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I have always bought good alcohol in US stores or Duty Free, because I think that there are a lot of fakes in ordinary Russian stores.
The cost of a bottle of high-quality whiskey or cognac is more than 15 rubles, for such a price you can order branded bottles and pour dubious colored liquid with cognac flavor into them.
Yesterday I opened an oak cask in which I had been brewing whiskey myself. The taste turned out amazing, the purity of the drink and its smell were many times better than the elite ones.
The story was shared by blog subscriber Gregory.
Why I decided to make alcohol myself
I did not believe that Hand Made whiskey (hand-made) could be better than the factory one. I read a lot about what requirements not only manufacturers impose on themselves, but even at the level of French standards:
- harvest time;
- fermentation terms;
- composition of raw materials;
- aging time;
- conditions of detention.
My first desire was, of course, to save money. Paying 15 thousand even once a month is very expensive. I calculated the approximate cost of the necessary tools and ingredients and got:
As a result, the cost of half a liter of whiskey was to be 500 rubles, which is 30 times less than the store price. The game was worth the candle, and I began to prepare.
What ingredients are required
For different types of whiskey in different countries, different raw materials are used. Among manufacturers, there is a constant debate about which raw material is better.
Self-respecting brands will never change the raw materials from which flagship brand whiskeys are infused.
I have a few friends I know who I call “sniffers”. In fact, their nose works much better than the average person. I consulted with them and decided to make my whiskey recipe:
Once I tried to start a brew with special enzymes, but then abandoned this idea.
The cooking process
The whole process consists of several stages:
- grain preparation;
- crushing;
- digestion;
- fermentation;
- distillation;
- infusion in an oak barrel;
- blending.
After the purchase, I sifted and thoroughly washed the grain so that dirt, insects and foreign odors did not get into the wash. After that, I ground it in a meat grinder, because the yeast will not be able to process enough sugar for whole grain mash.
Then I boiled the grain for the same purpose – to make it easier for the yeast to do their job. After cooling, the infusion was poured into a large container, yeast with enzymes was added. At least two weeks, this mash must now be insisted.
After the yeast converted the sugar into alcohol, I poured the mash into the distillation column in the distillation mode. I did the first distillation completely, up to 99 degrees, in order to cut off only water.
Prior to the second distillation, pure water was added to make the alcohol separate more easily and to prevent the column from exploding. The degree of distillate must be below 45.
During the second distillation, I separated 10% of the “heads” (poisonous contents, including methyl alcohol) and after 97 degrees of heating – “tails” also 10 percent (especially smelly fusel oils). The result was raw alcohol with a strength of 70 degrees.
To improve the rate of return of tannins in an oak barrel, I overtook sugar mash through the same column, but already in the rectification mode, getting an alcohol of 96,5 degrees.
I drained both of these liquids, diluted them with distilled water to 65 degrees and poured them into a barrel.
What result did I get
I bought a new barrel, and according to the rules, it cannot be used for the first time with alcohol for more than three months, because at first the tannins from the oak are released in large quantities and the product can be spoiled.
As a result, after 3 months I began to check the contents of the barrel. The drink turned out to be tart, the perfect color, almost without fuselage.
The contents of the barrel were poured into a jar
Having received such beauty, I envied myself!
He began blending, mixing with distilled water to the desired degree. And then I got an incident:
- a mixture with a strength below 45 degrees cloudy;
- the mixture with a strength of 47 degrees remained transparent.
Blended whiskey 40 degrees
Luckily, the cloudiness didn’t affect the taste of the whiskey. But I left half of the blend at 47 degrees to have a light drink.
Thus, I received a product that is much tastier than store varieties with a price of 5-6 thousand rubles. For the first time, the taste of the drink, of course, was a little worse than the most expensive whiskeys, but “it’s a start.”
Why do you think whiskey becomes cloudy with a difference of only 2-3 degrees?