Hjemmebrent........
In 2008 I went to a music festival in Trena off the coast off Norway and camped out there for a couple of days. Around 10pm on the 2nd night some Norwegian festival goers let me have some of the local homemade moonshine also known as Hjemmebrent or home burnt (I had to google the spelling). I took a big swig out of a coke bottle and don't remember much after that. When I woke up the next day I had lost my wallet, glasses and camera. Due to it being Midnight Sun there was also 24 hour day light which meant this particular hangover was more a mindfuck that usual, when I eventually got someone to tell me the time it was 10pm the next night, I had literally lost around 24 hours of my life to moonshine induced amnesia.

When I found Dave my fellow adventurer he said I'd disappeared to the other side of the island with a gang of Norwegians come back unable to speak or stand up properly then passed out around 2pm. Some Norwegian goth later told me I'd dropped all my belongings over a cliff face trying to catch a sea gull and climbed up a water tower.

I got pancreatitis a couple of years ago and I think that may have a contributing factor.
(kendohmassif Fritzl Burger Monkey Chode, Sat 6 Dec 2014, 2:54, 3 replies)

A friend of mine called Bill
used to talk about drinking "bath tub gin" at the time of prohibition in the States (he was an old bloke, died in the seventies). Alkies used to make it in the bath tub by a method called cold compounding, with botanicals such as juniper, coriander, clove, cinnamon, orange peel and cardamom being left to infuse in high strength pot-distilled grain spirit (moonshine) they got from the local bootleggers. Imagine my surprise when I found out today that Ocado will deliver the stuff to your door.
And at £47.07 per litre it's almost as if Al Capone was still fucking with us.
( buffet_the_appetite_slayer ٩(●̮̃•)۶ jacked in to the ICE on, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 22:36, Reply)

Sloe gin is rewarding and not difficult.
I also make sloe brandy, whisky and white rum.
Got a few bottles that are 7 years old. Nectar!
( edjogs Collared doves are shit., Fri 5 Dec 2014, 20:30, 7 replies)

Surely you'd need a still? Is it absinthe 'flavour', as opposed to a spirit?

(DBT became a fruitarian on, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 20:29, 8 replies)

Vodka bong
Not exactly a home made booze thing, but when I was a bit of a stoner, but had no gear to hand, I once tried putting vodka in a bong in place of water and pipe smoking tobacco in it.

No. Don't try this. Inhaling pipe smoke and alcohol fumes in big lungfulls 1) doesn't get you high, 2) gives you a hangover like someone is knifing your skull within minutes.
( Invisible Wizard - 10th Level Nerf-herder, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 19:06, Reply)

Teufels Arschloch

With the US Army in Germany in 1980, living in a barracks room with three other sergeants. One of the married sergeants who lived in an apartment stopped by one Saturday afternoon and gave us a box with 12 liters of homemade schnapps that he'd received from his German neighbor.

We cracked one open and encountered a vile, sulphurous, odor, so we named it Teufels Arschloch and left it unsecured in hopes that someone would steal it when we went out that night. No luck there.

Turned out to be the perfect liquor to use for drinking a penalty shot in a drinking game.
(Wahoo, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 18:33, Reply)

nothing to do with homebrew but mixing booze. booze that is probably left unmixed.
Dog's nose - traditional version. Pint of bitter with a measure of gin on top. Pig's nose, as dog's nose but with cider.these are not that bad, pretty good for a Sunday livener.

special brew, gold label and gin. Terrible, eventually you walk through glass doors and fall into the Leeds and Liverpool canal.
( d.r._and_quinch when will you be famous?, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 18:03, 4 replies)

Vodka
Just get 35cl of Vodka, and add 200g of your favourite boiled sweets.

Leave for a week. Drink.

Pear drops, Sherbet lemons and Glacier mints work best.
(The Kitchen Sink, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 17:25, 3 replies)

You have to place your cock in a firkin of ale
to get it started. The smegma from your old boy helps start the fermentation process.

© CAMRA, 1998.
( $$ ✅, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 16:54, Reply)

Simple one, but rather good.
Pound of frozen raspberries. Have to be frozen, it does something to them to make them, er, not waterproof or something.

Very clean glass pot, with a good seal on it.

Bottle of cheapo brandy. Something like Sainsburys el crappo is fine, it just has to be Brandy.

2 tablespoons of sugar.

Chuck the lot in the jar, seal it and leave for a couple of weeks. Keep the brandy bottle.

Decant brandy from jar into bottle. Eat raspberries with ice cream, don't drive afterwards.

