Making Moonshine Making sugar wash moonshine using a simple Sugar wash is a mix of water, sugar, and yeast necessary in the fermentation of alcohol followed by distillation using a, A sugar wash is an affordable and one of the easiest ways to create a wash for fermentation.
It can be done with cheap table sugar or dextrose, or brown sugar for more of a rum style wash. Follow our simple sugar wash recipe. How Sugars Turn Fermentable: When a sugar wash comes into contact with a strain of yeast, over time the yeast will start to feed off the sugars and grow. As it grows, the sugars will convert into ethanol and carbon dioxide.
When yeast first comes into contact with your sugar, 60 minutes or so should go by with little activity. Soon after, as the yeast colony continues to grow, it will start to feed off the sugars rapidly. When nutrients and sugars are becoming hard to come by for the yeast, and the alcohol percentage rises the fermentation process will end.
The Process: Start with 5.5 gallons of hot water about 105-110 degrees F which is hot enough to dissolve the sugar. Pour 18 lbs of sugar into the hot water and stir until dissolved. Then put a couple hand fulls of ice in the sugar water to cool it down. You might need to let it sit for an hour or so until the temperatures comes down to around 80F.
Then add the Turbo Yeast and stir in really well. Place lid on the fermentation bucket with air lock in place. Fermentation takes approximately 5 days and using the you should get up to 20% ABV (alcohol by volume) in the wash. Keep fermentation bucket in a dark place at 70-75F.
In this cycle, since the yeast is still trying to adapt to it’s new environment, it will hit a bit of lag in it’s reproduction. One to two hours will go by with little activity. Be patient and give it time. After this cycle has passed, the yeast will start “feeding” on the sugars in order to sustain in it’s environment without any more oxygen. The yeast will eat fast, and within the first 3 days or so, most of the sugars will be gone. You’ll notice your airlock will be bubbling frequently at this stage, as carbon dioxide expels from the bucket This cycle is within the last days of fermentation as the yeast has eaten up all sugar and stops thriving. With the airlock now only bubbling every so often, the yeast will fall to the bottom of the bucket as it ends it’s cycles. We recommend to clear the wash. The Turbo Clear will pull down any suspended yeast and nutrient particulate to the bottom within 24 hours or you can just let the fermenter sit for a couple more days to clear by itself.
Making moonshine process will take 5-7 days with most strains of yeast. Our popular 48-Hour yeast is capable of producing 20% in 5 days, but it’s recommended to wait a full 7 days to have all yeast settle or use Turbo Clear for quicker clearing. Another good alternative for making moonshine from regular sugar are actually fruits.
This is a fun process to do because you can experiment with different fruits to achieve natural flavors in your finished product. A common example of this is using potatoes to make vodka. Apples, plums, pears, and a wide array of berries can also be used to experiment with to make that liquor using a,
This process will work differently with fruits. Simply use table sugar and fruit juices collected is what you really want for fermentation. Keep cautious if you choose to skip this step and purchase fruit juice instead. Preservatives in some fruit juices has potential to kill the yeast in your mash.
How much sugar per gallon to make moonshine?
How Much Sugar do you Put into One Gallon of Mash? – The amount of sugar used in moonshine mash will vary from recipe to recipe. This is because it also depends on the amount of natural sugars and starches present in your recipe. If you are making a, a one gallon recipe will use 5 cups of sugar and 13 cups of water.
Do you use sugar to make moonshine?
Even if you’re new to the ‘shiners club, you might have already figured out just how essential sugar is for making moonshine and all other distilled spirits. Basically, all you need, aside from your trusted copper pot still, is water, sugar and yeast as alcohol is obtained through the fermentation of natural sugars, with the help of yeast.
In fact, sugar is so indispensable that you can either obtain it through fermentation from fruit or cereal mashes or you can just use it as a sole ingredient, in what is called a sugar wash, Sugar washes are easy for learning to make your own moonshine as they’re fairly easy to prepare but can still yield a nice amount of clear, neutral moonshine, perfect for mixing and flavoring.
Types of sugar Knowing the different types of fermentable sugars will help you distinguish variations in your final distillate. There are simple sugars, such as glucose and fructose, and compound sugars, such as sucrose and maltose. Glucose is usually found in fruit and plant juice; fructose is the sweetest of sugars and can also be found in fruit, vegetables, sugar cane and honey.
Sucrose is actually formed through the combination of a molecule of glucose with a molecule of fructose and is found in sugar cane stems or sugar beet roots, while maltose is the least sweet of sugars and is formed through the germination of grains, the most important being barley, which is converted into malt (For more information on malting read: http://www.whiskeystill.net/blogs/whiskey-still-co-blog/12638473-malt-whiskey ) You can either base your moonshine on a fruit or grain mash, from which natural sugars will be extracted through fermentation, or you can use already processed commercial sugar.
