Anyone ever made a liqueur kit using turbo yeast? How did it turn out?

hatrickpatrick

I was looking at trying something new for the craic and I came across this coconut rum liqueur kit from Home Brew West:

https://www.homebrewwest.ie/prohibition-high-alcohol-liqueur-coconut-rum-407-p.asp

The page contains absolutely no information whatsoever about the process or how the kit works, but luckily there's more info on a UK brew shop which sells it:

https://www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk/acatalog/Prohibition%20instructions.pdf

I have three questions about this, I'm very interested in trying it out but my reservations are as follows and I was hoping one of ye might have more information!

1: Simplest question to start off, both of my fermentation buckets are the standard 30L buckets used for making 40-pint or 23L beer batches. Given that this kit calls for 4.7L of water, would having roughly 25L of head space be an issue? I'm assuming it wouldn't, but then I've never attempted anything like this before. Would enough CO2 still be produced to push the oxygen out of the headspace etc?

2: These turbo yeasts, from everything I've read, are really designed for the illicit distillation of spirits - you would ferment to the 23% they can handle and then distill to 35 or 40. Every thread I've discovered about these yeasts suggests that they would produce a lot of much rougher alcohols than ordinary yeasts, and that without distilling, they would this have a very harsh alcohol flavour and produce a hangover from the deepest recesses of the abyss. However, given that these kits are designed to be fermented and drunk as-is, does that imply that either these particular yeast strains avoid creating nasty alcohols, or that perhaps the kits come with enough flavouring as to mask it?

And finally:

3: If you read the PDF linked above, they basically talk about using different amounts of sugar to produce different types of liqueur - for instance, 350g for coconut rum, 800 for coffee rum, etc. What I'm wondering is, combined with the sachet of flavouring included, what kind of taste does this actually produce? Would it create a decent approximation of a coconut rum or would it be hideously synthetic and, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, "almost - but not quiet - entirely unlike coconut rum"?

Appreciate any advice ye can give here, I'm definitely interested in trying this but the aforementioned reservations are causing hesitations!

poitinstill

never tried often wondered what they would result in. my guess is 20% and just a liquid to get p1ssed on. here is a reliable review...

rubadub

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

2: These turbo yeasts, from everything I've read, are really designed for the illicit distillation of spirits - you would ferment to the 23% they can handle and then distill to 35 or 40.

In many countries home distillation is legal. These kits were out before I heard of turbo yeasts, I was making them ~20 years ago I would not bother now as they are quite expensive relative to cheap spirits.

You will create less unwanted by products by brewing at cooler temps, the turbos will often have different recipies for the same yeast. The colder the brew and lower the % then the "cleaner" the brew is. So people making biodiesel will not care and go for 23%, but it can take a long time to get that so they might go for 18% to get a quicker turnover. People with decent stills will not care too much about byproducts, some view it like a challenge!

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

However, given that these kits are designed to be fermented and drunk as-is, does that imply that either these particular yeast strains avoid creating nasty alcohols, or that perhaps the kits come with enough flavouring as to mask it?

The kits give you activated carbon powder to add, this adsorbs (not absorbs) nasty tastes flavours and some by products. It just rests in the demijohn and draws them in, you do not have to pour it through like filtering. It did have a definite flavour afterwards. If I wanted cheap liquers I would buy the flavouring kits and glycerine and make it with cheap vodka. Some of the flavourings are really good, some are using proper stuff, I used Prestige brand. The amount of sugar they recommend is stupidly high though, you can always add more but not take it back out so go easy.

As these are sugar brews there are only bare trace amounts of methanol created so its more the ethyl acetate nail polish remover type smells & chemicals you want rid of.

I had considered making a bulk version with 25L turbo yeasts and activated carbon granules. The powder is horrendously messy stuff.

Sleepy

I did a few batches of the "Peach Schnappes" kit that Easons used to sell in the late 90's when I was in college. The end result was perfectly drinkable when mixed with orange juice or the like and did the job it was intended to: getting a gang of students drunk cheaply.

Unless the kits are going for less than the price of a few bottles of vodka in Lidl / Aldi I wouldn't bother with them these days though. A lot of work involved for very little cost savings.

Effects

I made a few of them back in the 90s. Did the job, which was to get a teenager pissed.
My tastes have since changed.

rubadub

The kit is 20euro and needs 1.8kg of sugar.

€20 would get you 25 litres of apple juice to go with that 1.8kg of sugar. So it is not an economical way of getting cheap hooch. I would far rather have turbo cider than this stuff.

Bailey type drinks are a good one to try making. Or liquers with cheap vodka and the likes of real lemons.

hatrickpatrick

I bit the bullet and ordered the kit before ye all replied, but thanks for the heads up Sure it'll be a fun experiment either way. Only thing I'm really kicking myself over now is that I forgot to include a thermometer with my order to stick to the demijohn (first time brewing with one) so I'll have to either find somewhere local to buy one or take the risk of judging it by ambient air temperature

Will report back how it turns out either way!

hatrickpatrick

rubadub wrote: »

The kit is 20euro and needs 1.8kg of sugar.

€20 would get you 25 litres of apple juice to go with that 1.8kg of sugar. So it is not an economical way of getting cheap hooch. I would far rather have turbo cider than this stuff.

