They’re right about the nutrition factor. But alcohol doesn’t have to be expensive.

My father is a do-it-yourself-nik. You shoulda seen his brewery in the basement. He made beer, wine, sake, mead, and lots of other delicious alcohols. Most of that stuff took fancy equipment and expensive ingredients to make. So I don’t make that suff.

My dad taught me how to make cheap cheap alcohol and I figured that I’d share this homemade brew recipe for those people who enjoy a nice drink every now and then buy don’t want to spend money on it.

Take an empty glass bottle. Make some lemonade out of the juice from fresh lemons (preferably, but you can also make this with bottled lemon juice) and sugar. Add an extra cup of sugar to the mix. You want it sickeningly sweet. (Don’t worry, it won’t taste so sweet when finished.)
Add about a teaspoon of yeast to the lemonade. You can use wine yeast for this, but I’m a cheapo and use my usual bakers’ yeast that I have for bread-making purposes.

Cover the bottle with a bit of plastic- either from plastic wrap or a plastic bag- and secure it onto the bottle with a rubber band. You don’t want it to be too tight; you just want to make sure the plastic doesn’t fall off.

Place this bottle in a moderately warm place for two weeks. After 2 weeks, taste test to see if it tastes alcoholic. If it doesn’t taste alcoholic enough but isn’t sweet, add some more sugar and let it ferment some more. (The yeast eats the sugar and makes alcohol, so in order to make it more alcoholic you need more sugar.)

If it is alcoholic enough, pour yourself a glass and enjoy your home brewed hard lemonade.

Cheers!