How To Make Hard Seltzer at Home

If you can brew beer at home, then you already have all of the equipment you need to brew hard seltzer. Let me show you how.

My name is Martin Keen and on my YouTube channel, the Homebrew challenge, I brew different types of beer, but I’ve noticed there’s another type of alcoholic beverage that’s really gaining popularity and that’s hard seltzer.

And before I brew my own, I wanted to see what’s out there commercially. And what better place to do that from the Sheetz Beer Den.

Well, I found a couple of options. I was surprised actually, how many different seltzers there are. So, um, I’ve got one here from Truly, which I think, uh, one of the more popular brands Wild Berry, this one is mango a both 5% alcohol and beautifully clear.

See what we got on the aroma? Fruity mango smells, smells great. So bubbly, but the taste is quite subtle. So lots on the aroma, refreshing, but not overly powering with the taste. Okay. That’s what it’s supposed to taste like. Uh, see if I can brew one.

This is everything you’re gonna need to brew hard seltzer. What we’ve got here is 19 liters of distilled water. You are going to want to use either distilled water or reverse osmosis water.

If you use tap water, even if it’s filtered, it’s probably going to come out a little bit too cloudy. So we’re going to, with that, we also have some gypsum here, uh, some dry yeast, some DAP, and then this heap beast here is sugar.

So the, uh, the brewing process here is really simple. Basically, we’re going to heat up some water, boil it for a little bit and dissolve the sugar into it. So we’ll start off with the distilled water.

Then I’m going to add in my gypsum, this is just a little bit of calcium into this distilled water. And then I want to bring this thing to a boil. So I’m going to turn on my heat and while that’s heating up, I’m going to dissolve my sugar into here.

Now, the purpose of this sugar isn’t to make the beer sweet it’s to give the yeast something to eat so that we actually get some alcohol in this thing. So all of this corn sugar will actually be consumed by the yeast and we shouldn’t really have any of it left in the finished product.

I’ve moved my kettle underneath my extract fan. I’m just approaching a boil. Now I am going to leave this boil running for 20 minutes.

Now, at this point, we will have basically brewed alcoholic water. So we’re going to want to add a little bit of flavoring into this as well. And I’ve partnered with Olive Nation to try out some of that extracts in my hard seltzer. So I’ve got a whole bunch of flavors here, some fruity ones like blue raspberry and pineapple through to some more out of the box flavors like chocolate chip mint.

And I’m going to be adding these in, at the very end of the process. And if you want to have a go at this yourself, um, olive nation have provided me with a coupon code for a discount on their extracts. All right, back to the boil.

Going to want to get this down to around 68 Fahrenheit, 20 Celsius before pitching the yeast. And we’re going to then move this into a fermentor. Uh, you can use whatever fermenter to you like clarity, uh, fermentation bucket would be fine as long as you can seal it up and put an air lock in, you’re good. I am using a Fermzilla.

Um, I actually quite like this one because there’s a floating dip tube. So I’ll just be pulling the Seltzer off the top and leaving the stuff that’s on the bottom when fermentation is done. Anyway, I’ve um, I sanitized this with some star san, and now I’m going to get ready to transfer the seltzer into here.

Four grams here of diammonium phosphate or DAP, and this will go just sprinkle into the water. And then I’ve got my yeast as well. So this is US-05, it’s an American Ale dry yeast. And I’m just going to pitch this in, just sprinkle it on the top. That’s it.

I put my fluting dip tube in for the air lock. I’ve just filled up a growler with some sanitizer, and then I’m going to go from out here, which is the gas post into here.

So any CO2 will just bubble up in there. By the way, the gravity for this came out at 1.031. And, uh, I guess this just tastes like sweet water, right? Sugary water. Yep. That’s it. So I’m going to ferment this now at 68 Fahrenheit or 20 Celsius for probably about three weeks, then come back, move into kegs.

It’s fair to say. We’re quite excited to do this, right? Yeah. Yeah. You’ve got everything laid out pretty brilliantly. I’ve got, uh, my Fermzilla here, the seltzer water is pressurized. So, um, before we try any of the flavors, how about we just try the water by itself? It looks super fizzy. I drink a lot of seltzer. Wow. Okay.

Yeah, that sounds great. That sound is beautiful. I hope that captures, it’s beautiful. It’s nice and clear. It’s very clear. All right. Let’s see what we get nothing on the aroma. Just water. I mean, it’s fizzy. Yes. Alcoholic, but it’s not very exciting to drink. You got the bubbles, got the bubbles. All right. But let’s get some of the flavors in.

