- Drink: Whiskey
- How to serve: cold
- Main ingredients: moonshine, berries, oak bark, barley
- Cooking time: over a month
- Strength: over 45°
To make whiskey, I needed 22 liters of water – 6 kg of barley and 200 g of pressed yeast. I used 2 g of potassium permanganate to disinfect seeds, but this is an optional step.
Important! For the preparation of moonshine, it is better to choose alcohol yeast.
It is necessary to have the appropriate containers available: a container for preparing the starter, a pot for preparing the wort and a container for mash with a water seal.
You will also need an oak barrel, I had a Hungarian oak at home. Depending on the desired final taste, you need to select a barrel from a certain type of wood, but I took advantage of what I already have.
The cooking process
First you need to make sourdough or malt. To do this, I thoroughly washed all the barley. There should be no debris, dirt and spoiled grains in the water. Conducted disinfection.
To do this, I used a weak solution of potassium permanganate, poured grain into it and left it for 3 hours. Then I washed the barley again and removed the debris that still remained.
I put the barley in a plastic container, with a layer of 3 cm, covered it with gauze and put it in a dark place where the temperature is + 15 ° C … + 17 ° C. The first sprouts appeared after 2 days, but for the germination of all seeds, we had to wait another 4 days. All these days I sprayed the barley so that the gauze did not remain dry.
Making mash
The sprouted malt was dried in the oven. Temperature range from 75 to 80 degrees. This took about 40-50 minutes. After that, the raw materials were ground almost to the state of flour. The resulting mixture was loaded into a saucepan and filled with water.
Important! The water temperature must be at least 50°C. It is better to choose a pan with a thick bottom.
He heated the future malt to 65 degrees and boiled for 30 minutes on a quiet fire. Then the wort was quickly cooled. He filled the tub with cold water and lowered the pan into it. I waited until the wort cooled down to 25°C.
And the last stage – poured the cooled mixture into a fermentation tank, covered it with a water seal and put it in a dark place. Literally after 1,5 weeks, the mash was already ready.
In the process of cooking in a saucepan, a mixture of approximately this consistency should be obtained.
Distillation
As soon as the mash came up, I cleaned it of sediment and drove it through the moonshine 2 times. I did the first distillation as completely as possible, while alcohol was felt.
It turned out about 2 liters of raw with a strength of 40 degrees. Diluted with water to a strength of 20% for the second distillation.
First, I separated the head part, which is about 100 ml, put it in a separate bowl. Then he slightly increased the heating temperature and expelled the moonshine until the fortress dropped to 40 degrees. Selected tails in a separate container.
I diluted the resulting alcohol with water to 50% and left it for 4 months in an oak barrel. Naturally, it takes more time to get the real aroma of whiskey, but the drink turned out to be too tasty even after 1 month, so gradually there was less and less whiskey in the barrel.
What will be the result
The result was a very tasty drink with a strength of 45%, the degrees after insisting in a barrel fall. The taste is a bit dry, even my wife liked it. The smell is characteristic, of course, due to storage in an oak barrel.
I confess that the drink was tried throughout all 4 months, the taste and smell constantly became more saturated. I have a barrel of Hungarian oak, so there were light notes of chocolate and pepper. I think if you store it longer, then the whiskey will turn out to be almost indistinguishable from the real thing.
At cost, the ingredients cost me a penny. I bought only 6 kg of barley at a price of 69 rubles. Yeast bought “Intoxicating”, for 200 g gave 350 rubles. Everything else: I had a container, a barrel and a moonshine still.
From 22 liters of water and 6 kg of seeds, I got almost 3 liters of moonshine with a strength of 40 degrees. Not much, but it was a trial batch. Before dilution, respectively, approximately 1,5 liters of pervak were obtained.