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The opening of the fishing season was approaching with the obligatory preparation of fish soup and shish kebab. Usually, my godfather San Sanych and I do not miss such events. The night before, I went to him to discuss the details of the upcoming fishing trip.
There were no questions about gear and baits. The inflatable boat, which had lain in the attic all winter, was also checked. The only question left open was alcohol for evening gatherings in front of the fire.
There was not much time, and I decided to try to do everything in an accelerated version. Looking ahead, I will say that my comrades appreciated my work and were a little shocked by the set of components and deadlines.
The story was sent by my subscriber Sergey.
How do I usually do
Make your own moonshine? Easy. Cooking time – a record day! Add dried fruits – we get an exquisite “whiskey”!
For all this, you do not need to have academic knowledge and buy expensive equipment. Separately, I would like to note that almost anyone can make moonshine, you only need desire.
Before making moonshine in an accelerated mode, I tried many recipes:
- classic “sugar” – a rather sharp product is obtained at the output);
- grain moonshine – many nuances due to which you can screw up the result;
- “fruit and berry mix” – the mash worked for quite some time, despite the fact that it was in the greenhouse;
- moonshine made from expired kvass – despite the fact that kvass was a natural fermented kvass, the process was rather sluggish, and the quality of the drink was not very good.
No supernatural ingredients are needed to prepare our miracle drink. All can be found in any grocery store.
So, let’s begin.
Ingredients
As I mentioned above, everything you need for cooking can be purchased at any grocery store. Even in the outback it will not be difficult to find the right ingredients in the general store.
To knead the mash, we need:
- dry peas, 1 kg – 30 rubles;
- cow’s milk, 1 liter – 60 rubles;
- sugar, 5 kg – 150 rubles;
- pressed yeast, 500 g – 80 rubles;
- clean drinking water in the amount of 15 liters – free of charge.
As for the cost of everything that we need, it is relatively low. Of course, if you knead the mash from vegetables and fruits, you can reduce the cost of the final product, but today we put the speed of production at the forefront.
How to expel moonshine in haste
As a basis for my equipment, I took a bucket from a milking machine. The obvious advantage of using it, rather than a bucket with a lid or an ordinary can, was the presence of a finished hole with a tube in the upper closing part.
I didn’t have to do anything with nuts and drills to remove vapors for condensation from our “pressure cooker”.
What does this miracle look like?
The second important component of our apparatus is the so-called refrigerator. It is in it that the vapors condense and at the exit from it we get the finished drink. There are many schemes for manufacturing a spiral or coil for vapor cooling.
But our task is to do it quickly and, preferably, from what is at hand. I did not look for metal tubes, so that later I could bend them and come up with adapters for all connections.
The remnants of a metal-plastic tube, which remained after the repair, and a 20-liter bucket of paint came to the rescue.
The tube bends by hand without problems, the diameter of the turns is selected based on the available bucket. This is how my fridge looks like.
Non-flowing
Flowing
The process of kneading and preparing mash
So we got to the most interesting: the accelerated preparation of mash.
You should start with water. Gradually stirring, you need to completely dissolve our yeast in 15 liters of water. Water should be slightly warm, no more than 30 ° C.
If the water is cold, this will significantly complicate the process of dissolving the yeast, and if you stir in hot water, the yeast itself may die and the miracle will not happen.
After dissolving the yeast, you need to add the rest of the ingredients one by one. The sequence doesn’t matter anymore. After that, you need to mix everything thoroughly and leave the mash to work.
Based on personal experience, I will say that this mash works a little less than a day. In theory, the process can be reduced even to 2 hours, but for this you need to constantly stir our semi-finished product, for which an activator-type washing machine is ideal.
Not everyone can afford to have such a machine on the farm, because automatic washing machines have long supplanted obsolete activator ones.
You can check the readiness of the mash with a match. During life, yeast processes mash with the release of carbon dioxide. If the brought match goes out, then the fermentation process is not yet completed.
Separately, it is worth mentioning that dishes for mash should be chosen with a margin in volume. My mistake was that there was not much free space left in the can, and I closed the lid so that nothing got inside.
For ventilation, I relied on a hole in the lid. How wrong I was. The fermentation process was so active that a decent puddle formed around my can on the floor.
Distillation of the finished product
After waiting for all the processes inside the bucket to calm down, and it does not explode (I doubt that this could happen, but the wash worked very actively), you can begin the forcing process.
We collect our “miracle machine”. Using a piece of hose and fittings, we connect a pre-prepared coil to the outlet from the can. We lower it into the bucket and put the other end into the hole at the base of the bucket, sealing this place to prevent water leakage.
By the way, I made the “refrigerator” flowless. What does it mean? With this design, as the water heats up, it needs to be changed, and in the flow-through “refrigerator” everything happens by connecting the inlet and outlet for running water from the tap.
And here is the moment of truth. We light the gas, pour water into the bucket and wait for our semi-finished product to boil. After boiling, the steam, passing in a spiral, condenses and flows into the prepared container.
What happened as a result
Separately, I want to talk about the fractions of the finished product, their strength and quantity. In total, out of almost 20 liters of mash, I got about 3 liters of moonshine. Why so few? I explain.
The first 300 grams that came out are called “head” or “head”. They are the strongest, the alcohol content in them is more than 60%, but the content of fusel oils in them is the highest. Next comes the faction that we leave.
Its strength ranges from 40-50% alcohol, fusel oils are an order of magnitude smaller than in the first fraction. Well, the last faction that we get, it is significantly inferior in strength to the first two.
It can be used to adjust the strength of the main product, or you can leave it together with the “head” for the next batch of mash and pour it in before forcing.
Despite the short preparation time, at the end we got a product with an acceptable strength, astringent taste, which did not burn the mouth when consumed.
Peas were probably the key component influencing speed. There were almost no whole peas left in the developed mash, it all went to support the fermentation process.
At each stage, do not be afraid to experiment in search of the perfect balance of taste and quality. Personally, I like to insist moonshine on dried fruits later.
It acquires a beautiful, pleasant color and flavor, although in this case alcohol failed to take the maximum from the fruit. There was too little time.
Do you prefer a pure product or infused with something?