Introduction & Background Information

From Macdiyvers

Making alcohol to drink is not an excessively complicated affair, as any alcoholic drink you consume tends to have three things:

Water - Which is the liquid in the bottle.

Flavor - Is what makes the liquid taste nice.

Alcohol - What we are all really here for.

If you imagine those three things to be a pie-chart, each piece is either larger or smaller than the other according to how much there is of it inside the beverage. A drink such as vodka can be anywhere around 50 to 70% alcohol, so it is little wonder that it tastes of anything but, however other drinks such as rum or high quality beer will have more focus on the flavor. A really shitty beverage will taste like piss so it is little wonder they have crappy flavors and have fuck-all in the alcohol department.

Alcohol, Ethanol, or Ethyl Alcohol as it is more accurately known as, is a by-product of yeast feeding on sugar. Active yeast will attempt to find any source of sugar around it as it is it's main source of energy. We, as humans, have been using almost any plant or fruit or vegetable that would remotely contain a form of sugar, as the yeast's main food source.

Sugars come in many forms, and are processed differently by the yeast which affect what quality of alcohol you can end up with. Simpler sugars, such as those found dissolved in fruit juice or in grapes, or the white crystal sugar we tend to think of, are processed quickly by the yeast and can mean a shorter brewing time-scale. Other sugars, such as starch in potatoes and wheat takes longer for the yeast to work with, and is set-up wise more complicated, but can result in a higher score in the flavor department.

So in a nutshell: All you need is yeast, sugar, and a liquid that already has flavor in it such as an apple juice or even lemonade.