A previous post about hobo jug wine got me to thinking about recipes I’d seen for pruno, a fermented fruit beverage often made in prisons. The basic idea of combing heat, fruit and sugar to create alcohol is often used by inmates who have access to sweetened products such as fruit cocktail, ketchup, orange juice and even sauerkraut.
Eric Gillin at The Black Table decided to bring a little slice of lockdown into his own home by brewing up a batch of pruno and documenting every step. Granted, this is a little more sophisticated than straining a can of sterno through a loaf of Bunny Bread, but it still sounds pretty rank.
Gillin had this to say about the final product (pictured here): “The only drawback pruno has, aside from its unappealing tannish-orange color, the white flecks of mold floating on the top and the smell you can't wash off, is its taste. For lack of a better metaphor, pruno tastes like a bile flavored wine cooler. It tastes so bad, in fact, that it could very well be poisonous or psychedelic, which might explain the violence it induces in prisoners.”
Due to the violent tendencies that Gillin mentions, many prisons have removed fresh fruit from their meals in hopes of stemming incarcerated vintners.
Also, here's some pruno poetry from Jarvis Jay Masters, a death row inmate at San Quentin.
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