You now have a bottle of rather good raspberry brandy.
(username failed moderation, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 16:43, 11 replies)

Homebrew
A couple of years back I got into homebrewing from beer kits. The first batch I made in the winter was perfectly palatable and got me pissed so I put on a batch of lager sometime around the middle of February. After it had brewed in the barrel I decanted it into bottles and left them in the airing cupboard for a few more weeks before they would be ready.

One mid-March morning I was woken by a muffled thump. I couldn't immediately identify the source of the noise and was just drifting back off to sleep when I heard it again. It sounded like some kind of explosion and it had come from the airing cupboard. After a couple of neural connections in my brain did their thing I jumped out of bed to find beer and broken glass all over the inside of the airing cupboard and the other bottles sitting there looking innocent.

Seems the change to warmer weather had a bad effect on my homebrew, making it increasingly volatile to the point that the bottles could no longer contain its potency, so I got some thick suede garden gloves and leather clothing and started gingerly moving it from the airing cupboard to the fridge, in the hopes that cooling it down would stop it from spontaneously exploding.

No such luck, as one bottle went off in the fridge, smashing the plastic shelf for the milk, and I was ordered by the missus to take the rest of the homebrew out to the shed. That weekend I had some friends over and we basically had to sit in the garden and drink the beer before it exploded and killed us.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 16:21, Reply)

pretty sure i've posted this before
went to some bloke's house after the pub for a few drinks. he handed me a glass of what i didn't know was homemade whisky. this stuff was rocket fuel, but i was already half pissed, so i didn't really care.
we had a few drinks,we talked, he stripped naked and tried to play the piano with his cock. you know, the usual.
staggered out of his house at about 4.30 in the morning and headed off to my friend's house. fortunately, she was awake and let me in. unfortunately, she didn't want to share the large bottle of hooch i'd got from naked piano-playing bloke, so i had a drink myself. i don't remember much after that, apart from having my clothes cut off in casualty.
i had severe alcohol poisoning and needed a stomach pump. i've never felt so ill or been so hungover in my life, it was terrible. even to this day,i can't bear the smell of whisky.
recently,i heard that the bloke who i was drinking with died of liver failure. if he'd kept drinking that shit for the last 20 years or so, i'm not surprised, tbh.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 15:13, 4 replies)

I distill my own.
plum, apple, pear, cherry, fig. Very basic technique - take fruits, chuck in a barrel (after destoning if necessary) and ferment, decant, distill to 70%BV (my still is also "home brewed") taking care to cut off the heads and tails, water back down to somewhere around 55%.

The result is an evil devil-hooch that fucks you up good and proper.
(m.auron, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 15:11, 4 replies)

Caramel piracy
Over a weekend when I was staying with a couple of friends, they explained the technique for making caramel rum, wherein you put a packet's worth of a particular brand of caramel sweet into a bottle of rum and left it for three weeks, over which time the sweets and the alcohol would interact and infuse to form a sweet and potent cocktail.

I bought a bottle of paint-strippingly acrid agricultural rum, stuffed a bag of said caramels into it and left it in the kitchen cupboard for three weeks. Shook the outcome when the maceration period was over, and it had indeed turned an even and enticing caramel colour.

When you tasted it, you could feel two distinct layers of flavour on your tongue: pickled caramel with a hint of herring on the top, and vintage white spirit aged in plastic barrels underneath. The magical alchemy of chemistry had somehow combined to blend together the worst aspects of each individual ingredient and intensify them until they took centre stage. I christened it Care Bear Bile and served it to guests that I didn't like.
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 14:54, Reply)

A few months before I was posted abroad I had made
a dozen demijohns of wine from various fruits and flowers.
Through its enforced stay in packing cases it avoided the otherwise inevitable pre-maturity consumption.
On my return we gave it a right good hammering. The best one was the cowslip.
( edjogs Collared doves are shit., Fri 5 Dec 2014, 14:30, Reply)

I used to make my own ale.
We drank it and got a buzz without getting sick. At first I used Australian malt concentrate(Coopers)and no matter how careful I was it always had a nasty burnt sugar aftertaste.
Then I found I could produce a fairly decent pale and dark ales with New Zealand malt.
(the other guy not the one that gave you coochie warts, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 13:58, 2 replies)

Not exactly homebrew, however
When my father lived in France, he had a cellar, and one was allowed to drink anything in there EXCEPT the "Château Smith" - for that was its name, and also his surname - which had apparently cost a fortune, worth even more etc.

