this is what your solution might look like. There's a lot of yeast and suspension, but this is perfectly fine if you plan to distill it. Optionally you can add a clearing agent and wait a day or two and your wash might look like this afterwards, much clearer. If you plan to drink your wash, you can add some activated charcoal to clean it up, but I don't think it's going to taste very good either way. You can test the alcohol percentage of your sugar wash by buying a meter from the brewing store. The next step for me is to build a homemade pot still and distill off the ethanol.