Cheap wine recipe:Dangerous?

Okay i made a wine recipe i got off the internet.It basically goes like this,
Get grape juice,add sugar till juice is cloudy,add yeast,leave in a container with a small(1-2mm)hole in the lid,leave like this till the CO2 bubbles stop rising to the surface,strain with a coffee filter,drink.I used bread yeast.
I just read that this can produce methanol which can cause blindness w/as little as 10ml.How much methanol will this recipe produce per 1/2 gallon?
I drank it a week ago and I'm not blind but can the methanol accumulate till i go blind?If so what is a safe rate to drink this stuff at to avoid blindness?
I'm sorry if this is a foolish question,if it is please forgive my ignorance.

Blindness is not really a concern with homebrewing AT ALL. The methanol produced in home brew (which is produced in all brewing) is in very very small concentrations. You really would be throwing up long before you got enough methanol in you to do anything, much less blind yourself. Now if you were distilling (illegally) then you were be concentrating the very small amount of methanol produced to a possibly unsafe level. And even that can avoided by removing the first run offs from distilling, but I shouldn't even be saying that since we do not discuss distilling, just being informative.

Tusch is right, you'd lose your dignity and pants long before your eyesight..

Our website is dedicated to quality craft brewing and winemaking. There are plenty of other places on the internet to find the information you are looking for. If you just want to make hooch for a buzz, this isn't the place for it. I'd refer you back to the website that gave you the original recipe you used.

If you're interested in making drinkable beverages, we have many good easy recipes and techniques.

Besides what yoop said. Methanol requires wood and a different species of yeast to be produced.

YooperBrew said:

Our website is dedicated to quality craft brewing and winemaking. There are plenty of other places on the internet to find the information you are looking for. If you just want to make hooch for a buzz, this isn't the place for it. I'd refer you back to the website that gave you the original recipe you used.

If you're interested in making drinkable beverages, we have many good easy recipes and techniques.

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Why yes,I am actually somewhat interested in making mead and rice wines.This was mainly an experiment to see if it actually would work that way.I hafta warn you though I am on the poormans side of the equation.So whatever i make is probably going to be somewhat poor in quality.
I am one of those people that believe that things like home brewing,cheesemaking,canning and other techniques should NEVER have left commomn knowledge in America(or anywere else for that matter),so I am very interested in learning simpler techniques for brewing simple wines. If you'd be willing Id like some explanations on the simple does and dont's of winemaking.(Remember there is no information thats so obvious that it shouldnt be explained to someone new to a field. )
Thank You.

If you want cheap, easy, and tasty try this, https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f25/man-i-love-apfelwein-14860/

or search the mead recipes for Joe's Ancient Orange Mead. 1 gallon batch sizes are cheap and good for experimenting and learning.
the downside is you get less than a 12-pack of tastey goodness.

you want cheap and easy?

Airlock $2.00
Brew bucket from a homebrew shop $10
Bung for brew bucket $.75


Those are the bare bones materials you need buddy. You can order them online too, austin home brew supplies sells them and ships them cheap.

Once you have that you can throw all sorts of crap in there and add yeast to ferment it.

If you want to let it ferment a couple of weeks and have it taste good then there is really only one thing that is gonna be drinkable.


Heres the recipe


Apple Juice from the store and beer yeast (Nottingham or Safale-05).
Beer yeast is cheap, just like bread yeast but it's gonna taste a hell of a lot better.



Tastes pretty good actually right out of the bucket, but you would be better off bottling and carbonating it. But, in midevil times i'm sure they just would have stuck their glass in the bucket and drank it.

Now you can add things to that to make it stronger but then it won't be drinkable in a couple weeks.

If you want to spend a $100 you can get everything you need to make, bottle, and carbonate your beer.

quam said:

Why yes,I am actually somewhat interested in making mead and rice wines.This was mainly an experiment to see if it actually would work that way.I hafta warn you though I am on the poormans side of the equation.So whatever i make is probably going to be somewhat poor in quality.
I am one of those people that believe that things like home brewing,cheesemaking,canning and other techniques should NEVER have left commomn knowledge in America(or anywere else for that matter),so I am very interested in learning simpler techniques for brewing simple wines. If you'd be willing Id like some explanations on the simple does and dont's of winemaking.(Remember there is no information thats so obvious that it shouldnt be explained to someone new to a field. )
Thank You.

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Well, me too. I make my own beer, wine, cheese; grow my own food; kill my own meat. I don't buy packaged food- for health and financial reasons. So, I think we have much in common. Except- NOTHING I make is poor quality. Just because something costs less than $1 doesn't mean it's poor quality. I demand only great quality. If you want poor quality, buy some Everclear and Wyler's lemonade and have at it.

