A few years ago, before the covid lockdowns, there was a product on the market called Prohibition High Alcohol kits. These were very popular and came in a range of flavours including cherry brandy, london dry gin, whiskey, coconut rum, apricot brandy, peach schnapps and sloe gin. Sadly, the makers of these kits sold their business and the new company decided to stop making these kits. They had a few left over the cherry brandy and the coconut rum, but these quickly sold out. And so now these kits have been sadly discontinued.
But why were the Prohibition kits so popular? Well, they helped you make 4.5 litres of high strength alcohol at about 21% without the need of a still and the flavours were pretty good.
I personally loved the cherry brandy the kit made. I still have a bottle of it maturing nicely (it's about 10 years old) and for that specific kit, I found if you could hide a bottle or 2 away and forget about them for a few years, they really improved with age.
The kits took about 4 weeks to make and the process was pretty simple, so we have decided to try a few experiments to see if we can recreate these kits, so that you can enjoy making them at home too.
So let's get brewing...
First we start by dissolving 1.6kg of sugar in 3 litres of water...
Then, lots of stirring to dissolve all the sugar. then a couple of ingredients to help the fermentation go smoothly and then a sachet of yeast...
Basically, we are making a high alcohol sugar wash. But we wont be running this through a still.
I've taken a SG reading and it's coming out at 1.124, so it should reach an ABV around 20%. Fingers crossed as this now goes into my warm cupboard for a week to ferment.
To Be Continued...
That's it for now, but come back in a week for the next update as I'll update this blog as we continue the experiment. Then if it all goes well, you'll be the first to know of our new kits coming soon.
Let us know in the comments below if there are any flavours you would like us to make...
1 comment
Sam Davey
Hi I really miss the Liquor Quick kits (no honest it was the name) they were similar high alcohol and there was an Ameretto flavour that I would love to make more of. They also did a mint chocolate liquor. I would be first to buy an Ameretto flavour kit as I cant get them anywhere. I am not too technical and all the gubbins was included, so I just had to follow the instructions.
Hi I really miss the Liquor Quick kits (no honest it was the name) they were similar high alcohol and there was an Ameretto flavour that I would love to make more of. They also did a mint chocolate liquor. I would be first to buy an Ameretto flavour kit as I cant get them anywhere. I am not too technical and all the gubbins was included, so I just had to follow the instructions.