How to drive moonshine out of beer – recipes and experience of civilized countries

Distillation of beer into moonshine will not eliminate its vices – it is foolish to expect good results from sour or expired raw materials. But distill a properly brewed, fresh, heavily hopped drink, and you’ve got a truly unique, bold, high-potent moonshine that, when properly aged in an oak cask, will become an exemplary whisky. There is no need to invent anything – in civilized countries, beer has been distilled for centuries, and every year it looks more and more like art.

Making moonshine from beer is simple, no more difficult than sugar (by the way, immediately forget about the fermentation of beer with sugar – either it won’t ferment, or it will turn out even worse). You take a sour or expired beer, air it out for about an hour to remove the foam (or add a defoamer), and then quickly distill it to dryness. It will not be superfluous to immediately select goals – the SS is often very smelly. Then you dilute the SS to 20%, fractionally distill it to 40% in a jet and … you’re done! If you’re lucky, you can drink it only after thoughtful cleaning with charcoal and preliminary insisting on something very fragrant and tasty. But more often – no luck. Then it remains to pour the fetid slurry into the scrap and try again.

We explained in a nutshell how not to do it. Let’s now think about how to do it right. And, of course, we should start with the experience of civilized countries.

Moonshine from beer in a civilized way

Believe it or not, Germans and residents of other European countries have been making moonshine from beer for several generations. Brandy bierbrand or eau de vie de bière (bierschnaps, beer schnapps can be included in the same category) is traditionally produced in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and France, usually by small breweries in collaboration with local distilleries. Beer is rarely brewed specifically for this purpose, instead the regular beer that the brewery prepares for the local market is sent to nearby distilleries or distilled locally.

Beer brandy is defined by the European Economic Community (EEC) Regulations of 2008 (No. 110/2008) as: “An alcoholic beverage obtained by direct distillation at normal pressure of fresh beer to a strength of not more than 86%, but not less than 38%, which guarantees the preservation in the distillate of the organoleptic characteristic of beer” (free translation of the author). It is forbidden to add alcohol and third-party flavors to the drink. Caramel can be added to color the distillate.

At the same time, the practice of making hopped brandy (rather, whiskey) is common not only in Europe. For a couple of decades now, the famous Japanese brewery Kiuchi has been distilling its beer. They even have a distilled version of the world famous Hitachino Nest pale ale, Hitachino Kiuchi No Shizuku (about $50 a bottle). Ale is distilled once, after which it is aged for a month in an oak barrel with coriander, hops and orange peel, and then the distillate is distilled again with the addition of a fresh portion of beer and aged for six months in oak barrels. The result: a “Genever-like” whiskey with bright aromas of hops, citrus and beer motifs.

But where serious and significant steps are being taken in the evolution of beer distillates, it is in the USA. The craft revolution is not going unnoticed. Marko Karakasevich, technologist at Charbay Artisan Distillery & Winery in California, is considered the unspoken godfather of the production of American distillates from craft beer. After experimenting with turning a classic pilsner into whiskey in 1999, six years later he took one of the most famous IPAs in the US at the time, Bear Republic’s Racer 5 IPA, and turned it into arguably the first – and by far the most famous – whiskey distilled. from an American IPA, Charbay Whiskey R5. Marco joked about this: “… if you distill something, it is concentrated ten times, so when you try to distill something really tasty, you get a concentrate of good taste …”.

To date, there are hundreds of such examples. Offhand:

• Uerige «Stickum Plus» Cognac Barrels – beer brandy of the famous German brewery Uerige, distilled from Altbier, and then aged in cognac barrels. The result: hoppy, with a bright Sauternes wine motif and an aftertaste of Asian pear.
• Uerige Stickum Plus Spatburgunder Barrel – another example from the Germans, an altbier distillate aged in a Spätburgunder barrel (from Pinot noir). A complex set of autumn spices, dill, red fruits and even some chocolate.
• New Holland Brewers Whiskey is a whiskey from the New Holland Brewery and their distillery Artisanal Spirits, made from very tasty craft beer, twice distilled in traditional copper distillers and aged in heavily charred white American oak barrels. Intense aroma of toffee, vanilla and chewy caramel. On the palate there are sweet honey notes, cocoa and milk chocolate, and in the aftertaste there are accents of spicy oak, coconut and papaya.
• Charbay «S» Hop Flavored Whiskey – Another brainchild of Marko Karakasevich, whiskey distilled from a strong black stout (8,1% alcohol) and aged in French oak barrels. Charbay “S” – aromas of coffee, malt and fresh hops; notes of caramel, vanilla and semi-sweet chocolate with hints of bitter hops. The finish is long, sweet and complex.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, because…

All whiskey starts with beer

In a basic sense, all whiskey begins its life cycle as beer. The only difference between whiskey wort and beer wort is that the former is not meant to be drunk. Wouldn’t it be logical to create a higher quality wort that can be drunk immediately, enjoying its deep taste, in order to get a better quality whiskey? No, not necessarily better, but definitely with a wider range of flavors and aromas that are not typical of whiskey in its traditional interpretation. At the moment, the limiting factor in the development of the craft beer whiskey theme in most countries, especially in the EU, is the legal definition of whiskey. It does not allow third-party flavors, in particular hops, which are legally such.

