Alcoholic drinks are present on almost all tables during the holidays. But the quality of store-bought alcohol cannot be compared with the level and taste of a home-made drink. There are products of different strengths, and some people prefer something lighter like wine with a strength of 13-15 degrees, and some are fans of moonshine. But you can "kill two birds with one stone" and make moonshine from wine - the drink will turn out tasty and of high quality.
Moonshine from wine
Moonshine from wine is rarely prepared, but all because it is an intermediate step between the preparation of calvados or cognac. Often, wine is distilled in the apparatus precisely in order to obtain elite aged alcohol from moonshine. After distillation, such drinks are not drunk, but poured into oak barrels for further infusion. In this way, not only they prepare a delicious drink, but also get rid of expired wine.
The recipe for making moonshine at home from the very beginning may differ for different distillers. Recipes have been improved over the years, and not everyone wants to share the intricacies of the process.
Before distillation, you need to find out that only house wines will fit for the process. Store-bought or packaged options contain a large amount of dyes, preservatives. Most cheap wines are obtained by diluting grape powders, which affects the taste and quality of the distillate not for the better. And in store products, sodium sulfate or sulfur is used as a preservative. It also gives an unpleasant odor to the finished product, which cannot be removed.
Expired wines from the store cannot be distilled. The situation is different with homemade wines - they can be prepared on any fruit raw material. Accordingly, the taste of the distillate will give off the aroma of the fruit from which the wine is made. The most popular options are grapes, plums, apples, cherries. After insisting on oak chips or in a barrel, home-made cognac is obtained, not of the worst quality.
But in this case there are exceptions in the form of sour wines. Acetic acid can make moonshine sour. This development of events can be corrected by cleaning the drink with charcoal or soda, although the sour taste will still remain. And it should also be remembered that out of 20 liters of wine, no more than 2 liters of moonshine will be obtained, while the strength of the drink will increase to 40%. But the taste and the result as a whole will justify the effort and money spent.
Step-by-step preparation of wine for moonshine
You can easily get moonshine from apple wine or cider. It is not necessary to use grapes. In principle, the recipes are the same for both apples and grapes, but you need to add a couple of kilograms less sugar to the raw grapes, since apples are more acidic. But getting juice from apples is easier.
To make wine, you will need the following ingredients:
- peeled and chopped apples - 15 kilograms;
- 10 liters of pure water;
- 3 kilograms of sugar;
- dry yeast - 110 grams.
The main thing is to get juice from raw materials. Making wine from fruits is done without the use of pressing, since during the fermentation process it gives a lot of unnecessary substances like fusel oils. It is better to use ripe fruits, and get the juice with a juicer or make it manually.
In an enamel bowl, add sugar to the juice. To do this, we use the proportion: for 1 liter of juice we take 200 grams of sugar. The contents are mixed, then yeast and water are added. The fermentation tank is filled no more than 70% of the volume, since foam is actively formed. A water seal is installed on it. Such a drink ferments for a month at a temperature of 19-26 degrees Celsius.
It is important not only to know how to distill wine, but also when to do it. If you skip this moment, the product will turn sour, the distillate will turn out tasteless. And if you use a sweetish mischief, then the number of liters made will be small, and the distillate strength will be below 40%.
Distillation of wine into moonshine
The distillation stage is the same for any mash, including finished wine. Before this, the mash or wine is removed from the sediment and poured into the cube of the apparatus. The aging of the drink does not matter, it does not affect the quality of the distillate, it only affects the taste. The main thing is that the winemaker likes the taste of wine, because getting rid of it and making tasteless moonshine from wine will not work. In order to lose a minimum amount of product during the distillation, it is necessary to check the tightness of the device.
To begin with, the product is heated over low heat. Then the fire can be added and further monitor the temperature. When the indicators approach 89 degrees Celsius, the moonshine begins to drip into the container. This is the pervak. The smell and color of such a liquid will be unpleasant, so it is better to drain it.
The use of pervak is dangerous for the body, it quickly causes addiction and intoxication. Pervak, or "heads", can be used for technical needs.
