Newgate Corrections Citrus Blend

(Before any of you start worrying for my health, I want you to know I ran my process and the finished product by two different people I know who do a lot of homebrewing. They were disappointed, dismayed, and horrified, but they assured me that this should be safe. Fairly safe).

So, we all knew this was coming. I think we were all wondering, "how long is it going to take before Jasper decides that no ordinary awful stuff is enough to keep him running and instead decides to engineer something truly awful and gloriously perverse?" So I found a shittily-made website from the year 2000 that told you how to make prison wine out of Welch's and baker's yeast and decided "fuckit, why not?"

A paragon of  good decisions.

The roommate and I made it out of Grapefruit, Pink Lemonade, and Apple from Wal-Mart brand concentrates and fermented it in a plastic water jug. It's been sitting for about four days and last night the bubbles finally stopped going, meaning that all the yeast poisoned itself. And so, named after one of the most infamous prisons in history, I present to you: Newgate Corrections Citrus Blend.

Pictured: pride!

This is it: the moment when i get to call myself Gonzo. When I create the worst story possible and then report on how awful it is. Or I could call myself a Republican Congressman.

LOOK
Whooooo boy. There was a lot of pink juice that went into the blend of this and I don't know where it went, because it's pretty much beige now. It's about the color of slightly lighter apple juice, but totally opaque. Also, as you can kind of see in the image up there, there's a surprisingly thick layer of sediment at the bottom of the jug. This is the dead yeast and the processed pulp from the juice. The fact that there's so much of it means some pretty serious fermentation went down. Kind of like when, in a horror video game, you walk into an empty room that's strewn with chunks of something and you know a brutal boss fight's coming up.

This is Regeneratin' Robby. He's our mascot.

NOSE
Okay I think I might have fucked up the airlock seal that is supposed to let some of the waste product out (I was making it out of a balloon and a rubber band), because this smells straight up rancid. (Again, I want to stress I had people who know their shit make sure this wasn't poison-- I'll be fine in the morning, people. Although, fun fact, in the slim chance I did seriously fuck shit up my body would actually turn this into formaldehyde. Having friends who know chemistry makes you kind of scared of life).

There's a serious sulfur whiff here because I used bread yeast and that shit does not make anything good ever,  and there's a vague sharp, sweet citrus smell under it (and I mean under, as in lurking.) It's a little bit like the aroma that bread dough makes when it's rising, only a lot stronger, more bitter, and in a place it really shouldn't be.

TASTE
I've been listening to a lot of Sparklehorse lately, and the thought of even having to do this section made me cue up "Here Come the Painbirds." And that song's about the time Mark Linkous did so much heroin he filled his heart with potassium, briefly died, and couldn't walk for six months. SO YEAH.

"The only things I really need / is water, a gun, and rabbits / [also not prison wine]"

(He uh, he shot himself in the heart about four months back. So I feel bad for that. But not as bad as I'm going to. Look, I made prison wine here-- I WOULD RATHER BE DRINKING THUNDERBIRD.)

Ohgodohgod here we go. Okay, for starters, it doesn't actually taste as rancid as it smells. The grapefruit flavor really tears to the forefront, which makes me glad we only used one third grapefruit. It also makes me really glad that we couldn't find beet juice from concentrate, which was our first idea. Still though, it's amazing that, starting with simple fruit juice and the addition of two ingredients, we got this awful.

"I can ferment, mother. You fermented juice."
"Good for you Buster, now let's see you drink it."

It actually tastes like the time we mixed Thunderbird and grapefruit juice, but if you drank that through rising bread dough. Or like, if it was given to you by the world's absolute worse pastry chef. I don't mean worst as in "the worst at being a chef," I mean "out of all the chefs in the world, he is the one who is the most objectively bad as a human being." I don't know what the fuck that website was smoking, baker's yeast was a terrible idea. As was making it as concentrated as they suggested-- this should probably have like twenty percent more water. Although using grapefruit juice was also a terrible idea.

This tastes like bile and sulfur. It may well be the straight-up worst I've reviewed, and definitely the hardest to choke down, although I can't really count it in the running because it was engineered to be the worst. I mean, it's not like anyone actually makes grapefruit wine.

Blow me, world.

On the downside of the downside, it's hard enough to get down-- and I'm still vaguely afraid I might have made poison--that you pretty much can't get drunk off of this concoction. So yeah, it is an abject failure.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Now, I don't wanna condemn the proud tradition of hombrewing-- there's some people out there (I know a couple) who make delicious things. But if you're gonna do it, don't go by a website from ten years ago that still uses frames and encourages you to use a rinsed-out milk jug (because it's free!).

And that's why I can't go to prison. I just have certain standards about my wine.