I decided to continue the theme of brandy, namely the processing of winemaking waste. In the last article, we looked at what grappa is and how to drink it correctly, but today you will learn how homemade chacha, the eminent Georgian brandy from all the same grape pomace, is prepared. By the way, I walked a little on the Web, so to speak, with an intellectual crusade and found out that brandy from grape pomace has a lot more analogues than it might seem at first glance.
Grappa is prepared in Italy, chacha in Georgia, Pisco in Peru and Chile, Oruhu in the northwestern part of Spain, rakia in the Balkans, Bagaseira in Portugal, and Törkölypálinka in Hungary. I am sure that this is not the whole list of brandies of this type. All the same, the essence is the same – a strong alcoholic drink obtained by distilling fermented grape pomace.
For the first time I tried a Georgian drink in the Crimea, although it was not a home-made chacha, but a factory one, with a strength of about 60%, but it was drunk with a bang. In general, chacha is a Georgian alcoholic drink with a strength of 55-70%, is nothing more than grape brandy. Traditionally, it is made from grape cake, which is called “chacha” in Georgia.
At home, the drink is prepared as follows: the pomace remaining after the production of wine is placed in kvevri (ceramic vessels like amphoras, but without handles) for the whole winter, and in the spring, when the mash has completely fermented, the contents are distilled in special stills. Braga is poured into a large copper cauldron, which is closed with a lid with a spout, the gaps are smeared with earth and soot. A copper pipe (similar to a coil) is attached to the spout of the lid, which is passed through a container of cold water, these connections are smeared with cornmeal dough. Firewood is placed under the cauldron, and the distillation of chacha begins.
Qvevri are buried in the ground and serve as part of the wine cellar. Grape cake is simply poured into them and the mash ripens there.
In different regions of Georgia, the drink is prepared in different ways. In the west of the country, where there are not so many vineyards, chacha is made by double distillation. In Guria and Samegrelo, chacha is distilled three times; in Kakheti and Kartli, where grapes are measured and unmeasured, grape pomace is distilled only once – double distillation is considered a waste of time here. As a rule, distillation is crushed, that is, divided into fractions: the head and tail are separated, which are then added to the next batch of mash before distillation. In general, everything, as with noble whiskey.
The middle fraction, that is, the heart, is aged in barrels, where the drink becomes softer, fragrant and fragrant. Barrels, as a rule, are made of mulberry wood, sometimes partitions of walnuts are used for infusion, as well as various plants – they make delicious, healing tinctures.
Museum exhibit.
Cooking chacha at home
If you want to taste real, Georgian chacha, then try to get its authentic counterpart, and not modern surrogates. After the embargo on wine by Russia, things in wine-growing Georgia went very badly, and a large amount of wine products formed in the warehouses. The wine could turn sour, and many producers distilled it into cognac spirit, bottled it and called it chacha, but the drink is not like that.
According to experts, the best chacha is produced by the company “Khokhbis Tsremlebi” (“Tears of a Pheasant”). Another excellent product is Chacha Platinum and Chacha Okro (Chacha Gold) of Askaneli Dzmebi (Askaneli Brothers), as well as the products of Telavis Gvinis Marani (Telavi Wine Cellar), which produces as many as three types of chacha from Chardonnay, Rkatsiteli and Saperavi grape varieties.
Almost a museum piece, which can often be found in the media.
But it is better to cook chacha at home. For mash, we need (the bookmark is taken as an example and may vary depending on the number of pomace):
- 10 kg of grape cake;
- 30 liters of clean water (can be boiled);
- 5 kg of sugar;
- 100 g alcohol yeast.
Cake, as you understand, is obtained as a result of making homemade wine. You can also roll the squeezed grape juice into jars and leave it for the kids for the winter. I would recommend using a light pressing so that at least 20-30% of the juice remains in the cake. For mash, we need a 50-liter container, glass or enameled.
Then we do everything according to the recipe:
- Pour the pomace into a container and add sugar with dry yeast there.
- Pour water, but only warm, up to 35 degrees, so that the yeast does not die.
- Mix everything well and cover with a lid. In this state, the liquid should ferment for 1-2 weeks until complete fermentation (until bubbles cease to stand out). A couple of times a day, the mash needs to be mixed.
- The resulting mash must be carefully filtered so that there is no pulp left in it – it can burn and transfer unpleasant aromas and taste to the drink. Pour the strained mash into the moonshine and distill completely, without crushing.
- The resulting alcohol is distilled again, this time with crushing into “heads” and “tails”. The original product is diluted to the desired strength and bottled.
Another design of the moonshine still for chacha. The distillation cube practically does not change in all variants.
I recommend trying the second recipe, without yeast. Braga ferments longer, but the risks are less – the final product will not have a 100% yeast flavor. For this we need:
- 15 kg of unripe grapes (Isabella is ideal in our latitudes);
- 5 liters of water first and then 40 liters;
- 8 kg of sugar.
You need to prepare in two stages:
1. Do not wash the grapes!!! This is very important, as there will be a white coating on its surface – “wild” wine yeast. Together with the branches, we crush the grapes and pour them into a large enameled container (we press well so that all the berries are crushed). Next, add 5 liters of settled and filtered water to the wort and close the container with gauze. We put it in a warm place and wait 3-4 days.
When a “cap” of foam rises in the mash, squeeze it through a colander or gauze, and return the cake back to the container. Add 40 liters of water and 8 kg of sugar there, close the lid and put in a warm place. We leave the second mash until it ferments completely, and be sure to mix it 3-4 times a day. It is recommended to taste the mash so that it does not turn sour. If bitterness or unusual acidity appears in the taste, then it’s time to start distillation.
2. We make the first stage from mash on cake without crushing. Distillation should be carried out on low heat or in a water bath (steam is better and safer), the cake can be collected in gauze and hung inside the distillation vessel. After pasture, about 10-12 liters of alcohol will be obtained. Add another 10 liters of water to it and distill a second time. This time we cut off the head part (about 300 ml), take away the whole “body” and some “tails” (more about the distillation process here). At the output we get 5-6 liters of strong chacha (about 80 degrees). Dilute and bottle; if possible, we age in oak or teak barrels.
You can also make homemade chacha directly with grape juice, but it will no longer be chacha, but cognac spirit, which, after aging in the sides, will turn into a noble drink. In any case, you cannot cook real chacha at home, because this requires special equipment (although not complicated, but with its own specifics), as well as special grape varieties and technology that only Georgians know.
But the beauty of making chacha at home is that you can not only control its quality, but also experiment, do everything to make the drink as tasty and healthy as possible.