Some winemakers advise distilling moonshine from homemade wine for the first time without fractionation. At the same time, finish the selection of the drink when the output strength in the jet falls below 25-30 degrees. The drop in the amount of alcohol indicates that the “tails” fraction has gone, which has a large amount of fusel oils. It also shouldn't be drunk.
And if at first an unpleasant smell of sulfur appeared, which is typical for shop wines, the first 15-20 milliliters from each liter of wine must be collected separately and poured. You can check the quality of the product with the help of cotton wool, which is moistened in moonshine: if it burns well after arson, then the product is excellent.
Of course, when using homemade or store wine, the result and aroma is not always the desired one. And there is also such an indicator as the purity and transparency of the drink. To further clean moonshine, you can use several methods. Purification can take place between two distillations or after a second distillation.
The easiest and cheapest way is to use gauze and activated charcoal. To do this, a watering can or a sieve is covered with gauze folded in three layers, coal is placed on top. The liquid is passed through this filter and a pure product is obtained.
The distillation of wine for moonshine according to technology is not much different from the preparation of a regular drink. The technique is one, but the main thing is to follow all the instructions and perform the actions in stages. If the first distillation fails, you still need to keep trying to make a distillation and achieve the desired result.
Distillation of wine at home is carried out if it is necessary to obtain fruit vodka (subsequently it is infused in oak barrels in order to obtain a quality drink that is not inferior in value to cognac and calvados), as well as in the case when a batch of wine has become unusable and must be disposed of. In order to get excellent moonshine from homemade wine in both the first and second cases, a recipe is used that provides for the preparation technology, thanks to which the drink is surprisingly beautiful.
Attention! It is undesirable to distill shop wines, since they contain sulfur dioxide, which in large quantities adversely affects human health. But distilling homemade wine is very useful, because they do not contain any chemicals. Moonshine turns out to be pleasant to the taste, when it is aged in barrels, it becomes quite similar to cognac. The longer the exposure, the better the drink. Distillation of sour wines will not allow you to get such a result, moonshine from them is also obtained with sourness, which can only be removed by a carbon filter or the use of soda.
How to distill house wine
- Wine is taken of any quality and any aging period, it is necessary to remove it from the sediment, only after that it is poured into a distillation cube.
- The distillation process should be slow (approximately 3 liters should come out per hour). The first fraction of 20 ml per liter (“head”) is poured into a separate container and used only for technical purposes, because it contains a lot of harmful impurities.
- The next fraction (“body”) is collected in the main tank, the selection is completed after the strength is lowered by less than 40 degrees.
- The next dose of the fraction ("tail") is collected to be used for a new mash. This helps to increase the strength of the future drink.
- Some people use ready-made moonshine from wine right away, but the quality of the product will not be excellent. In this regard, moonshine is pre-cleaned with coal or soda, but in these cases, the fruity aroma disappears. To eliminate such a precious loss, a second distillation is carried out.
- Moonshine is diluted with water until a fortress of 20 degrees is obtained and distillation is carried out according to the same scheme as for the first time.
- The resulting moonshine is diluted with water to 45 degrees, poured into a container, which is immediately closed. To improve the quality of moonshine from wine, they give the opportunity to settle for two days.
Since ancient times in Rus', during feasts, festivities, games, they used intoxicating drinks of various strengths: mead, sbiten, mash, moonshine. Moonshine was obtained from wine based on various fruits and berries, so the taste of this primordially Russian alcoholic drink was very diverse, and its recipe became a family heirloom and was passed down from father to son.
Making high-quality moonshine is not at all easy, this drink requires high quality raw materials, strict adherence to technology, and the exact implementation of all prescriptions. From homemade wine with a volume of 20 liters, you can make just one liter of moonshine. But what moonshine! From him, the Russian soul flows with a spilling song, the legs themselves go into a daring dance, and a friendly conversation turns into a heartfelt conversation.
Moonshine from wine: cleaner than tears!