The main forms you can find this in are white sugar, brown and raw sugar. Among these, raw and white sugars are used most for home distillation: they ferment easily and are affordable. Molasses, a sugar byproduct, is also used in distillation, most often in the process of making rum ( http://www.whiskeystill.net/blogs/whiskey-still-co-blog/12175097-how-to-make-homemade-rum ).
- White sugar is a processed sugar obtained generally from sugar cane.
- It comes in many different forms and levels of crystallizing, from the standard granulated sugar, to coarse and sanding larger crystal sugars, to superfine and powdered sugar.
- Brown sugar is a sucrose sugar with a distinctive brown color due to the presence of molasses, which is between 3.5%, for light brown sugar, to 6.5% for dark brown sugar.
Natural brown sugar, or raw sugar, is obtained from the first crystallization of sugar cane and can be found as unrefined or partially refined. Unrefined brown sugar contains molasses syrup, which is higher in mineral content. Turbinado and demerara are partially processed sugars, obtained through crystallizing raw sugar cane, then removing water and impurities through the use of a centrifuge.
- Demerara has less molasses than light brown sugar, while turbinado has a golden color and a mild brown sugar flavor.
- Muscovado is an unrefined, dark brown sugar with a stronger molasses flavor and a sticky texture.
- Sugar wash A sugar wash is easily obtained through mixing your chosen type of sugar with water and yeast.
First add the sugar to some hot water and mix, then once it’s dissolved, add colder water. You can decide proportions depending on recipe, ingredients or the equipment you have but as a general rule, you can use about 3 liters of water for 1kg of sugar.
Add your yeast and let it ferment for 4-8 days. Once that’s done fire up your moonshine still and get to the next stage: distillation. A typical yield from sugar wash is somewhere between 40-50%, meaning you should get about 550 ml of pure ethanol per kg of sugar. So, for 5kg of sugar, you should get some 2.75 liters of alcohol.
If you run your pot still at 40%, you can get up to 7 liters of distillate from 5 kg of sugar. So, whatever you decide to make your homemade moonshine from, sugar is your best friend. Although it might not come out as rich and tasty as a distillate obtained from malt or fruit mashes, a sugar wash is easy and cheap to make.
How much alcohol does 1 pound of sugar make?
Shipping Update: Shipping Daily M-F. Orders Placed After 10 AM Ship the Next Business Day. This blog provides information for educational purposes only. Read our complete summary for more info. August 11, 2014 Last updated March 28, 2022 Adding sugar to a solution before fermentation may be done for a variety of reasons. For example, a lot of homebrew recipes call for sugar additions. The Double IPA we brewed a while ago, for example, called for a 12 ounce dextrose addition. Adding highly fermentable sugar, such as dextrose, as opposed to adding more grain, will increase the ABV of the final product without increasing sweetness and malt character.
The chart below shows how many pounds of sugar are required to reach a particular potential alcohol percentage for a 1, 5, and 10 gallons of finished fermented beer, wine, etc. A couple of notes, this chart assumes that the fermentation will end at 1.000 specific gravity. This is possible, but keep in mind that many beer yeasts finish around 1.010.
Also, the chart assumes a starting point of zero sugar in the solution. But it is also useful useful if you make an all grain mash or a fruit mash and you want to increase potential ABV to a specific amount. Examples below. Let’s pretend that we make 5 gallon batch of what is supposed to be a Double IPA.