Can you top me up? And then what’s, what’s coming up first? First is going to be red raspberry. It is here. So we should say that maybe if you’re making this, you would just like put a bunch of this in the serving vessel. But because we have so many to taste, we’re just going to put a drop into these glasses.

Can you hold it it up so everyone can see? All right. The color is the scientific drop. Okay. I feel like we need a spoon to mix. Okay. Nope.

So I gave you only one milliliter, but I don’t think that’s going to be strong enough. So I’m going to do two. All right. Let’s give it a try.

Oh man. That’s good. Okay. So I did a three milliliters. You only did one. Yeah. So color wise still my little bit darker. Yeah. But my goodness, this is so drinkable. Okay. Bring it on the next one. Uh, next we have blood orange. Yes. This is one. I’m not one of the most I’m looking forward to.

Oh, that came up quite Milky.

Yeah. It is sort of is Milky. Yeah. Where it looked quite clear in the syringe that’s a really strong, lovely smell. That is just, I mean, I’ve brewed with blood oranges and that is, it smells like I’ve just squeezed the blood oranges. Really fresh smelling. Too strong? That was a little bit stronger than the raspberry for me.

So this is going to be blue raspberry and it’s thick. I don’t want to stir at it. It looks so cool. It looks like a little, it looks like worms in my, I didn’t put my full two out two milliliters in. Look, it just comes floats to the surface and mix it. Mix it, mix it. Oh my goodness. Well, let’s see what we got on the smell. Delicious. Super delicious. There’s no mistake of not even having to put that two minute. Oh my God. I’m so excited. Like blue jolly ranchers are the best. Oh, that’s true. Blue Everything.

Actually, blue jolly ranchers is a pretty good description of this. Absolutely delicious. It lives up to his flavor. It is legit blue raspberry. Oh, your tongue, Your tongue and your teeth are blue. Well, I don’t know how we top that one. Me neither, because that was a really good and blue tongue. Yeah. Well, we’ve washed out some glasses. W.

e’re gonna go to the next one, which is pumpkin spice in lieu of Thanksgiving and Christmas and full, ah, let’s start with one milliliter. Alright. Okay. Oh again, Milky. Okay. Very, um, questionable. Um, what it looks like. Oh man, go ahead and spell it. Tell me what it smells like as advertised though. It’s fair to say. And no mistake to me it smells more spicy than pumpkin. Yes. Agreed. Agreed. Very strong spice smell. Yes. It was like a candle. Oh no. Oh no. It actually it tastes like a candle.

It’s not, Oh, that’s not. That’s not bad because I know so many people would love that. Yes. I’m glad we went with one. This is a strong flavor. Was very strong. I don’t know. I think what we’re going to do for you is you’re going to smell this one first and then you can tell me if you know, all right. Sounds good. It’s a tropical fruit. I’m not so good on my tropical fruit, but I smell really good. I’m going with mango? It is mango. Yes. Yes. It is premium mango. Oh, well it has a very premium smell. It does actually smell good. I don’t know.

Let’s drink here. Yep. So I’ve had mango seltzer before I think. And this is much stronger. So it’s yeah. It’s a little bit strong. You know what? Um, I’ve drank half. Just top that up. Oh, that is much better. Yeah. Yeah. So 0.5 for four ouce glass. Yes. So one would be good for like 12 hours. Hmm. Okay.

Well you have one more for me. Okay. I do. You won’t tell me what this one is. No, it looks green. Okay. All right. How’s that kind of thick?

It’s not like mouthwash tooth paste? It’s very mint.

Smells like my favorite ice cream, but I’m so excited. Your favorite ice? My favorite ice cream mint choc chip?

Ah, what’s it taste like?

It tastes exactly like mint CHOC chip except in drink form instead of ice cream. Yeah. This is quite weird. It’s like so good. Like an after eight mint in a glass. Oh my goodness. I don’t have one of those in a long long time. Um, so yeah. Check out the description. We’ve got a link to all information there and you can actually check out all of the different flavors. They have a whole ton. We just got six of them to try.

And you can also find my recipe in the description for the hard seltzer as well. Normally we do a cheers. You don’t have anything to cheers? No. I have a one that doesn’t have anything in,…. Cheers!