You can buy an airlock and a #6 rubber stopper for $2 total. Grab a Carlo Rossi wine jug, the 4L size (I just go dumptster diving), and decide what you want to make.

If you have fresh fruit, you need about 3 pounds per gallon plus some table sugar. If you don't have fresh fruit, you can make good wine from apple juice or grape juice. Just make sure you have 100% juice- no "cocktails" which contain high fructose corn syrup. Check out my recipes for banana wine (when bananas go on sale for $.19/pound- the extra ripe ones are great for this!), Welch's wine, and apple juice wine. It's cheap, easy, and tastes great.

Ummm...

I doubt this person wants to make low quality beverages. I guess most people have low expectations for what they make they first time, but hey; there always has to be a first time.

I was pretty sure my first beer would taste like crap but I was wrong!

Take Brandons advice and make some Notty Cider, it will be great and fast.

If you're lucky (like me) you might live near a winery that presses and sells the juice.. When I visit mom in silver lake (near Buffalo) there is a winery that sells it's juice for 20-30 bucks per 5 gallons (unfermented)..Yeast there costs $.59 cents so it's about a dollar a bottle to make my own.. They carry about 20 varieties from real dark reds to light white grape juice.. :fro:

YooperBrew said:

Well, me too. I make my own beer, wine, cheese; grow my own food; kill my own meat. I don't buy packaged food- for health and financial reasons. So, I think we have much in common. Except- NOTHING I make is poor quality. Just because something costs less than $1 doesn't mean it's poor quality. I demand only great quality. If you want poor quality, buy some Everclear and Wyler's lemonade and have at it.

You can buy an airlock and a #6 rubber stopper for $2 total. Grab a Carlo Rossi wine jug, the 4L size (I just go dumptster diving), and decide what you want to make.

If you have fresh fruit, you need about 3 pounds per gallon plus some table sugar. If you don't have fresh fruit, you can make good wine from apple juice or grape juice. Just make sure you have 100% juice- no "cocktails" which contain high fructose corn syrup. Check out my recipes for banana wine (when bananas go on sale for $.19/pound- the extra ripe ones are great for this!), Welch's wine, and apple juice wine. It's cheap, easy, and tastes great.

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I realized after reading your post that i had used the wrong words,instead of saying poor quality i should have said "will not be fancy".I'm sorry,my words don't always match up to the concept I'm trying to express.
Now onto business,so to speak.And airlock is a device designed to allow the control of the amount of c02 in the headspace of the brewing chamber. It is analogous to the lid with a hole in it in my initial post in that it prevents the oxygen from entering and interacting with the yeast to form vinegar and vents the Co2 to prevent it from killing the yeast.Is this correct?
Thats the main question that i have right now,to my knowledge my area has no homebrewing shops available,but the liquor stores probably carry brewers yeast.They might have the airlock I'll check.
As to the initial recipe it actually turned out far better than I had hoped and got me some valuable insight into brewing.As it was a "proof of concept" run I figured on no more than a one in three chance of it actually doing what the sight said it would do(I generally assume a large failure rate on the first attempt of anything).Not only did it succeed it wound up tasting far better than I expected.I was expecting a flavor like Zombie Breath or Fish Stank but instead it tasted like that Franzia box wine without the acidic bite.Don't get me wrong franzia isn't very good but compared to Fish Stank its heavenly.
I originally tried to separate the by-products by pouring it through a coffee filter from the jug but this also agitated the mix causing a colloidal suspension of particles(I'm assuming leftovers from the yeasting process) in the mix.I also shook the mixture during brewing to insure proper mixing,an idea which now seems stupid to me.So next run ill try to let it settle as much as possible and siphon from the top to keep the solids mostly out of the final product.(The next run will hafta be the same original mixture,I dont have the resources allocated to this project yet and i want to keep experimenting anyways.The recipe may not be good but its gaining me valuable experience on how to brew which cant be gained through simple discourse,and thats what I want the most right now.) Thank you for enumerating the equipment that I'll need I will try to acquire it post haste,till then it'll be jury rigging fun for me.

I think the posting system might have an error my last post isn't showing up at all....
To summarize it I used the wrong words in my second post,I should have said "will not be fancy" instead of "will be poorer quality".I kinda goofed with my language.Sorry
Anyways,I'm trying to make that notty cider first.Then I'll move on to the mead and grape wine recipes.Ive acquired a s-type airlock,#6 stopper,and some knottingham yeast.I'll have two growlers tomorrow. So I just hafta put the yeast and apple juice in it stopper with the s-lock and wait a week?Do I need to put anything into the bend on the s-lock? Will water work? Can I leave it for more than a week?If so what will be the effects? Also I realized that the best way to get rid of sediments(that I know) is to let them settle and siphon from the top(this is the primary lesson i gained from the first attempt),is there a better way to get rid of em? Is there anything I'm missing in the process for knotty cider that I described above?Any mistakes I could make? Please advise me on these questions.Thank You.
By the way that initial batch of wine I described in my post turned out like franzia box wine without the acidic bite.I was expecting something far nastier, so I'm kinda pleased.Was this the flavor I should have gotten or was I lucky/unlucky?

quam said:

I think the posting system might have an error my last post isn't showing up at all....

