How to Make Alcohol for 29p per Litre (Kilju with a Twist!)

Hi my name is Pete Rainford and you're watching Rainford's Brew Lab. Can you make alcohol for 29 pence a litre? Today I'm going to show you how. So very quickly here's what we're going to need. We need a one litre plastic bottle with cap, 500 millilitres of warm water, 500 millilitres of cold water, five raisins, 170 grams of sugar, a teabag and a spoonful of bread yeast. That's it. Total cost 29 pence. This is the absolute bare essentials. So to start off I'm going to add the 500 millilitres of warm water to our one litre plastic bottle. Then we add our 170 grams of sugar. If you've got a funnel use it and make it a lot easier. That's our sugar in. Now because baker's yeast will fail in pure sugar water we add our basic nutrient pack which is unnegotiable. You have to have these and that is a teabag and five crushed raisins. Okay so in go our raisins and in goes our teabag. The five crushed raisins and the teabag aren't there for taste, they're there as yeast nutrients so that the fermentation won't fail. Okay at this point we need to put the cap back on firmly and give this a little shake just to get that sugar to dissolve. At this point take the top off again and we need to bring the temperature of this warm water down with the cold 500 millilitres of water so that we don't kill our yeast when we pitch it in the Place the top back on again just give that a little swirl around purely just to mix the hot water and the cold water. Okay remove the top again and last but not least we pitch our yeast. Five grams of yeast pre-weighed. Okay now put the top back on and just thread it on a little bit so that it's still loose and you can squeeze air out of the bottle. That way the CO2 can escape as the yeast is doing its thing. Okay I'm going to take a quick gravity reading on this so that I can prove to you when it's finished what percentage this finishes at. I'm aiming for 10% so let's take our reading 1.070. Now we can pull this back, put the cap back on loosely again. Okay now we need to leave it for a week in a nice warm place and then we'll be back to taste this and see if we've created the cheapest alcohol in the world. Hi guys, I am just going to wrap off our kildew or sugar wash, whatever we're going to call this when it's done, into a clean bottle. It's still fermenting, I can see bubbles, it's been over a week but it is still fermenting. I just want to get it off that, I've left the teabag in there, I should have really taken that out by now and I just want to get it off that sediment in there give it a better chance to clear and taste a little bit better when done. So I'm just going to pour it into there very carefully as to not disturb that sediment at the bottom. The raisins are going in as well, I don't mind, it's the teabag more than anything that I want away from this brew now. There's quite a bit of sediment there now, I'll stop there. Okay oh it actually smells like a cup of tea with alcohol, that's weird. Whoa, tea alcohol, alcoholic tea, the world's upside down, it's inside out, I'm telling you. Okay, slacking it off again, he didn't see that. Okay, back to fermentation for a while. Hi guys, just a quick one today, I've got our kildew or sugar wash here and I want to get it cleared, it's had a couple of weeks so it's getting there but I need to get my videos on YouTube for you guys so I tend to rush things a little bit, whereas if you had the time at home you'd just leave this, let it clear on its own, just time will do it but I don't have that luxury unfortunately, else I'll have brews here piling up and I won't be able to get in the door. So I am going to add a little bit of bentonite into this bottle which I've already done, a quarter teaspoon and then I'm going to add some of our brew to the bentonite, put the top on, this is a fresh cleaned and sanitized identical bottle I believe to this one here. I'm just going to shake that up and then I'm going to add our brew to here and just pour it in. I'm going to do it gently just to try and leave as much sediment as I can in there, there's not that much actually, there's some in the bottom, show you in a second, and they're starting to arrive, okay we'll leave it there. So yeah, look at that muddy, see it? Muddy sediment, we will leave that in our long fermentation vessel and I'll just put the top on this, give that a good stir with our bentonite and then tomorrow that will be cleared and probably ready for a taste. I can tell you now, it smells okay but I'm certainly not going to try it while it's that colour. So just in case it's still fermented because I've not taken a reading, we'll leave the top on loose and put it back on the fermentation mat. Okay guys, see you tomorrow. Hi guys, remember this, I've killed you, our sugar wash? Well it's been a couple of weeks now because I've not had time to get to this and it's not completely cleared but it's not far off so I think it's time to have a little taste. I'm going to get it out of there first into a couple of my plastic bottles I've got here and just to get it off that lees. I'm going to taste it raw, I'm going to take the reading first, it should have fermented to dry, it's had plenty of time to do so. There might be a bit of fizz here now, there is, you hear that? Because I've shut the top on. Okay, we have got a carbonated brew, naturally carbonated, excellent. Right, I've got a funnel with a gauze here which you don't have to use, you can just pour it out carefully. So I'm going to go straight into this jug, very gently. Okay, let's get a reading while it's in there. It's properly carbonated, excellent, it's going to make this a lot easier to drink. It also might give us a slight false reading on the hydrometer. Right, in we go. Okay, that's just above 1.010, we're going to say 1.012. 