Home-made moonshine from wine obtained from grape and apple raw materials is considered one of the most delicious types of moonshine. The process of its manufacture consists of several stages:
– preparation of wine material,
- its fermentation
- distillation,
- cleaning of the finished product.
Let's consider each stage in detail on the example of apple raw materials for winemaking. The process is identical for grape wine, only getting juice from grapes is much easier than from apples. We will need:
- apples - 15 kg;
- water - 10 l;
- granulated sugar - 3 kg;
- yeast - 100 g.
1.
The harvested crop of ripe apples is not washed, but subjected to dry cleaning, removing the core, dirt, damaged areas and rot. We extract the juice of their fruits using a juicer, and if it is not there, then the apples should be chopped in any other way, for example, using a grater. Squeeze the crushed mixture using gauze and a press. The finished juice is placed in an enamel pan for initial fermentation, which will cause a violent process that separates the juice into pulp and liquid. On the third day of fermentation, the pulp accumulated on top should be removed using a colander.
The resulting juice is measured to comply with the required proportion of the addition of granulated sugar. This sweet ingredient is added to the wine material at the rate of 200 grams per liter of liquid. Mix the wine preparation thoroughly until the sugar is completely dissolved. Add water and yeast to the solution.
2.
Now the resulting liquid is poured into a glass vessel and closed with a water seal. We place a bottle with wine material in a room where the temperature fluctuates between 18 -24 degrees. Fermentation of apple raw materials takes a month and a half, but even after the process of carbon dioxide separation is completely attenuated, you should wait at least five days until the fermentation processes in apple mash are completed. It is very important to guess the moment of complete maturation of the mash, since the quality of the future moonshine depends on it. If the mash has stood still, the moonshine will turn out to be tasteless and weak, and if, on the contrary, it is not ripe, the yield of moonshine will be significantly reduced.
3. Distillation
So, we proceed to the most important stage in the production of moonshine. The mash obtained as a result of fermentation is placed in a moonshine still and heated over low heat. As soon as the liquid warms up, we add fire. It is very important that the moonshine still be completely sealed - this is necessary in order to minimize the loss of product through evaporation. We provide cooling and monitor the temperature. As soon as the temperature reaches 90 degrees, moonshine begins to drip - the so-called "pervak" - 250-300 ml of liquid with an unpleasant pungent odor. Pervak is a poisonous liquid that should never be consumed. After pervak, moonshine comes out, suitable for consumption. Its volume is about three liters, and the fortress reaches 60%. Then the fortress decreases and a drink with a strength of about 40 degrees is expelled, the volume of which is also about 2-3 liters.
You can check the quality of the finished product with a cotton swab dipped in fresh moonshine. If it burns, the product will turn out well. However, the process is not over yet.
4.
Purification of moonshine consists in filtering the product through a sieve with crushed activated carbon. This will help remove odors and accidental impurities. The use of low temperatures also has a good effect on the quality of home-made alcohol. Moonshine placed in the freezer significantly benefits in taste and smell, since all harmful impurities will be frozen and removed from the product.
To improve the taste and aroma of the drink, you can add some dried apples to moonshine from wine and insist for two weeks
Video of making homemade moonshine
In order to make moonshine from wine, you need a little patience and the right type of wine. The result is a quality, good cleaning product that can be used for several purposes.
We will consider further how to make moonshine, what can serve as raw materials, and what kind of wine should not be used.
How moonshine from wine is used
Distillate from grape wine is also obtained for industrial purposes. It is then used to make such elite drinks as cognac and calvados. You can cook a good one, while getting a product of excellent quality will be possible within 6–8 months after the end of the distillation process. For these purposes, only high-quality grape wine is suitable.
Homemade cognac from wine moonshine, it will turn out to be already vintage!
You will also need to place the resulting moonshine from wine in oak barrels for the specified number of months; in the absence of oak barrels, glass containers can be used. In order for the final product to acquire the desired shade and flavor, oak chips are placed in the container. The resulting final product will not yield to expensive brands of cognac in terms of taste.
