Prison Hooch Update

It's been a month since I strained the prison hooch, so time for an update. If you are new to my blog you may want to read the first installment of the prison hooch saga from 11/29 for context.

As you can see from the picture on this blog entry, the color is good but it is still a bit cloudy. That is to be expected, the more unexpected thing to me though is that it is clearer than the control batch. To speed up the process I racked both the control and the buck to aid in clarifying as is common after 30 days or so for several reasons we'll discuss in a future post. I realize this may not be easily done in jail, but I figured an enterprising inmate could steal or bribe an orderly in the infirmary to acquire a length of surgical tubing to perform the siphoning, so I went ahead with it. There was sediment in the bottom of both jars, which is also to be expected and in fact is a good sign as it means the particles causing the cloudiness are slowly dropping out of the wine. After 30 days of aging the taste is starting to mellow a bit, not to a point that you'd rush to purchase some but it's certainly becoming drinkable without wincing. I think I will back-sweeten one of the jars just a little to see if that helps it go down easier, and leave the other dry. We are coming up on New Year's Eve, so maybe a toast to the arrival of 2022 (or the departure of 2021 depending on how your particular year went) with a glass of each may be in order. Palate-pleasing ability notwithstanding, I'd have to say the jailhouse method of winemaking did indeed produce an alcoholic beverage, and assuming there is not a wine bar in cellblock E and your choices are fairly limited this version of prison buck will certainly do the job. One side note, I have made wine with bread yeast before and there was a noticeable bread-like aroma from that wine that I did not detect in the prison version, which is a little surprising given I used bread as the catalyst for fermentation.

I am not loving taste of the control batch at this point, but it is also starting to smooth out a bit. I think I will leave it another month or so to age and clear, if it is still cloudy after that I will fine it (a process where additives called fining agents are mixed into the wine to help clarify) and likely sweeten a bit before bottling. As with the prison wine it will make a drinkable alcoholic beverage but unless it improves a lot over the next few months this will not likely be a recipe I will try again, though I could be pleasantly surprised. We'll see how it goes.