Apple chacha – homemade recipe

There must be at least one apple tree in every garden. These fruits are familiar to the inhabitants of the middle lane, and, usually, they do not feel a lack of apples. Sometimes the fruit harvest is so plentiful that the owner does not know how to use all the apples from his own garden. If the jams are already boiled, the juices are squeezed out, and the storerooms are full of fresh fruits, you can make excellent moonshine from the remaining apples, which is often called chacha or calvados.

This article will be about the recipe for apple chacha, prepared at home. Here we will consider the traditional recipe for making apple moonshine, as well as the method of making chacha from cake or other waste left after processing apples.

What is apple chai made from?

In classic recipes, they usually suggest making moonshine from beautiful, neatly chopped apples. Of course, it looks great, but the taste of a drink brewed from peel, cores or apple pomace will be the same, and the aroma can be even richer and brighter.

Absolutely any apples can be used to make apple chacha: sour, sweet, early or late, whole or spoiled, the fruits remaining after the initial processing.

How to chop apples also does not really matter. Often, the fruits are simply cut into cubes or slices of approximately the same size. If juice was prepared, take the cake left after processing. From the preparation of jams, the peel and cores with stones usually remain. By the way, it is better to take out the bones themselves, as they give more bitterness.

Opinions differ on whether apples should be washed before making chacha. Still it is better not to wash the main part of the fruit, cleaning only the dirtiest specimens with water. The fact is that there are wild yeasts on the peel of apples, which are easily washed off with water – after that, the mash will not ferment.

How to prepare apple mash

An important step in the manufacture of any moonshine is the process of making mash. Apple pomace will make an excellent mash for high-quality chacha. Such moonshine is appreciated by lovers of strong drinks for a particularly pronounced aroma and a slight aftertaste of fruit.

In order to end up with high-quality mash, and not sour turbidity, you need to adhere to the technology and observe the proportions of all products. For apple chacha you need to take:

• 30 kg of ripe apples;
• 20 L of water;
• 4 kg of sugar;
• Xnumx dry yeast.

Braga is prepared for apple chacha in several stages:

1. Apples are sorted out, rotten specimens are removed. Heavily contaminated fruits are washed with water. Then the cores with stones are removed from the fruit and cut into small pieces. Now you need to chop the apples with a blender or meat grinder so that they turn into a homogeneous puree.
2. The resulting fruit puree is transferred to a can or other container for fermentation. Add 18 liters of water there.
3. All the sugar is dissolved in two liters of water and the syrup is poured onto the rest of the products.
4. Heat a small amount of boiled water to no more than 30 degrees. Dissolve the yeast in warm water, pour it into a can and mix thoroughly.
5. The container with the mash is closed and left for 10 days in a warm place (the temperature should be more than 20 degrees). After a day, the lid is removed and the mash is mixed, lowering the apple pulp to the bottom. By this time, foam should form on the surface and the smell of fermentation should be felt. Future chacha is stirred daily.
6. After 10 days, all the pulp should sink to the bottom of the can, the mash itself becomes lighter, fermentation stops. Such a liquid is drained from the sediment and used for distillation for moonshine or drunk in this form.

There is practically no juice in the pomace, therefore, in the case of making chacha from apple pomace, the yield of the finished product will be less, with the same amount of initial ingredients. That is, cake should be taken 1,5-2 times more than fresh apples, the proportion of which is indicated in the recipe.

How to turn mash into fragrant chacha

Inexperienced moonshiners often complain about the lack of a characteristic fruity aroma and sweet aftertaste in apple chacha. To make chacha smell good, the mash is not filtered, but simply drained from the sediment. In this case, you will have to make sure that the chacha does not burn, you need to boil it over a very slow fire.

Only that chacha, which is competently divided into fractions, will be good. There are three fractions in the distillate that comes out of the moonshine: “heads”, “body” and “tails”. The highest quality chacha is the “body” of moonshine.

If apple mash was prepared according to the above recipe, the proportion of fractions will be approximately as follows:

• at the very beginning, it is necessary to drain 250 ml (glass) of “heads”. You can’t drink this liquid, it can cause poisoning of the body or a severe hangover, so the “heads” are mercilessly poured out.
• After the “heads” comes the “body” of chacha – the highest quality part of moonshine. This fraction is carefully collected in a separate container until the degree of distillate falls below 40.
• “Tails” with a strength of less than 40 degrees can not be thrown away; good owners recycle this part of moonshine from apples again.

To make a good homemade moonshine, it is enough to follow all of the above steps. But to get a real apple chacha with an excellent aroma and mild taste, you will have to work a little more.

How to improve apple chacha at home

A drink made from apples, prepared by distillation and infused in oak barrels, is called Calvados by the French. It is valued for its special softness and good strength, as well as for the light aroma of apples.

At home, apple chacha can be improved in the following ways:

1. Pour a handful of dried apples and some finely chopped fresh fruits into the moonshine. Infuse the drink for 3-5 days and overtake again. To do this, chacha is filtered and combined with three liters of water. The resulting chacha is again divided into fractions, the “heads” are poured out, only the “body” of moonshine is collected. You should get about three liters of excellent chacha, the strength of which will be 60-65%. It is not necessary to dilute chacha with water immediately, but after a few days, when the drink is saturated with fruity aroma. Dilute apple chacha with clean water until its strength is 40 degrees.

   

2. You can not dilute 60% moonshine, but turn it into Calvados. To do this, chacha is poured into oak barrels or insisted on oak pegs.
3. Chacha can be made from fresh or canned apple juice. Such moonshine will be even more fragrant and tastier than the previous one.

Whatever recipe homemade chacha is prepared for, it should turn out fragrant and light. For everything to work out, you just need to adhere to the technology and choose high-quality raw materials. Then at home it will be possible to prepare excellent alcohol, which will in no way be inferior to elite purchased drinks.