fake beer?

I was thinking, instead of buying malt extract, and using that, has anyone here ever thought about using a combination of other things?

like ice tea mix and say, ginseng?.... like, you could get the color and sweetness out of the ice tea, then use the ginseng for the bitterness?

basically, does anyone think theirs a close substitute for malt extract?

No. Seriously, no.

There is nothing to stop you making it. However, your gag reflex might stop you drinking it.

Pappers said:

No. Seriously, no.

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oh now don't make the lil puppy feel bad.

here's a recipe i concocted for Crommy...

Take a BIG gallon or so can of iced tea mix (the powdered kind of course) and add it to a pot and heat it up. Add only enough water to make it pastey and like syrup. Get this to a rolling boil for 15 minutes with ginseng (just kind of eyeball the amount...maybe half cup of powdered root) additions every 5 minutes. Next, chill the mixture and add it to a 5gal carboy or fermenter of choice and add clean (boiled and chilled) enough water to bring it to five gallons. Next, add 2 packets of nottingham yeast. Ferment for 1 week and rack to secondary preloaded with 12 starlight mint candies to aid in the secondary fermentation and let it stay in there for 2 weeks. Bottle and carb with the usual coon sugar and age for not less than 3 weeks.


This should give you a definite result. I strongly urge you to try this recipe as it sounds just fantastic!

While you're waiting for the bottles to condition, run out and purchase a copy of The Complete Joy Of Homebrewing and also Radical Brewing. Read them and come back and read this thread again. Cheers!

Laughing_Gnome_Invisible said:

There is nothing to stop you making it. However, your gag reflex might stop you drinking it.

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Don't be such a downer Gnomey! The world needs dreamers.

The only fermentable in iced tea is sucrose. Sucrose is 100% fermentable. Malt on the other hand has a lot of unfermentables, and other flavor compounds that give beer body and flavor. Its also why you rarely see beer finish at 1.000 FG. Your sugar water will ferment out to an insipid bland hooch like liquid.

Sure.

People here do it with apple juice all the time.

Other people do it with honey, it's called mead.

Just throwing whatever sugars you can find at the yeast is generally referred to as "hooch", I believe.

Boondoggie said:

Sure.

People here do it with apple juice all the time.

Other people do it with honey, it's called mead.

Just throwing whatever sugars you can find at the yeast is generally referred to as "hooch", I believe.

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Usually it isn't presented as "fake beer":cross:

Try it. What's the worst that can happen? You spent a little time and money on something and had some fun doing it. If it doesn't work then mark it down as a don't do it again recipe.

If you really want to do something like this, check out the GAP (Grocery And Produce) thread where people made "beer" only from items purchased at the grocery store. It should give you some ideas. As was said earlier in this thread, I'd stay far away from ice tea mix.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/gap-grocery-produce-beer-experiment-69313/

I was at Powell's used bookstore in Hyde Park, Chicago a few months ago, and they had a book called "Early American Beverages" or somesuch. Had all sorts of recipes of the kind you're looking for. Not too many had alcohol though.

Edit:

That was fast:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0006BO32E/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

CROM said:

I was thinking, instead of buying malt extract, and using that, has anyone here ever thought about using a combination of other things?

like ice tea mix and say, ginseng?.... like, you could get the color and sweetness out of the ice tea, then use the ginseng for the bitterness?

basically, does anyone think theirs a close substitute for malt extract?

Click to expand...

Sure.. you can ferment all kinds of stuff! Just don't expect it to be anything like beer! And it certainly can't be called beer (even fake beer would be stretching it! Personally, I would only refer to non-alcoholic beer as "fake beer".) Depending on what you ferment, you might need to add yeast nutrient. Remember too that what ever you ferment may taste nothing like what you expect. For example, completely fermented apple juice doesn't taste much like apples anymore.

Cultures all over the world ferment with different ingredients to create alcoholic beverages. Experiment away!