Bailey type drinks are a good one to try making. Or liquers with cheap vodka and the likes of real lemons.

It's more that I'm a huge fan of coconut rum and this kit has extra steps involved which could make it an interesting project to undertake - I'm not yet in a position of either storage space or funds to buy extract or all grain equipment, but I must admit that making standard beer kits has been failing to allay my lust for brewing for a while so I've been trying more complicated brews which don't require any extra gear The only thing I needed for this one was a 1gal carboy, but luckily I was able to borrow one.

I'm sure some of ye have experience the thirst (pun intended) for doing more hands-on or complex brews without, for whatever reason, being able to get all the extra gear that's required - this obviously appeals more than say, making a liqueur with cheap vodka as you're still actually brewing the stuff yourself.

I've been meaning to find out how much extra gear would be required to make cider from actual raw apples as opposed to with kits, so that'll be my next way of circumventing the itch to do more than just mixing pre-extracted kits and dry hopping! Will make a different thread for that when the time comes as I don't want to hijack this one in case anyone else with the same question stumbles across it via Boards or Google - there's surprisingly little forum discussion online about these Prohibition kits which I have an uneasy feeling about, but all in the name of science

hatrickpatrick

Update! Bottled this today after sampling it at the weekend.

Oh.
My.
Gawwwwwwwwd.

If emojis worked on Boards.ie I'd be throwing a row of those "hearts for eyes" smiley faced instead of typing this

Seriously, this is absolutely delicious and beautifully alcoholic. Incredible. I highly, highly recommend anyone who enjoys liqueurs and in particular anyone who enjoys Malibu Rum to give this a shot. It's insanely cheap for what you're getting (€20 for a 4.5 litre batch, works out at €3 per 70cl!) and is just so unbelievably tasty.

The one thing I did differently to the kit was that on top of the coconut essence which is supplied, I actually made my own on top of that. The kit already recommends adding 30-100ml of Glycerine in order to give that lovely smooth texture that Malibu has, and given that glycerine can be used in place of vodka to make fruit flavour extracts, I bought a fresh coconut from Tesco, slice it open, cut all the coconut flesh away from the shell, and then put as much coconut flesh as would fit inside one of those tall marmalade jars (St. Dalfour, I forget how many fl. oz it is but if I can find an empty jar I'll update!) and poured 74ml of Glycerine in on top of it (you can get glycerine in tesco for €1 / 38ml, so in went two of those) and a little water until the coconut was completely covered.

Put that away in a cupboard in a cool part of the gaff for the entirety of the brewing process - made it the night before Paddy's Day and added it to the rum last weekend - and I definitely, definitely recommend doing this because it's absolutely delicious and I have no doubt that the coconut flavour would be a lot less intense if I hadn't decided to experiment with making my own glycerite to add on top of the (fairly small) bottle of flavouring the kit comes with.

I also followed what the kit recommended and only added 3/4ths of the amount of additional flavouring sugar they recommend to add post-fermentation and it's absolutely perfect this way so I wouldn't recommend going the full whack on this (because I scaled the whole thing down slightly out of fear of krausen in the demijohn and the need to leave headspace I can't remember specifically how much I used, but they recommend 350g so if you're doing that, go with 262.5g). I'll also add that there's basically no foaming or krausen in this, I went with a full blow off tube and sanitizer bath setup but it's entirely unnecessary, an airlock would have been fine. I was expecting it to be like a beer and involve several litres worth of krausen (in terms of how much of the demijohn would end up being filled out) which is why I scaled the recipe down to leave headspace and went with the blowoff setup, but all it really does is bubble like mad with visible surges of bubbles rising to the top. It just looks like an especially fizzy beer really, it doesn't create more than a millimetre or two of bubbly foam on top. Maybe krausen is only caused by the unfermentables in a beer wort interacting with the yeast, and this being only water and sugar doesn't create anything analogous?

Anyway all in all I'm delighted with this and will absolutely definitely be doing this again. If anyone decides to make a prohibition kit and wants any advice, hit me up on this thread and I'll answer anything I can, it's a very involved process compared with beer in terms of how much you have to do after sealing it into the fermenter (a lot of siphoning and fining agent additions involved, far more so than with beer) so it's a little intimidating with the amount of siphon sessions and how many chances there are for you to f*ck something up, but after spending the last few weeks terrified at every stage that I'd make a mistake and ruin all the effort, I'm now sipping on the dregs of the demijohn after filling all the bottles, and loving life

10/10, would highly recommend.

EDIT: Also, because I forgot to take an OG reading on brewing day I can only estimate the ABV of this to somewhere between 19-22% (there are two formulas suggested for ABV, the standard one gives 19% but the company which made the kit advises a different one which is ostensibly better for higher alcohol brews - the higher one is the "alternate" method provided on the Brewers' Friend ABV calculator page, which I suspect is the calculator most of us use when determining our beer ABVs!

However, what I can say is that I drank half a naggin of this (so two large shots) and I was bollocksed within minutes

TomOnBoard

Hmmm! I wonder would a tin of coconut milk instead of the coconut do just as good?

Your Malibu sounds awesome.... I might give it a go...