However, even without such tincture on oak chips, moonshine made from fruit or grape wines has a pleasant mild taste and aromatic fruity notes.
What kind of wine can be taken for distillation
For distillation, we take those wines that we definitely won’t drink! Almost all types of homemade drink are suitable for processing. You can use any wine, grape, sweet and semi-dry, fortified.
Failed wines are suitable, young and those that have expired.
You can use purchased wines (grape, fruit and berry), but here you should remember that inexpensive brands contain a large amount of preservatives, which will make the final product unsuitable for consumption. The drink will have an unpleasant smell of sulfur, will be hard to drink. Good moonshine comes out of high-quality purchased wine, but its cost is high in the end.
The most acceptable will be moonshine from homemade wine. Its production cost is low and the end product is excellent.
When choosing raw materials for moonshine, you can not stop at sour wine. Moonshine from sour wine has the smell and taste of vinegar. This off-flavour cannot be removed by re-distillation, nor is it removed by multi-stage purification. Sour grape wines suffer from a particularly strong unpleasant aftertaste.
When using sour wine, the taste of the drink will be hopelessly spoiled.
moonshine
The preparation of this product is not difficult for those who have already done it and will not be difficult for beginners. Those who undertook to distill homemade wine for distillate should use our advice:
- Homemade wine is better to distill 2 times. So the final product will receive higher cleaning and good quality.
- After processing, the resulting product should not be cleaned, this eliminates the taste and aroma of fruits.
- After the end of the distillation, homemade moonshine should be kept in glass containers for several days, and preferably a month. The final aroma will be unique and the taste mild.
First distillation
For her, you just need to pour the wine into a moonshine cube and start the process.
The first distillation of wine into moonshine From 10 liters of wine with a strength of 13–14%, the product yield is about 3 liters, but the final result depends not only on the wine, but also on the speed of the process and is usually much lower.
Important! When pouring wine into a cube, be sure to drain it from the sediment and strain through several layers of gauze. Fruit particles or other ingredients should not get into the cube, they can block the movement of the distillate and provoke an explosion.
To obtain a quality product, it should be distilled slowly, at a rate of 3 liters per hour. The whole product obtained is divided into fractions:
- The head is the first 12% of the distillation (if 10 liters of wine are poured, then this is about 200 g). This fraction contains many harmful substances, has an unpleasant odor, is harmful to the human body, it is usually used for technical purposes (added to grape mash), but not drunk.
- The body is the main part, this part is determined by the strength (presence of alcohol), it must be at least 40%.
- The tail or tails are the last part of the haul, often cloudy. It is also undrinkable.
The resulting product must be diluted with water up to 40%, poured into glass bottles. It can be drunk after 2-3 days.
If a second distillation is planned, it is still better to separate the resulting product into fractions and use only the body diluted to 25% ABV for distillation.
The product obtained should not be purified before the second distillation.
Second distillation
In principle, you can drink moonshine from homemade wine even after the first distillation, but the second processing will allow you to get a very high-quality, soft product that is pleasant to drink.
It should be remembered that after the second distillation from 10 liters of the original product, the yield will be slightly more than 2 liters.
First you need to dilute the resulting product to 20-25%. So, if you take 10 liters of 45-degree moonshine, then you will need to add another 5 liters of water to it. After that, you can pour the prepared product into the cube.
The resulting distillate should also be separated into fractions, while the heads and tails should be taken in the same proportions as in the first distillation.
Advice. To give an unusual flavor to the distillate, it can be infused for 2 weeks on dried apples, cinnamon or cloves.
cleaning
You should not clean home-made moonshine from grape or fruit wines; after cleaning, the aroma of grapes or fruits will disappear, which is very undesirable.
Cleaning moonshine from wine that has turned sour is not at all worth it; you still won’t be able to remove the taste of vinegar.
If, nevertheless, there is a desire or need to carry out cleaning, then the easiest way to do this is with activated carbon.
