Kilju - Finnish Sugar Wine - SUPER Cheap Wine at Home

Let's make Kilju, or Finnish Sugar Wine. We're going to try to do this as accurately as possible. However, the yeast had different ideas! In the end, we tested it with various flavorings. Kilju is very versatile, you can do just about anything you want with it. Kilju is also pretty cheap, so you can always have some brewing.

Ingredients:
2 lbs (.907 kg) Sugar
Water to fill to a Gallon

Additions:
*please watch the video for all the additional techniques we used to "fix" a stall

Flavors of your choice. We used Cherry Juice, Lemon Juice and Honey, and some extracts.

_____________________________________

Some items used in the making of this video (We are Amazon Affiliates and as such do receive a small commission if you purchase anything after using one of our links. There is no cost to you for this, but it does help the channel and enables us to keep bringing you content. Thank you!)
_____________________________________
Become a City Steading VIP - Click to learn more
_____________________________________
Want more City Steading?

[pointdironie]

Never in a million years did I think I would see a lovely middle-aged non-Finnish couple brewing kilju. Internet is amazing sometimes!

[Dewkeeper]

As a Finnish (former) student, I can say that your experimentation with flavorings truly honors the spirit of kilju consumption. If you don't scowl at least once while trying mixes, you didn't really experience kilju 😂

[Noctureal]

The origin (and main use) of Kilju here in Finland is to get drunk cheap. It's not fancy drink that people enjoy. It's very popular among students who don't have money to buy alcohol. So what they do is Kilju. Usually it's done with some kind of "turbo yeast". Which basically means that you let it ferment maybe a week, sometimes less. No flavoring, no fancy things, usually done in cheap bucket. Then you drink that sugary water that tastes like yeast. It's not good but it gets people drunk.

[John-mzig]

What doesn't Kilju only makes you stronger.

[MaunoKoivistoOfficial]

As a Finn, I literally burst out laughing at your thumbnail. Traditionally kilju is made by highschoolers using empty juice bottles (Mehukatti brand being the most authentic choice, IMO). Having that highbrow a packaging for this beverage is intrinsically hilarious.

[lukehahn]

i made this without knowing what it was called, maybe i'm a Finn at heart. sugar-water-yeast, left it on the water heater for a week, cold crashed, carefully poured off the the good stuff and added a packet of lemon-lime koolaid. Ambrosia!

[NikoMikkanen]

Yeah, basic kilju is just sugar, water and yeast, but that's just opening a gigantic door to a whole world of kilju. If you're short on yeast, use bread. If you're short on sugar, use bananas or apples. Kilju has always been a way to make alcohol out of anything available, and "punk kilju" (as in the punk rock music lifestyle) is a whole chapter of it's own. So adding taste to kilju is perfectly accectable. If it produces alcohol through fermentation in the corner of your bathroom, it's kilju. And the only thing that's ever made me sicker than kilju was the night I discovered tequila in my early 20s...

[pekka]

My friends and I were 15 years old. We left the kilju to ferment in an anthill for 2 weeks. We went on a nature trip at night. It was fun, even if we threw up.

[jusas]

Greetings from Finland. I have done lots of kiljus in my life and have few tips. Add 100-500g of raisins in the mix helps with fermentation and not too expensive to "screw up" main idea of kilju. You can use a "raisin bomb" to restart fermentation, add put sugar, raisins and yeast to a other container and let it start fermentation for 4-12 hours and add to kilju. And in my mind you can add what ever you want to kilju, but only if its cheap. Main idea of kilju is that its cheap and high in alcohol. I like to use some kind of citrus or ginger for example.

Love your channel btw!

[poika]

This review does a good job capturing the essence of kilju, which is that no one really thinks it's better than... any other drink really, but it's a whole lot better than nothing to drink.

[billdevany]

I make this as my primary drink of choice. I make 5 gallons at a time using 8 to 10 lbs of sugar and 2 oz turbo yeast. 4 to 6 days later its ready to drink! I brew in a stainless steel keg with a tap an inch off the bottom. no air lock, just a small hole at the top. no racking needed. I have made hundreds of gallons and never had a stall, oxidation or contamination issue.

[Sir_Baddington]

My dad made kilju by brewing rosehip tea and adding sugar and bakers yeast in that. It was pretty good.

[snowandcoal]

Man it's been two decades since I had Kilju. This is nostalgic.

[Necrospunk]

This video takes me back. We were poor high schoolers but we liked to party, so we whipped up a 30 litre batch with sugar, fresh bread yeast and pear flavored "Mehukatti" juice concentrate. Halfway to the brew our buddies mom (who was kind enough to lend her closet to let it ferment) had told my buddy something akin to "you boys have no idea what you're doing", dumped some turbo yeast or similar in with some more sugar. In a total of two weeks we had a taste of it, raw with no mixers. I can remember me downing my second glass, a buddy of mine having grapes in his butt crack as a joke of some kind and then waking up with vomit all over my bed. Good times!

[wizandoz]

It is so strange to watch you guys actually make a proper enjoyable drink out of it. In my student days here in Finland kilju was made just to get drunk dirt cheap and "flavoring" was just to hide the awful sugarwatery yeast taste - neve thought anyone could actually drink it for its taste. But bravo to you, well done.

[andonlyMiro]

I'm new to your channel, but if you haven't tried making "Sima", which is also a traditional Finnish, somewhat alcoholic, beverage consumed around Easter, you could really like it. It's simple, fairly fast to make, pretty hard to mess up and tastes just lovely. It CAN be made with more alcohol, it is usually made for kids but often more for adults as well by adding more yeast/sugar/time. I personally really like it.

Basically lemons, brown sugar, white sugar, (sometimes dark syrup and/or honey) water, yeast, time, bottled + raisins (when the raisins rise to the top it is ready at least for kids), time, done. Sparkly. Delicious. Refreshing.

[frogjunk]

I made a kilju, it ended up high abv around 16% but sweet, so I added ginger and lime. Tastes really good.

[rullywinkle]

I never thought to make it; but I appreciate the idea of a simple wine for infusions. Really cool idea.

[alexlarsen]

Lol, this brings me back!! This isn't just a Finnish thing. Thing is, alcohol is abnormally expensive in all nordic countries. Norwegians buy booze in Sweden and the Swedes come to Denmark which is the cheapest, but still way more expensive than the rest of Europe.
Also, the yeast used to do this is usually some type of turbo yeast strain that can chew through anything...basically the distiller's yeast already mixed with DAP and other nutrients in their original packaging.

[Sefhen]

One buddy of mine made making Kilju into a science in his University days, he used coffee filters and active charcoal to clean out all the crap from it and that was left from fermentation, it was a clear liquid with a slight black tint and it was strong enough to give a warm feeling in your stomach. I think he sold it for 2 euros for 1, 5 liters so when you get a couple of 1 liter orange juices and extra empty 1, 5 liter bottle, you've got a fun night drinking outside and probably not so fun day after talking norwegian with your toilet.