Chemical purification of raw alcohol. Chemical purification refers to the treatment of the SS with various chemical reagents in order to neutralize some of the impurities present in the distillate after the first distillation.
This technology came to us directly from distilleries. The technique is based on the saponification of an alcohol solution with alkali (soda ash or caustic soda), which reacts with acids, neutralizing them, and the subsequent neutralization of the alkaline medium with potassium permanganate (potassium permanganate).
The result: an insoluble flake residue containing a certain proportion of the “stinky” and “harmful” impurities from the SS.
On practice! The technique was developed on the basis of the information presented in the book “Production of alcoholic beverages”, Dorosh A.K., Lysenko V.S. For 1 liter of absolute alcohol in SS, you need to take 4 g of soda ash, 0,4 g of potassium permanganate and 2 g of caustic soda (from the forum: for 10 liters of 40% distillate, you need to take 2 tsp of soda ash, 1 / 3-1 / 2 tsp potassium permanganate, 1-1,5 tsp caustic soda).
Cleaning method: soda ash (sodium carbonate, Na2CO3) is dissolved in 200 ml of boiled water and poured with stirring into the SS, potassium permanganate (potassium permanganate, KMnO4), also dissolved in water, and after 15-20 minutes – caustic soda (sodium hydroxide, caustic soda, NaOH) dissolved in a glass of water.
After 15-20 hours of settling, the SS is drained from the formed precipitate and is necessarily subjected to a second fractional distillation).
Chemical cleaning from Western colleagues: for 1 liter of 50% SS, add 1 g of caustic soda dissolved in a glass of water. Wait 2 to 12 hours with occasional stirring. Do a pH test to make sure the medium is very alkaline (8-14pH). If everything is in order, add as much potassium permanganate by weight as sodium hydroxide was added (we will first dissolve potassium permanganate in water).
After that, wait 15-20 hours until precipitation occurs. Then remove the SS from the sediment and distill. As an oxidizing agent, potassium permanganate can be replaced with 30% hydrogen peroxide (do not ask for proportions, I did not find an adequate manual).
Local output: chemical cleaning, of course, is an effective means of improving moonshine, and the Dorosh-Lysenko method described above has been tested by hundreds of experienced moonshiners.
But recently, especially with the development of the distiller’s technical equipment, more and more practitioners refuse it – it is difficult to calculate the required amount of chemicals for a particular SS without preliminary laboratory analysis. There is only one conclusion that can be drawn here: if you are looking for a ready-made recipe for the chemical purification of moonshine, then this cannot exist in nature, and blindly following the instructions is more likely to worsen the quality of the distillate than improve it and, in the end, can harm the health of drinkers.
For greater clarity and clarity of the entire technology, and to clarify the intricacies of the procedure, watch the video on how to properly clean moonshine with baking soda: