Cognac at home. Video recipe
In countries with a long history of winemaking, concepts such as “wine”, “wine drink”, “vodka”, “cognac”, “cognac spirit” have a very clear legislative definition. Russia is no exception. Only a drink that has been aged in an oak barrel for at least two years and meets the standards of the national alcohol classifier is recognized as cognac in our country.
In world practice, the attitude to alcohol is ambivalent. Some countries do not see the difference, for example, between cognac and brandy, while others (most often these are countries that produce alcohol) rigidly separate concepts. For example, in France, only a drink made from white grapes grown in the Poitou-Charente region can be called cognac. After harvesting, the berry is squeezed out and sent for fermentation for a period of three weeks, after which the resulting wine undergoes a distillation procedure, becoming cognac alcohol, which can be called cognac only after several years of aging in oak barrels with mandatory draining at least twice.
It is almost impossible to make real cognac at home, but there are methods that will allow you to get a drink that is no worse in taste and properties than French cognac.
You will need: – alcohol 5 liters, – bottled water, 10 liters, – glucose, – sugar, 1 kg, – activated carbon, – a household hydrometer.
Dissolve glucose in a liter of water (usually sold in packs of 50 grams at the pharmacy) and add sugar. Stir and bring to a boil. Carefully remove the resulting foam, and cool the resulting rather thick solution.
Choose bottled water with a minimum amount of salt in the composition
Pour the prepared solution into a bottle of water. Using a hydrometer, measure the density of the alcohol and, using the table, dilute it with the purchased water. Rather, pour the required amount of alcohol into the prepared water. It is believed that to obtain a 50-degree solution, it is necessary to take water and alcohol in a ratio of 1,3: 1. Do not interfere with the liquid, when alcohol enters the water, a chemical reaction begins, the solution may become cloudy – this is normal.
Leave the liquid for up to two days in a dark place. Then throw 10 tablets of activated carbon into the solution (one tablet per liter), and after two hours strain through rolled gauze. Pour the resulting alcohol solution into barrels and close tightly. After a week, add to the liquid: – black leaf tea without aromas (2 tablespoons), – bay leaf, – peppercorns (you can white, fragrant, pieces 7-10), – 2 tablespoons of sugar and a little vanillin.
To enhance the taste, sugar can be pre-burned
Close and stir. Insist the liquid for three weeks, then filter, seal in barrels and keep in a dark, cool place for at least two months.
If you are a happy owner of a harvest of ripe white grapes, mash 5 kg of berries in a bowl, cover and leave to ferment in a warm place for a day, then distill the mass. For cognac, you need to take not the first and not the last fraction, but the middle, purest one. You need to distill twice.
Pour no more than a glass of sugar into the finished solution (and it is better to do without it), pour everything into oak barrels and leave for a couple of months. During this time, a partial oxidation of alcohol will occur, and the wood will give up its tannins. After two months, the brandy must be filtered and closed again in barrels for six months, then poured into a glass container and cooled at minus 10 degrees for a couple of weeks. The liquid will begin to clear quickly. Leave the cognac in a wet cellar for a year and a half, then you can start tasting.