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Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

vinepair.com

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Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#91

Post by llampx »

bobthepanda wrote: post #34
vmception wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This resulted in a marked decrease in hospital admissions, traffic accidents and domestic crimes. That was the same worldwide because nobody was outside. Holy retcon, Batman!

Traffic accidents actually went up in the US. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-12-08/traffi... Generally speaking, emptier roads encourage more speeding and reckless driving, increasing the severity of car accidents.

I noticed a bigger increase in www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars submissions in the last year or so. People are really driving like idiots in traffic, let alone what they do on empty roads in the middle of nowhere.

Looks to me like there's a general societal breakdown, also looking at the proliferation of videos of people walking out of stores with stuff they didn't pay for.

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#92

Post by 123pie123 »

awild wrote: post #55
wumpus wrote: post #4

Fun that the homebrew limit is still 200 gallons. The more things change, ...

In germany beer homebrewing is limited at 200L/year (approx 50gallons, which is a respectable but not huge amount if you have friends). Anything above you have to pay taxes on. Those taxes however are pretty minor for a typical 20L batch, and customs are only allowed to investigate a case if they suspect a big enough discrepancy (I think 10€). So there's a group of petty homebrewers who don't make use of their free 2…

I was shocked to see the price of strong lager(5% abv) at a supermarket in Munich, a 500ml can was 29cents (after recycling costs)

they all tasted good as well

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#93

Post by gwd »

rdtsc wrote: post #7

When someone suggests a clever loophole, the response is usually “that would never work, the police and the judge will know exactly what you’re doing”. But somehow, a whole industry developed around the “do not do … detailed prohibited thing”. I guess, because it somehow worked that one time, it became memorable as an exception, while in most cases it wouldn’t fly in court.

The fact is, making home alcohol is super easy. Yeast is omnipresent, and are happy to eat basically any sugar. Wild yeast won't get you alcohol concentrations in the 15-20% like commercial yeasts will, but can easily go up to 8-12%. Apples, grape juice, honey + raisins will all easily make you hard cider, wine, and mead, respectively. If you have a freezer, you can even use freeze distillation to increase the ABV. Banning all ingredients that could be made into alcohol is completely impractical.

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#94

Post by gwd »

supernova87a wrote: post #45

How did they make the concentrate without destroying all the subtle things I hear that wine is supposed to contain (and the yeast)? Did they boil it? Reverse osmosis? Vacuum?

There's almost certainly wild yeast on the grapes themselves; and in any case yeast is more or less omnipresent, so you'll have wild yeast all over your own kitchen at home. The usual problem is preventing things from fermenting, not causing them to ferment.

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#95

Post by gwd »

jameslk wrote: post #18

I'm very curious how this tasted and I wonder why there isn't anyone selling them anymore (based on a quick Google search). If it tasted half decent I'm curious if there could still be a market for something like this, given it seems to be able to be stored dry?

> I wonder why there isn't anyone selling them anymore

Google "wine kit" instead; they have plastic packages of grape juice rather than solidified wine bricks. I've never tried one, because there's so many interesting things you can make without pre-packaged ingredients. So far I've made ginger wine, elderflower wine, cranberry wine, and chocolate mead. It's been a really fun hobby.

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#96

Post by thaumasiotes »

indigochill wrote: post #73
galaxyLogic wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A related question, why is voting considered "good"? Your vote is good if you vote for good people and good policies. Yes. But if a person votes for bad people and bad policies, then I don't see what's so good about it. Voting in general however I believe is good because it makes people be part of the system, and feel they are part of it. And so, if voting is good, maybe we should have more voting.

> But if a person votes for bad people and bad policies... The entire point of voting is that you are allowed to vote for whoever is running. Of course, the notion of a "bad policy" is as old as voting itself, but the noblest democracies are those which don't judge people for voting as they see fit, or else what's the point of voting at all? Just appoint a righteous elite to do all the political appointments for you.…

> ancient Egypt's history spans more years than the entirety of human history after Christ (so far), but as can be seen in their history, they had plenty of royal family squabbles and foreign invasions in that time. How they retained national cohesion through it all would be an interesting study.

Generally attributed to Egypt's relatively high population density at the time. They grew a lot of grain. They had a lot of people.

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#97

Post by chrismaeda »

Ontario has a bunch of make-your-own wine companies that work like wine bricks.

1. you buy 5 gallons of grape juice for ~$20 per gallon.

2. yeast is dropped into your grape juice

3. you come to the store to decant your grape juice into wine bottles and cork them up.

Since no alcohol is bought or sold, you avoid the (very high) taxes on liquor. You end up with ~28 bottles of wine for ~$4 per bottle.

It's not the greatest wine, but it's ok for sangria and cooking, and it's a good story if you hang out with people who like to talk about tax loopholes...

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#98

Post by awild »

123pie123 wrote: post #92
awild wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In germany beer homebrewing is limited at 200L/year (approx 50gallons, which is a respectable but not huge amount if you have friends). Anything above you have to pay taxes on. Those taxes however are pretty minor for a typical 20L batch, and customs are only allowed to investigate a case if they suspect a big enough discrepancy (I think 10€). So there's a group of petty homebrewers who don't make use of their free 2…

I was shocked to see the price of strong lager(5% abv) at a supermarket in Munich, a 500ml can was 29cents (after recycling costs) they all tasted good as well

Yeah, beer prices in Germany are absurdly low. Unfortunately that also means that it's quite hard for smaller breweries to compete. The Franken region (densest brewery region) is seeing the slow death of the family brewery because the clientele is not up for even small price hikes. Even the deposit on the crates is an actual consideration for these brewers as people won't buy their beer at full price 10€ (they will get the money back on return of the crate) instead they usually require just a 3€ deposit. This means that the brewery is staking out 6-7€ per crate sold in hopes it returns functional.

If you're ever in Bavaria again, you should make a visit to Bamberg. It has an incredibly rich culture around beer. They are famous for smoked beer, though its just two breweries of about 20 making it. The others all have absurdly high quality beer at fair prices all with a certain amount of personality.

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#99

Post by masklinn »

gwd wrote: post #93
rdtsc wrote: post #7

When someone suggests a clever loophole, the response is usually “that would never work, the police and the judge will know exactly what you’re doing”. But somehow, a whole industry developed around the “do not do … detailed prohibited thing”. I guess, because it somehow worked that one time, it became memorable as an exception, while in most cases it wouldn’t fly in court.

The fact is, making home alcohol is super easy. Yeast is omnipresent, and are happy to eat basically any sugar. Wild yeast won't get you alcohol concentrations in the 15-20% like commercial yeasts will, but can easily go up to 8-12%. Apples, grape juice, honey + raisins will all easily make you hard cider, wine, and mead, respectively. If you have a freezer, you can even use freeze distillation to increase the ABV. B…

Til you can get 20% out of fermentation, I always thought the limit was about 16 since that’s the top end for beer and wine.

Is it because starch yeasts can keep on keeping further than glucose ones?

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#100

Post by phasersout »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #77
boogies wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offtopic, but The Incredibles has one of my favorite movie quotes: You always say “Be true to yourself”, but you never say which part of yourself to be true to! … which stuck in my head because so many Disney (and other?) movies seem to be all about being “true to yourself,” and in my experience they conspicuously fail to address the fact (in my belief system) that all humans have both good and evil, selfish and self…

It's "just be yourself" all over again. What if my unmasked self is an aloof prick? It's just stupid. "Just be yourself... no not like that... wait not like that!"

That's what I always say... Be yourself? I'm terrible and I get nothing done! I spent my whole life trying NOT to be myself...
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