When he moved out, it was into his girlfriend's flat in Spain, no room for more than his clothes and a few books. So, on the farewell night, the "sacred" wine was allowed to be drunk, and we could take back with us any remainders.

The first bottle was opened - my sister tasted it - corked. Poured on the ground. The second bottle - yes, you can guess the rest.

The boiler was in the cellar - it had gone wrong at some point and overheated - the wine had turned to vinegar. We were drinking outside, God knows what the neighbours made of hearing corks opening from bottle after bottle, and the contents then being emptied onto the grass.

It taught me a good lesson - never bother saving anything that you might enjoy now - when you think it's time to have it, it might not be what you thought it was for all those years.
( I_Was_Mordred, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 13:51, 3 replies)

The Purest beer
In our first house, our neighbours introduced me to homebrew. If you're him and recognise the tale, drop me a line and say hello.

Anyway, he decided that the best beer would be be made from pure fresh rainwater - none of the nasty chlorine you get from the tap. So he collected some lovely rainwater from the waterbutt under the garage (can you tell where this is going?). The brew complete, he reported it was quite tasty. His wife reported he was laid low by mystery headaches and other ailments. She tried suggesting that water collected from an asbestos roof covered in moss, starlings and blackbirds might not be the best. Curiously his ailments disappeared when he decided not to finish drinking that batch. Bit of a crap story really.. perhaps I should spice it up with more serious diseases, but it was funny at the time. Can you get asbestosis of the liver?
(anonybloke, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 13:11, 2 replies)

Yes, we were penniless students
Too poor even to afford the prices in the student bar. We heard a rumour that some second-years were making cider in their rooms, so we knocked on the door and asked how much they wanted for it. But we didn't even have enough for that.

"There's this stuff over here," they guy said, pointing to a crate of bottles in the corner, "but it went a bit wrong. You can have it for nothing, if you want it."

It was a pale yellow colour, with quite a lot of sludge in the bottom. We took it. Drank it.

The next day...well suffice to say that it's the one time in my life that I genuinely wanted to die.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 12:34, Reply)

Bought a homemade lager kit when I was about 14.
Someone told us that it's the sugar that makes the alcohol. Even said something like that in the instructions, but obviously I didn't give them any more than a cursory glance.

So it occurred to me that if it says put 1kg of sugar in, if I put 2kg in, it'll be really REALLY good lager.

I'm not sure, I could be wrong, but I think there were actually bits of my own liver in the vomit.

Which brings me to a top tip; a) If you brew your own lager, put a little bit less sugar than the recipe says, it makes it a bit weaker, but it tastes better, and you've got 40 pints so you can always have another one. b) More importantly, don't ever brew your own lager, however well you do it, it tastes like shit.
(username failed moderation, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 12:03, Reply)

As penniless students
Me and my housemates found ourselves completely and utterly skint, yet with a burning desire to get pissed. So we raided the cupboards of our large shared house and discovered to our delight that the previous occupants had left about three quarters of a bottle of red wine behind, which had been gathering dust and going bad for about eight months. It was like dark vinegar and about half-full of sediment, so we poured it through a tea-strainer and mixed it with lemonade.

I'm glad I'm no longer a penniless student.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 11:10, 4 replies)

I remember meeting one of the lower orders, who mistook me for one of his own.
He advised me conspiratorially that what I need to do, right, is get a bottle of meths, and three cartons of orange juice, and and and decant them both into a barrel, right, and leave it for two weeks, right, and, and, and it's great - you could serve that stuff in pubs and they wouldn't know ...
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 10:50, Reply)

Interestingly, the main antidote to methanol or ethylene glycol (antifreeze) poisoning
is ethanol, which acts by competing with the methanol/ethylene glycol for alcohol dehydrogenase.

If you turned up at casualty with methanol or ethylene glycol poisoning, one of the first things they would do is inject you with a 10% ABV ethanol solution.

Many alcoholic drinks, especially spirits, contain quite substantial amounts of methanol which on its own could be deadly. But when combined with the ethanol it doesn't do any harm.
(Baggenfrock get fucked, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 10:42, 11 replies)

Met her in a pub in Kensington
Shocked at how fat she was.
(dozers, do fuck off ur a nob m8, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 9:51, 1 reply)

RIP Chompy x
4eva smoking that fag :(
( tangledupinblue hairy badge with moving eyes, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 9:50, Reply)

Firssshhhtttt.
(Hiccup)
(CasuallyObscene, Fri 5 Dec 2014, 9:43, Reply)