But there’s bierbrand, there’s beer schnapps, there’s even beer-distilled gin (read below), and there are dozens, if not hundreds of craft-distilled whiskeys in the US. At the same time, it should be understood that distilling beer is a blow to the pocket for the commercial sector. It is one thing to sell several thousand liters of prize IPA, which already entails a lot of money and time, and another thing is to sit on this beer for two, three, six, ten, twelve years and watch how the angels “devour” it in a cask. Profitability is down, the product is more expensive, and selling a bottle of whiskey for $75 (the average price of craft whiskey, cheaper – at a loss to the brewery) is much more difficult, especially when the price of a good scotch starts at around $30.

The moonshiner is not aware of such problems. No one gives him orders, a small barrel or oak chips allows him to deceive the angels, and motivation is fueled by a healthy desire for experiments. Actually, what stops you from cooking something unique and worthwhile, instead of distilling sour? Freebie? Well, actually!

Craft beer moonshine recipe (craft whiskey)

Well, we have already prepared traditional whiskey – interesting, authentic, informative. Creating an eau de vie from craft beer, armed with experience in the distillation of grain distillates, will be a little more difficult. The wort is enough to hop, boil and slowly ferment. Sample recipe attached:

¹ Flameout (or “0 minutes”) hopping is effectively a “hop break”, but with a shorter break between the fire being turned off and the wort cooling stage. Technically, it looks like this: after an hour of boiling, add the entire volume of hops marked “flameout”, turn off the fire and after 10-15 minutes start supplying cold water to the chiller to cool the wort. This hopping method contributes to the enrichment of the drink with hop essential oils without increasing bitterness.

² – dry hopping means adding hops to the wort at the stage of its primary or secondary fermentation. In the context of this recipe, secondary fermentation is not provided, so the hops are added to the wort 2-5 days before the end of the primary fermentation. This hopping method works roughly on the flameout principle – more hop aromatics, less IBU.

³ – for subsequent aging in a barrel, it is recommended to ferment the wort at higher temperatures, which contributes to the formation of a larger amount of third-party impurities in the drink and their further transformation into new flavor compounds. For chips or no aging, it’s best to stick with low fermentation temperatures and yeasts that produce less foreign matter, such as lager yeast (don’t worry, there are lager yeasts now that ferment easily at “ale” temperatures).

Are such experiments not for you? Then try making beer liqueur – the category is clearer, the recipes are simple, and the result is predictable.

How to cook:

Single infusion mashing malt at 64^оC for 60 minutes, cook 60 minutes. Add yeast, ferment at standard temperature. When gravity drops to 1.020, dry hop for 2-3 days until fermented dry (no more than 3-5 days). Before distillation, strain the beer from hops and degas according to the standard scheme. The first distillation should be carried out without crushing (you can take 100 ml of “heads”, it will not be superfluous), dry. Raw alcohol should be about 2,5 liters of 33% (assuming that it was originally 15 liters of 6,5% beer). Dilute the SS to 18-20% and overtake again, with careful separation into fractions. As a result, you should get about 1,2 liters of 40% moonshine with a floral aroma characteristic of hops and a slight smokiness in taste. Now you can age the distillate in a barrel or on oak chips, let it rest for a couple of months and start tasting.

In fact, any heavily hopped beer can be distilled into whiskey and expect good results. And you can enrich your experience at the expense of the experience of others. For example, insist SS before distillation on citrus zest, hops, coriander and other spices, as the Japanese do in Kiuchi. Or, the aforementioned beer gin. The guys from Rhode Island, Sons of Liberty, offered connoisseurs True Born Gin a couple of years ago, brewed with Belgian-style wheat beer. All this is distilled according to the tradition of jenever, without noticeable strengthening (not higher than 90% alcohol in the stream), and all the botany typical of gin, including juniper, is placed in a gin basket.

Boundless and fascinating world, what else can I say!

PS Required reading on the topic: Darek Bell, “Alt Whiskeys: Alternative Whiskey Recipes and Distilling Techniques for the Adventurous Craft Distiller”, 2012.