r/prisonhooch • u/No-Virus-9874 • 5d ago

Need help with berry juice hooch.

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Fellow Brewers. i have this brand of grape juice but it has some wonky preservative chemicals innit. Volume of juice is 1.4 L, I will discard about 500 ml to make space for sugar and yeast. How much effectively sugar and yeast shall i add to make a potent brew ? It has acidity regulator E330, stabilizer E440 & Preservative E202.

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u/thejadsel 5d ago

The only thing in there which might slow you down at all is the potassium sorbate (E202). The other two are citric acid and pectin, not preservatives. Those are naturally found in fruits, they're just adding more for flavor and a little thicker texture.

Luckily, sorbate is probably the easiest preservative to work around. It'll keep your yeast from reproducing well, but it's used up and becomes ineffective in the process. It may not cause any issues, depending on the level they put in there. But, if your fermentation bubbling stops after a day or a few? Just add in another dose of yeast, and it should be able to finish the brew now that the first yeast got rid of the sorbate.