Since COVID-19 has hit our local communities, I have been increasinly bored from all the time I am spending at home. So to fuel my curiosity for free alcohol, I decided to try and make a sugar wash, hoping for some alcohol percentage between 5% and 15%.

Ingredients and Materials

  • Ice cubes
  • Table sugar (sucrose)
  • Suvee cooker
  • Tap Water
  • Cooking pot
  • Glass cup
  • Instant / Active yeast

I used store-bought “Westpoint Naturals Instant Yeast”, table sugar (sucrose) at home, a suvee cooker for a water bath, and also tap water.

First of all, I wanted to distill the water to remove contaminants and increase the alcohol percentage. I did this by taking a pot, filling it with water till half full and placing a bowl on top of the water (make sure it floats), then placing the lid inverted onto the pot. Bringing the water to a boil, I then placed the ice cubes on the top of the boiling pot lid, allowing for condensation to quickly happen and collect the distilled water onto the floating bowl.

With the distilled water, it was time to start the sugar wash. Since this was a trial run, I used 25g of sugar and 75mL of warm distilled water. After mixing them together, I put an excess amount of yeast in, and brought the mixture-filled glass into a water bath. The temperature was set to 93F, or approximately 34°C, and left for 3 days. The glass was covered with a yogurt lid to help the fermentation process and prevent oxidation.

water_bath

The final product was better than expected. After taking it out of the water bath, a pungent whiff of yeast and alcohol filled my nose. I filtered the yeast contents out through a coffe filter, and was left with a yellowish mixture of liquid. If I wanted to make the solution clear, I could’ve added activated charcoal, but those are expensive and cost around ~$15 on Amazon.ca. All in all, the experiemnt was pretty successful. I should try it with maltose next since I have some lying around at home.

Taste: Pure alcolhol (expected of Ethanol). Works better if you mix it with juice or something. Strength was closest to some weak red wine.