Post date: Aug 02, 2012 3:9:49 AM
To be honest, what got me thinking about making wine was a link to this article in Gizmodo about making "Pruno", or prison wine. I do like the concept of being so self-sufficient I could get drunk using only water, food scraps, plastic bags, and time. The article went out of its way to use awful ingredients and techniques to make it more authentic, and concluded that you could make something that would make you drunk, but that it would taste supremely awful. Which has got me to thinking, what if you compromised - use proper sanitation, and decent yeast, but the most low-rent feedstock you could think of. Can you make, if not good, decent wine? I suppose the metric could be "drinkable wine at the lowest cost per gallon" when evaluating recipes.
This is currently just a thought experiment, but if I get going on this as a hobby, I want to see what the boundaries of drinkable wine are using "found ingredients". Basically you need sugar, and potentially some source of flavor complexity and additional nutrients for the yeast (pure sugar water won't ferment - the yeast will starve for lack of minerals). Some potential ingredients (in no particular order - some of which are mentioned in the article, some of which are found in classy recipes, some coming from a mental tour of my kitchen). I don't know how many of these things are actually common in prison...
Ketchup
Orange juice
Hi-C
Raisins
Crushed up sweet cereal (Lucky Charms, anyone?)
Bananas
Corn syrup
"Maple" syrup (the imitation stuff, not real)
Zarex (can you still even get that?)
Applesauce
Fruit leather
Candy (hard candy, sweet-tarts, lollipops)
Fruit cocktail
Kool aid
Juice from a juice box
Soda
Jams, jellies or preserves
Molasses
Branston pickle (although I think pickles of any sort may lead to acetobacter infection).
Mango pulp
Maraschino cherries