About 10 days ago, I learned about Mr. Money Mustache and my life has been forever changed. It’s a great blog that perfectly articulates a wondrously frugal philosophy about money, happiness, and life in general.  After binge reading the entire blog, dozens of frugal ideas and inspirations surfaced from those articles. Ecstatic to try them all, The Beard and I jumped all over the Frugal yet Fancy Homebrewing article which details how to make an easy fruity alcoholic beverage.

The premise is simple:

1. Buy a gallon jug of preservative free juice and an envelope of champagne yeast.

2. Pour the champagne yeast into the juice jug.

3. Fit with an airlock stopper that has sterilized liquid in it.

4. Set aside for two weeks in an area of minimal temperature fluctuation.

5. ??? SCIENCE ???

6. Two weeks later……amazing fruit juice with an alcohol kick.

We gathered the necessary supplies. Luckily, because The Beard is a skilled home beer brewer, we already had a gallon jug with a cap, cleaning/sterilizing supplies, and an airlock stopper.

The juice combo is from Trader Joe’s: Blackberry juice cocktail and apple juice.

It’s important to sterilize all the equipment, which takes longer to do than anything else.

Using either a kitchen funnel or a very confident hand, pour the juices into the jug.

Next comes the packet of champagne yeast. Then put that stopper on! We used white rum as the sterile liquid in the airlock. No need to stir the yeast in, science will pull it down into the brew over time.

See those little granules sitting at the top – that’s the yeast.

And now, an hour later:

Frothy goodness! Now we’ll just set it in the cool basement for 2 weeks. Since we used a bit more yeast than perhaps necessary (ahem, in our overzealousness we dumped the whole packet rather than measuring out 1/2 teaspoon) we’ll probably have to transfer the mixture into another container once it’s ready to drink. Don’t want a big yeast cake at the bottom of our beverage jug now do we?

I’m hoping we didn’t add too much yeast….we’ll see in two weeks. Or sooner if the jug froths up too much over the next few days.

Our total cost was only $7 for the juices and $1 for the yeast. I’ll post an update as to how it turns out.