I suspect that, lacking malt, the yeast will have nothing to convert to alcohol and CO2. So you would end up with yeasty iced tea -- or whatever.

GACurmudgeon said:

I suspect that, lacking malt, the yeast will have nothing to convert to alcohol and CO2. So you would end up with yeasty iced tea -- or whatever.

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Yeast will consume the sugar in iced tea mix, just as bread yeast consumes sugar in bread dough (causing the dough to rise from CO2). However, if tea lacks many of the yeast nutrients that barley malt has, the yeast might not produce an ideal fermentation.

It won't be beer. But you can make wine with fruit juice, hard lemonade with lemonade (which technically is a fruit wine, I guess), cider, and mead with honey.

If you use a sugar that yeast can eat, you'll get alcohol. There are plenty of websites out there that are geared to people wanting to make cheap hooch, and I'm sure that they've tried it all. I've heard from a reliable source that fermented Mountain Dew doesn't taste good.

This website is geared towards making craft beers, wines, meads, and ciders. Feel free to check out the wine forum to see the different types of drinkable fermenteds we've made.

We don't allow hooch threads, but making a good drinkable product out of common ingredients is fine.

lol thanks everyone...

I dont really want to make hooch or just some alcoholic drink... I wanted to see if I could make something that tasted like beer without using malt extract...

cause if I can make it with ice tea, something bitter, sugar and yeast and somehow make it taste like beer still its a score...

CROM said:

I wanted to see if I could make something that tasted like beer without using malt extract...

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You can. It's called malted barley.

CROM said:

lol thanks everyone...

I dont really want to make hooch or just some alcoholic drink... I wanted to see if I could make something that tasted like beer without using malt extract...

cause if I can make it with ice tea, something bitter, sugar and yeast and somehow make it taste like beer still its a score...

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I'm curious why you want to make something similar to beer without buying malted extract? I figure its a cost issue? A lot of people say that you don't really save money by making your own... but I beg to differ. If you can resist the urge to expand your brewery and move into more advanced brewing, you actually can save over time. Staying with your typical $75 starter equipment and recipe kits, and reusing bottles from commercial brew will eventually save money. By some rough calculations, the kit will pay its-self off in about 5 batches, (assuming you normal buy commerical microbrew anyways). The increasing costs with homebrewing, though, comes from a desire to never stop tinkering and expanding.

As everyone has mentioned, you can make alcoholic beverages from a variety of ingredients. I doubt anything will really taste like beer (as far as modern beer goes), unless you're using barley (either all-grain or extract).

CROM said:

lol thanks everyone...

I dont really want to make hooch or just some alcoholic drink... I wanted to see if I could make something that tasted like beer without using malt extract...

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Most gluten-free beers are made without malt I believe.
I think most are made with sorgham(sp?) syrup?

if it doesn't have malt, and hops...its not 'beer'.

i don't feel that sorghum stuff is 'beer'. beer-like maybe, but not 'beer'.

all this hate... lol...

imagine if Les Paul said "you guys are right, I have no business making guitars electric, we'll just stick with acoustic"

if it doesn't have hops its not beer? what were they drinking b4 Germany put their touch on it?

malkore said:

i don't feel that sorghum stuff is 'beer'. beer-like maybe, but not 'beer'.

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Have you tried it? I haven't, just wondering....

fineexampl said:

Bottle and carb with the usual coon sugar and age for not less than 3 weeks.

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I'm am not familiar with this item. I pray to god you mean corn sugar. Otherwise, I shudder to think where this product comes from. I never suspected you could get sugar from those ring tailed little bandits!!!

CROM said:

if it doesn't have hops its not beer? what were they drinking b4 Germany put their touch on it?

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Gruit. Beer must have hops.

Let's just cut to the chase. If you wanna make hooch, then look no further than some if this site's biggest threadselwein.

Laughing_Gnome_Invisible said:

Let's just cut to the chase. If you wanna make hooch, then look no further than some if this site's biggest threadselwein.

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lmfao

hahahahaha