DIY Weekend: Spiked juice for homemade hooch

Normally for our DIY Weekend feature, we talk about things like homemade rocket launchers, mobile Xboxes-in-a-case, and powerful plywood telescopes. This week, we talk about getting drunk.

I enjoy drinking alcohol. I'm also cheap, which is why I was excited at the chance to try out Spike Your Juice, a $10 DIY hooch-making kit that might just be of dubious legal standing depending on where you live.

SYJ is an all-in-one fermentation kit that lets you take off-the-shelf fruit juice from your local supermarket and turn it into a tasty alcoholic beverage in as little as 48 hours. I was doubtful at first, but after some experimentation, I can say it works as advertised.

My next experiment was with a type of three-apple juice. After just 48 hours it was plenty boozy, though it had an odd flavor. We ran some of the juice through a standard Brita water filter, which certainly helped, but it did strip out some of the apple flavor.

So I went to a friend of mine who's a chef and has a broad if esoteric knowledge of all things fermented and distilled. We made a more porous filter out of a coffee filter and a rubber band. The outcome was fantastic. The drink was smooth and crisp. But we weren't done.

We like our booze to be high octane. To that end, we took what was left of the juice and added some cane sugar and a little bit of honey. We then boiled it and added another packet from the kit and put it back into the bottle with the special stopper. We let it sit about two weeks.

After another pass through the coffee filter, we had some of the most powerful hooch I've ever tasted. We have no idea what the proof is, but I've had shots of Jager with less kick. We could shoot it, but we discovered that by mixing it with a little orange juice over ice we get a really amazing little cocktail. I'm going to call it "The Spiker."

Sure, this kind of fun isn't for everyone, but it's an almost fail-safe way to have a little fun with home fermentation on a three-day weekend, like the one coming up.

I have a couple of packets left, so I'm discussing other recipes with my drinking posse. We're going to make our own peach puree, add some cane sugar, and see if we can make the most amazing breakfast power-jam ever to grace an English muffin. I hope I live through the fall.

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