Cleaning will require several tablets of activated carbon, gauze and cotton wool: the coal is crushed, placed on gauze between layers of cotton wool, the cotton wool is also wrapped with gauze, then the resulting distillate is filtered through an impromptu filter.
How to get moonshine from fruit juice
You can get an excellent quality drink from fresh fruit juice, apple juice is best. For this you need:
- Apples, plums, other fruits - 15 kg;
- Pressed yeast, (wine yeast is also suitable for moonshine) - 110 g;
- Sugar at the rate of 0.2 kg for each 1 liter of juice;
- Water - 10 liters.
Before you make moonshine, you will need to squeeze the juice, make wine out of it, and only then drive the distillate. Work should be carried out in the following sequence:
- Squeeze juice from apples or other fruits, berries.
- Place the resulting juice for 3 days in a warm place.
- Then squeeze the pulp to measure the amount of juice.
- Dilute the juice with sugar, then add water and the required rate of yeast to it. Mix everything.
- Pour the resulting mixture into a bottle, put on a water seal for 1.5 months.
- Then drain from the sediment and pour into a still for distillation.
- During distillation, moonshine is divided into fractions.
Dilute the final product to the desired strength.
your mark
First you need to figure out why make moonshine from wine. After all, wine itself is a ready-made drink that can be consumed without any distillation. As a rule, it is distilled in two cases: for the preparation of some special drink or for the disposal of expired wine. In the first case, a fruit or grape drink is used to make Calvados and Cognac, respectively. At the same time, high-quality good wine is taken as a raw material.
When disposing of a low-quality drink, you can take both homemade and purchased wines.
The only thing to remember is that store-bought drinks contain a lot of dyes and other artificial additives that are not purified during distillation. For example, sodium sulfate, used as a preservative, can give moonshine an unpleasant aftertaste. Moonshine from homemade wine does not contain such impurities, so home-made drinks can be safely used as a raw material for distillation. In any case, the recipe for making moonshine from purchased and homemade wine is no different.
wine distillation
Wine needs to be poured into a distillation cube. If there is sediment, then this must be done carefully so that it does not get into the distillation tank. Distillation will take place in two stages. The first time you need to overtake without cutting off the "heads" and "tails". Stop distillation when the strength of the product at the outlet drops below twenty-five degrees.
The resulting distillate may be opaque, this is quite normal. It is necessary to measure its strength, calculate the amount of absolute alcohol and dilute it to twenty degrees. If you want to make moonshine from wine with the taste and aroma of raw materials, then you do not need to purify this distillate by chemical methods.
In the second distillation, the first fifteen to twenty percent of the absolute alcohol must be separated. This is the “head”, you can’t use it inside, it contains too many harmful and toxic impurities.
It is necessary to continue distillation until the strength of the distillate at the outlet drops below forty degrees. After that, you can stop the distillation or collect the "tails" in a separate container. Many people use this fraction to make mash.
The resulting moonshine from wine must be diluted to forty degrees and poured into bottles. Keep in glass for two to three days before use.
The output of moonshine from wine should be about a quarter liter per liter of raw materials. But due to fractional distillation, this volume will be less.
Features of wine distillation
If purchased wine is used as a raw material, then often the smell of sulfur appears during the first distillation. If this happens, then you need to collect the “head” in a separate bowl and pour it out. The volume of "heads" is taken at the rate of 15-20 milliliters for each liter of raw materials.
Making moonshine from sour wine is impractical. Due to the acetic acid contained in the sour drink, the taste of moonshine will be too sour and unpleasant. You can, of course, try to filter it or clean it with charcoal, but you won’t be able to completely get rid of this aftertaste.
Wine made from grape juice is great for making homemade cognac. Ideally, moonshine from this raw material should be kept for three to six months in an oak barrel, but in the realities of Russian city apartments, oak chips are also quite suitable.
Wine of any aging is suitable as a raw material - both young and expired. You can also use failed homemade wine, as long as it contains a sufficient amount of ethyl alcohol. With the observance of technology, wonderful noble drinks can be made from such moonshine.