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It got snagged by the anti-spam queue for some reason, I just cleared it through.

An airlock will let CO2 out but won't let air in. Exposure to air is a bad thing and should be minimized. A hole in a lid will let CO2 out but will also let air in.

CO2 coming from the fermenting liquid must be released, not because it kills yeast, but because your bottle will eventually explode if the CO2 has no where to go.

Where do you live anyway? I bet I can find a homebrew shop that will ship good yeast and the other cheap things I mentioned.

But ya, go apple juice and yeast. It will be drinkable after about 2 weeks of fermentation.

If you want to bottle, you can always use plastic soda pop bottles, they hold carbonation just fine. Just make sure they are clean and sanitary before you fill them up.

If you want to carbonate the bottle, you need to add some sugar to it. The amount you need to add depends on the size of the bottle.

Let us know what kind of soda bottles you will be using and I bet we can tell you how much sugar to put in with the cider in order to carbonate it.

Thank you for the explanation Brandon.I went to the liquor store down the way from my house and found out that its like the only place in the area that has a dedicated brewing section,so I lucked out on that one.Am I supposed to put a liquid in the s-locks bend to help keep the air out or is it good as is?

You add water or vodka up to the line (hold it up to the light to see the line) to allow the co2 out, but no air in.

One more question about the knotty cider,how much yeast do i use per gallon of juice?

quam said:

One more question about the knotty cider,how much yeast do i use per gallon of juice?

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One package of yeast is good for 1-6 gallons. So, one package.

Just use one packet of Notty for a 5 gallon batch

EDIT: Yoop types faster....

One last question.Its a little different topic,a friend I was talking to wanted to know if i could brew some non-alchoholic stuff (rootbeer,gingerbeer).Does this forum have a place for that?
I know I said last question but a new one just occurred,is it advisable to add sugar to the notty before brewing to increase the potency,and if so how much per half gallon growler(the only available container to me at this time).Also,how much would this affect taste/brew time?Another,is there anything aside from the siphoning process i should use to filter solids?

I brew some really small batches of ghetto wine in a 1.36L glass jug and I add about 2 ounces of dextrose (corn sugar) to raise the final alcohol content approximate 1% give or take. I've made nice Afpelwein in this way.

quam, there's a soda forum on the site, dedicated to brewing up tasty, N/A beverages. I'm about to start a 5 gallon batch of ginger ale with 2 POUNDS of ginger.

Thank you to both of you.(my reply is tardy due to comp failure)

Ok my cider is done fermenting,I wanna carbonate it and I have a 2 liter soda bottle available.How much sugar should I use and how long do I leave it out for after bottling and adding said sugar?

I'm not too sure about volume but you need roughly 15 grams of sugar (+-oz/gallon) and two weeks to a month to carb. Maybe two tablespoons but don't trust me, I'm drinking!

quam said:

Ok my cider is done fermenting,I wanna carbonate it and I have a 2 liter soda bottle available.How much sugar should I use and how long do I leave it out for after bottling and adding said sugar?

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Are you asking for instance or are you really done fermenting? Because, if you just made this since post one of this thread, I doubt it is done fermenting.

Misread the original recipe.I thought it was one week,glad I caught that before taking the airlock off.Anyways though about the sugar and time necessary for carbonating?

I usually put in about 2/3 of a cup in the entire bucket for 5 gallons of cider. I've found this to be easier than putting sugar into each bottle. Of course, I have multiple fermenters and it's not a problem to move it from one to another.

I'm guessing you only have one fermenter, so I would say to sanitize something that will hold 5 gallons (large pot, igloo cooler, something like that) add sugar to that, then siphon it off into your bottles. Don't worry about having a hole for an airlock or anything like that, it's only going to be in this long enough to fill your bottles.

Oh yeah.... don't forget to leave some headspace in your bottles. If you're using soda or beer bottles (and you should be) then fill them to the same level as the soda/beer was when they were originally.

Ive been experimenting for awhile and just acquired a bung bucket,however the gasket on the bung is kinda slowly leaking (i tested it w/water first so ive lost nothing in terms of resources).Im wondering if greasing the threads with crisco would stop the leak? I got these myself and bored them so the hole has small irregularities. Is this fixable?