1.010, so this hasn't fermented to dry. Right guys, our opening, sorry, our starting gravity was 1.070, our final gravity was 1.010, which gives us 7.88%. So I'm going to round that up to 8% obviously. So we've got an 8% Kildew here or sugar wash. So I'm just going to pour it into these two sanitised bottles to get it out of this ridiculous container. It's going to lose some of its fizz sadly. That's maybe one bottle and the rest will do for a taste. Yeah. And then we can have a little pour, a bit of a posh glass for Kildew, but you know. May as well pour that in hadn't we really. Oh God, it's a full glass. It's a good job it's evening. Look, it's dark out there, don't judge. Okay, we're going to do two things here guys. First off, I'm going to taste it as it is. Now I can smell, I can smell some of the tea there. Bit of orange maybe, that sort of smell. Anyway, I'm just going to, yeah, I can slightly smell the tea, bit of orange, not much else. Doesn't smell unpleasant anyway. Smells fine. So you've got to remember this is just water and sugar and the tea was just to take the edge off. Oh, we put a little bit of lemon in there as well didn't we. Right, okay, in we go. That's not bad. That's not bad at all. Tastes a bit, it's a bit orangey really. Yeah, almost tastes a little bit like orange juice. It tastes like a weak wine rather than a strong cider. I'd say it tastes like a weak wine. I'm wearing the microphone low down here for those of you that mentioned they could hear me gulping by the way. So if you can't hear me gulping, great. If you can't hear me talking, it's your fault. I'm joking, okay. Right, that's not unpleasant at all. Could I drink, yes I could. I could drink it as it is, but there's another ingredient that I want to add. I'm kind of thinking now it doesn't need it. Let's have a bit more. See, it's drinkable as it is, but I bought this thinking that this was going to be, not undrinkable, but wasn't going to be very pleasant. And okay, it's not something I'd go out and say, I want homemade killed you please with my steak and chips. Not going to happen. But I bought some caramel flavouring basically from Tesco and I'm going to add a couple of drops into here, which okay, it might bump up the price by a penny or two, but I'm literally going to add just a couple of drops because that's all you need. This is, you know, strong stuff. Okay, now that's sunk to the bottom, so I'm going to give it a stir with the baster, just to stir it up. Now let's have another taste with a little bit of caramel. I can't say I can smell it, but I can taste it. That transforms a drink and to be brutally honest, I thought this was going to be harsh, should we say, but it's not that bad. The teabag and the lemon helps. It really does. Without those, I think it would be very harsh and you'd need probably a lot more of that than I just put in. So that makes a massive difference. It now tastes like something Christmassy, which guess what? It's only a week away. So a Christmas killed you, should we call it? Christmas sugar wash. I honestly thought I was going to taste this for you, make the video, taste it and throw this away, but I'm not going to. I'm going to chill that. I'm going to add some of that to there and it's going to get, it's going to get demolished over the Christmas holiday sometime. But for now, I'm going to enjoy drinking this. That's remarkable. Water, sugar, a teabag, a bit of lemon, some yeast and that really does make it a nice drink. So yeah, maybe some, some orange or some, some lemon. It doesn't have to be caramel, but I just chose that because I quite like, you know, caramel taste. So there you have it guys. Very, very cheap alcohol. 8%, less than a pound. Yeah, at 8%, if I was to drink all that right now, I'd be a merry man. So it's worth it. This was, obviously brings the price up a bit more, but you can't count all of that. It's just a couple of drops. So only a couple of pence because this wasn't that much. Okay guys, as always, if you've enjoyed the video, please like and subscribe. If you're already subscribed, by all means, throw a like on it and I hope you enjoyed the video. I've got a few coming over Christmas. I've got a mead, I've got some Christmas wine, some Christmas ciders and something a bit more traditional with a twist, a bit of a surprise, which will probably be pushing Christmas Eve with that one. But anyway, that's a bit of a surprise. So for now guys, as always, cheers. Okay. It's a little bit, oh, after that much, yeah, I've had enough actually. I'm still not pouring that away though. I'm going to get drunk.