Due to their low sugar content, carrots are not a traditional raw material for moonshiners. But if you wish, you can really get a distillate of good quality from this vegetable by adding sugar. We will consider two methods for making carrot mash. In the first case, squeezed juice is used, in the second, all pre-cooked pulp ferments.
Carrot mash requires ripe root crops of any variety, you can use small and chopped carrots that are not suitable for storage. Damaged, rotten and moldy parts should be removed so as not to impair the taste.
Ingredients:
- carrots – 25 kg;
- yeast – 300 grams pressed or 60 grams dry;
- sugar – 1-3 kg (optional);
- water – 2 liters and another 4 liters for each kilogram of sugar.
The average sugar content in carrots is 3-5%. This means that to obtain 1 liter of pure carrot moonshine with a strength of 40 degrees, a minimum of 20 kg of raw materials is required. Therefore, to increase the yield, I advise you to add beet sugar. According to the proportions in the recipe, up to 5 liters of distillate (40%) will turn out.
It is not advisable to make carrot moonshine without yeast (wild or wine), it will only increase the fermentation time and will not affect the organoleptic properties of the drink. The introduction of dry baker’s or alcohol yeast is the best option.
Carrot brew recipe
1. Wash the carrots well, cut into pieces.
2. Squeeze out the juice.
If a juicer is not available, an alternative is to put the pieces in a saucepan, fill to the top with water (the amount depends on the cooking container), boil and boil until the carrots are soft. Then mash the pulp to a puree state.
3. Add sugar to the juice, mix. Pour the resulting wort into a fermentation vessel, filling no more than 75% of the volume.
In the case of boiling carrots, add sugar to the puree, mix, then cool to room temperature and pour into a fermentation container. If the mass is thick, add more water.
4. Dilute the yeast according to the instructions on the label and add to the wort at a temperature below 30°C. Mix.
5. Install a water seal or a medical glove with a hole in the finger on the neck of the container (made with a needle). Check the tightness of the structure.
6. Move the bottle to a dark room with a temperature of 18-27°C. After 5-12 days, the water seal will stop emitting gas (the glove will deflate), the mash will brighten and become bitter in taste, sweetness will disappear, sediment will appear at the bottom. This means that you can start the distillation.
Getting moonshine from carrots
7. Filter the mash through cheesecloth and squeeze out the pulp. This is very important if the carrots were boiled and not juiced. Without filtration, the remaining pulp will burn during distillation, spoiling the taste.
8. Overtake the mash for the first time without separation into fractions. Collect distillate until the strength in the stream falls below 35%. Measure the total strength of the output, determine the amount of absolute alcohol (multiply the volume by the percentage of strength, then divide by 100).
9. Dilute the resulting distillate with water up to 18-20% (so that the apparatus does not explode during distillation) and overtake again.
10. The first 12-15% of the yield from the amount of absolute alcohol should be collected separately and used only for technical needs. This is a harmful fraction that should not be drunk.
11. Select the main product until the fortress in the jet drops below 40% (stops burning in the spoon).
12. Dilute the resulting carrot moonshine with water up to 40-45% and keep for 2-3 days in a dark, cool place to stabilize the taste.
