Where do people get alcohol?

Answer 1

That depends largely on where they live and their age.

If you are asking about how they make it, it comes from fermentation. All it takes is yeast and some source of sugar (or sugar and starch). Then it is a matter of boiling your mixture to make sure it is sterile, cooking it a little if you are using grain, and then "pitching" your yeast into it after it cools some.

Beer is made from grains. The grains are often partially sprouted and then killed using heat (malting). That is so the germination process will convert some of the starch into sugar. Then that is ground up, boiled, etc., to get a liquid. Then the yeast is pitched. Hops (cones of the humulus plant) are added somewhere toward the end of the initial brewing as a preservative and bittering agent. Then you would bottle and carbonate it. For home brewing, you could add sugar to it before sealing in the bottles. That causes additional fermentation which gives off carbon dioxide gas. You have to get the amount just right or you could have exploding bottles. For larger operations, it can be carbonated using carbon dioxide gas. That can be done at home, though it is difficult for individuals to find a source of food-grade carbon dioxide.

Winemaking can be simpler than brewing beer since you don't usually need to add yeast, since the fruit peelings usually have yeast growing on it. However, it is a good idea to add yeast to help control undesirable yeasts. Also, you wouldn't need to carbonate it unless you were making champagne.

It is hard to use the above methods to produce over 17% alcohol (though 22% is possible). Stronger alcohols are made by brewing and this distilling it. Alcohol evaporates faster and at a lower temperature than water, so you'd boil the fermented alcohol and collect what evaporates. However, this is illegal to do at home in the US and in a lot of other countries, at least without a very expensive license that's needed for possessing and using distillery equipment. However, people do it. Illegal alcohol that's produced this way is called "moonshine." That's why there was a problem with adults getting lead poisoning. Some were distilling alcohol using Model-T Ford radiators which were made from lead.