This is part two, for the recipe and story, check out this blog.
Update: My Friend from the Midwest tried it, said 2.5 out of 5!
It’s been several weeks since I made the Aldi Pruno (Prison Wine) — I followed some best practices, such as a proper airlock and sanitation procedures, aerating the wine, etc.
But I also left some real elements to the winemaking for the spirit of how it may be made in a cell — it sat in a warm closet next to a 3d printer, occasionally getting exposed to light (which is bad and why most wines and beers are in dark containers).
Bread yeast is pretty aggressive, and it started bubbling through the airlock pretty rapidly by the next day.
One week later, I decided to measure the fermentation and give it a quick taste:
I was pretty surprised at this is my “driest” fermentation yet — it got all the way down to 0.992.
Using the formula from last time:
1.062 – 0.992 = 0.07 * 131.25 = 9.1875% ABV
It actually over-performed. What about taste after seven days?
You may clean your office, or you can blur the background
Here it is, the yeast cake isn’t too visible due to poor lighting, but you can see the product is clear.
So I took a few oz out of the test jar into a cup, and this is what I got out of it:
A beautiful, tranquil sea of flavors coalescing jelly and white bread sandwich layered in organic and home made old gym sock. The nose was old pencil shavings, diapers and regret.
So, I decided to try a different drink than I’d ever normally have. This is not a sponsored post and that will be evident in a moment:
I grabbed a case of Happy Dad to see what I thought of it. It’s a “Hard Seltzer”. After the first sip went down my throat, the only thing I could think is:
“What a damn oxymoron.”
Happy Dad… Drinking Seltzer.
It’s like Five Guys burgers — you go in there and there are signs all over the store telling you that what you’re eating is good, meanwhile you’re slopping down $17 of grade F, 73% lean beef across the street from McDonalds where you could of had a $3.99 grade F, 73% lean patty and even went in the kids play place and went down the tubes a few times, driving fear into the parents that brought their kids with them.
You are not a Happy Dad if you’re drinking hard seltzer.
Party Time
It’s Friday the 13th, we have some people over for karaoke, whiskey, and Aldi Prison Pruno. A few hours before they came, I washed a fresh fermenter and siphoned the wine off the yeast cake, having forgotten this step and not wanting anybody to get wine with the texture of chocolate milk.
Here’s the official results:
| Person | Rating (1-5, 5 being best) |
| My Wife | 2 |
| Kim | 2 |
| Dale | 2.5 |
| Elizabeth | 2 |
| Jacob | 3 |
| Sarah | 2.5 |
| Derek | Like your IPA |
| Me | 3 |
It should be noted that I had served Derek a Citra-based IPA before that — I haven’t had the best go of beer making, but I thought this one was “okay”. I should mentioned I offered commercially produced beer too, but he was good with it. When asking for the rating for the wine, I got “Like the IPA”. I’m a realist and recognize this means 1.
Scoring the rest of them, gives us an average of 2.428571428571429. It’s a big number to make it sound better.
After sitting for a few weeks, it actually lost a lot of the sock/crap scent/flavor profile. It was plenty drinkable though not particularly good. It had a very thin mouthfeel and a bit of an odd bite. Dale had suggested mixing this with a Peanut Butter Whisky, which I agree would be great, but I had none on hand.
Have you made it? Will you make it? Let me know!
In other news…
I’ve started the next batch of actually really good Aussie Cab. If this one also comes out good, maybe I’ll write up something on this easy process.
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