| Added Sugar vs. Potential Alcohol in 1, 5, and 10 Gallon Batches | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Pounds of Sugar | 1 Gallon | 5 Gallons | 10 Gallons |
| 1 lb. | 5.9% | 1.2% | 0.6% |
| 2 lbs. | 11.9% | 2.3% | 1.2% |
| 3 lbs. | 17.7% | 3.6% | 1.8% |
| 3.5 lbs. | 20.5% | 4.1% | 2.1% |
| 4 lbs. | x | 4.8% | 2.3% |
| 5 lbs. | x | 5.9% | 3.0% |
| 6 lbs. | x | 7.1% | 3.6% |
| 7 lbs. | x | 8.3% | 4.1% |
| 8 lbs. | x | 9.5% | 4.8% |
| 9 lbs. | x | 10.7% | 5.4% |
| 10 lbs. | x | 11.9% | 5.9% |
| 11 lbs. | x | 13% | 6.6% |
| 12 lbs. | x | 14.2% | 7.1% |
| 13 lbs. | x | 15.4% | 7.7% |
| 14 lbs. | x | 16.5% | 8.3% |
| 15 lbs. | x | 17.7% | 8.9% |
| 16 lbs. | x | 18.8% | 9.5% |
| 17 lbs. | x | 20% | 10.1% |
| 18 lbs. | x | x | 10.7% |
| 19 lbs. | x | x | 11.2% |
| 20 lbs. | x | x | 11.9% |
| 21 lbs. | x | x | 12.4% |
| 22 lbs. | x | x | 13% |
| 23 lbs. | x | x | 13.5% |
| 24 lbs. | x | x | 14.2% |
| 25 lbs. | x | x | 14.7% |
| 26 lbs. | x | x | 15.4% |
| 27 lbs. | x | x | 15.9% |
| 28 lbs. | x | x | 16.5% |
| 29 lbs. | x | x | 17% |
| 30 lbs. | x | x | 17.7% |
| 31 lbs. | x | x | 18.2% |
| 32 lbs. | x | x | 18.8% |
| 33 lbs. | x | x | 19.5% |
| 34 lbs. | x | x | 20% |
Remember, while brewing is legal in almost all US states, distilling alcohol is illegal without a federal fuel alcohol or distilled spirit plant permit as well as relevant state permits. Our distillation equipment is designed for legal uses only and the information in this article is for educational purposes only. Kyle Brown is the owner of Clawhammer Supply, a small scale distillation and brewing equipment company which he founded in 2009. His passion is teaching people about the many uses of distillation equipment as well as how to make beer at home. When he isn’t brewing beer or writing about it, you can find him at his local gym or on the running trail.
How much sugar do I need for 5 gallons of mash?
How Many Pounds of Sugar to Make 5 Gallons of Mash? – A 5-gallon of mash requires 5 pounds of white sugar when using 5 pounds of corn which will yield a 15% finished product of 5 gallons or 3 quarts.
Is 10 grams of sugar alcohol a lot?
Are Sugar Alcohols Safe for People Who Have Diabetes? – Sugar alcohols are safe and can usually be safely included in your diet if you have diabetes or prediabetes —but there are some caveats to consider. The safe recommended intake of sugar alcohol intake is 10-15 grams per day.
- Like many other ingredients, including sugar, sugar alcohols should be eaten in moderation.
- Not only can they affect your GI system, but in some cases, some sugar alcohols can contribute to spikes in blood sugar.
- They’re also a source of carbohydrates—although a lower source than sugar.
- Many people with diabetes track and moderate carb intake since these nutrients can cause blood sugar to fluctuate.
If you choose foods with sugar alcohols, do so carefully. Include the carbohydrates in your daily carb total and keep a careful eye on your blood sugar levels to see how foods with sugar alcohols affect your glucose levels. You’ll also want to carefully check nutrition labels to determine the amount of sugar alcohol contained in a food.
- Search the label for the “Total Carbohydrate” number.
- There you’ll find the amount of dietary fiber, total sugars and added sugars, followed by a line indicating the amount of sugar alcohol in the product.
- Manufacturers are only required to list sugar alcohols if they’ve identified their product as being sugar-free.
When deciding if sugar alcohols have a place in your diet, talk with your doctor or a dietitian about your overall health, your eating habits and if sugar alcohols are OK for you.
Is 30 grams of sugar alcohol a lot?
Most sugar alcohols are considered safe at doses around 10 – 20 g daily but it varies depending on the type. For example, one review found that sorbitol causes diarrhea if ingested in amounts above 20 g. Xylitol, however, has a larger safety dose of up to 70 g per day, with some people tolerating up to 200 g daily.
Is 9 grams of sugar alcohol a lot?
Digestion – Sugars are digested in the small intestine and transported into the bloodstream to be further metabolized or used for energy ( 3, 7 ). Conversely, your body does not digest sugar alcohols efficiently. One exception is erythritol, which is well absorbed but not metabolized.
- Instead, it’s excreted through your urine mostly intact ( 3, 8 ).
- However, most sugar alcohols pass through to your large intestine, where they’re fermented by gut bacteria.
- At higher intake levels, this can cause bloating, flatulence, stomach pain, and diarrhea, particularly in individuals with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) ( 3, 9, 10 ).
Current recommendations advise that moderate doses of 10–15 grams per day are usually tolerated. However, sensitive people may need to avoid sugar alcohols, particularly sorbitol and maltitol, or reduce their intake to avoid symptoms ( 3, 9, 10 ).
How much sugar do you need to ferment alcohol?
Roughly 17g/l of sugar is needed to produce one degree of alcohol.
How much sugar to add to moonshine mash?
How Many Pounds of Sugar to Make 5 Gallons of Mash? – A 5-gallon of mash requires 5 pounds of white sugar when using 5 pounds of corn which will yield a 15% finished product of 5 gallons or 3 quarts.
