Minimalist Home Brewing and Turbo Yeast

[Carkis]

Hello!

I am pretty new to home brewing, but I am quickly becoming passionate about it and I am always looking to learn and try new things. I bought a beer kit and the first batch was good. I also have some brew from fruit juice and sugar going.

My situation is a little unique in that I work in a community that I have to fly to (bush plane), and there is a ‘prohibition’ in our community. I am not asking anyone to conspire with me to break any serious laws of course haha, it just has a large impact on my capabilities to brew.

Other than my Mr. Beer fermenter, I have 1 gallon milk jugs to ferment in. I have done some research about turbo yeast. Does anyone have experience brewing small batches with it? I've heard that the wash created with it (I want to brew a wine/beer not distill anything) does not taste good, but are there simple, flavourful, recipes I could use for turbo yeast and still bottle/ condition as per usual? Any advice on brands or what turbo yeast I should buy? The reason the turbo yeast is interesting to me is the short brewing times and high ABV. Otherwise, are there suggested Brewers yeasts, ingredients, small equipment etc.. that I could order online that would give me a better brew?

Thanks in advance for any advice/wisdom.

Happy Brewing!

 

[wooda2008]

Turbo yeast is specifically to make the most possible alcohol from sugar water for the ethanol fuel industry. No matter what you do it will taste horrible.
You would get a better brew from bread yeast, but order a dried ale yeast from an online Canadian brewshop.

ETA: and post your question in the right subforum. I forgot I was in projects.

 

[Transamguy77]

The way I'm reading your post is that using the turbo yeast will produce a high abv beer in a short amount of time, that's not the case the alcohol produced by the fermentation process is limited to the amount of fermentable sugar in your wort.

Turbo yeast will survive in a high alcohol liquid but without a large amount of sugar it won't produce a large amount of alcohol.

I wouldn't use it to ferment any beer, since you are just starting out I would stick to some tried and true recipes until you get the hang of it then start making changes to see how things turn out.

 

[Carkis]

Turbo yeast is specifically to make the most possible alcohol from sugar water for the ethanol fuel industry. No matter what you do it will taste horrible.
You would get a better brew from bread yeast, but order a dried ale yeast from an online Canadian brewshop.

ETA: and post your question in the right subforum. I forgot I was in projects.

Great, should I order specifically ale yeast or Brewers/champagne yeast? Or is that about the same thing?

 

[bfish]

us-05

 

[brewbama]

Sounds like Nottingham would work well. If stranded on an island it's what I'd want in my pocket because it is so versatile. It takes off like a rocket ship, doesn't require kid glove handling (no refrigerator required within reason), has a wide temp range (no ferm temp control on an island), neutral flavor, and fairly high alcohol tolerance.

 

[Pappers_]

Hi Carkis and welcome to HBT. As suggested above, you don't want to make hootch - bad tasting, bad for you, just plain old yuck. Take some time and learn about brewing, read around here, watch some youtube videos, etc.

If you want something fast and easy, you can make drinkable hard cider without too much effort and fuss.

I'll move this to the Beginners forum.

 

[Jim311]

What's nice about making ciders is that a lot of the cider yeasts don't produce a krausen so you can ferment ciders in the container you buy them in. Perfect for prohibition brewing! I've done it on the counter top in my house with US05 beer yeast and a gallon of apple juice. It tasted great.