The Archive

Truck

Details: Category: Boozin'; Created on Tuesday, 30 June 2015 02:54; Written by Super User

Truck: The LTN guide to home hooch in the war against sobriety.

There are times in a proud boozer’s life when dry spells are more terrifying than being strapped for cash. The tools need to be in your belt when you make that terrifying choice to cut corners and be cost efficient. Thankfully, making your own wine at home is not only an interesting science experiment, but also cheap enough to produce small or large scale after you blow all your booze money on a late night bender with strippers and cocaine.

The Wild Turkey is what you drink while you make this.

What You Need

3 cans of Welch’s concentrated grape juice. (Generic is honestly fine, I used Hill Country Fair with decent results)

½ Cup of Sugar- You will also need 1 teaspoon of Sugar for activating the yeast

1 packet of Baker’s Yeast - You can find this in the local grocery store’s baking section. This will get you to around 6%- 9% alcohol. If you can find wine yeast, this will bring it to around 11% and give it a better taste. For the purposes of this, I used Turbo Yeast, which will get you to about 20% at the cost of $7 for the equivalent of 15 packs. Turbo Yeast is not essential to making jug-wine, but it is if you want to make Truck. You can find it online or at a local home brewing store.

Gallon Jug - This is where you are going to dump all your stuff together and let the magic happen. Water - You don’t have to get it from the purest waters of Lake Minnetonka. Mineral or tap will work fine. Funnel - I don’t care if you have to jerry rig one from an empty box of cereal. Get one if you don’t want purple shit all over the place. Rubber Band and a Balloon - Once we are done with the mix, this is what we use to let air out without allowing contaminates to come in.

Making the Swill

First, thaw out the cans of concentrate and use the funnel to get them in the jug. Next, add the sugar and water. Once you have it all in, cap it and shake the fuck out of it until it’s mixed up properly. Seriously, mix the living fucking shit outta it. The next step gets tricky.

Now you are going to need to hydrate the yeast. You will do this in a bowl of WARM water. If it’s too cold, it won’t “activate”. Too hot and you could kill the yeast. You want it around 95-105°F to be just right. Add the yeast to the water, mix it around a bit, and leave it alone for a few minutes. Next, add a teaspoon of sugar to the mix and stir that around and then leave it alone for about 10 minutes. If you see it bubbling, you’ve done it right. Dump it in the jug and shake it up again with the cap on.

Now, you need to poke about six or seven tiny holes in the balloon with a pin and put it on the top of the jug. Secure the balloon to the top with the rubber band and push it down into the jug. The next part is all about patience. You need to let the yeast eat the sugar and fart out that sweet, sweet alcohol. This will take about a week. You should see the balloon fill up and small bubbles floating to the top around this time. Once the balloon falls over and stops bubbling, you can safely move it to another container for getting fucked up on. If you choose to move it watch out for the sludge at the bottom.

If you used regular bakers yeast, you should now have something resembling shitty box wine. If you used Turbo Yeast, you have produced a concoction that resembles wine, but will run you the fuck over if you don’t look both ways before crossing the street. Truck is a sneaky motherfucker that should be about twenty percent alcohol and is very drinkable. You have been warned.

By the way, if you make this , consider yourself an amateur home brewer. I’m sure we have a ribbon around here somewhere.