skunk78395 said:

That is something I wanted to try doing when I was 14 way before I ever smoked weed because it was the only thing I tried back then was alcohol...it would be fun to get a home beer kit though...

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Prepare your must. (the must (or wort, if you are a brewer) is the unfermented mixture of sugars and acids and juices and nutrients). There are different schools of thought on how this should be done, whether you need to boil honey solutions, or even juices. You really don't have to boil at all. It helps to fend off infections and blend ingredients, but tends to change the character of whatever you're preparing, and sometimes this can produce less desirable results. Personally, I like to heat honey solutions to almost boiling, but I don't boil (or even heat) fruit juices. I do like to pour boiling water over pieces of fruit to get wild yeast and bacteria off of the surface of the fruit. This also makes the fruit easier to crush and extract juices.

A solution of a little less than two pounds of honey per gallon will ferment out to about 10-11% alcohol, which is wine strength.

Most fruit juices, especially apple and grape, will ferment out to 7 or 8 percent, possibly up to 11 percent. Adding a half pound of honey per gallon will make a more potent wine or cider.

Mix juices, honey, tannins, acids, nutrients in fermenting vessel.

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Prepare the yeast. You can either start from a package of yeast or from the leftover yeast from a previous batch. If you're using a package of yeast, it can just be thrown in the must, but works better if you re-hydrate it in a (sanitized) glass of water, covered with a plate or plastic wrap. You can also give it something to do by tossing in a spoon of sugar or by substituting some fruit juice for water, but this is not necessary. Re-hydrating only takes about 15 minutes.

Culturing yeast is the process of taking yeast from the bottom of another batch's fermentor or by taking a bit of a another batch and adding it to a small amount of sugary solution to grow enough yeast to start another batch. This is a handy way to stop buying yeast, but is a bit riskier, since you risk infection from the less vigorous start. You just have to be a lot more careful with sanitizing equipment.

Culturing takes a few hours, but is best done overnight. Be sure the culturing container is sealed against the air (plastic wrap and a rubber band over the top of a glass is fine, or you can get a fermentation lock and stopper that fits a bottle).

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