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At the end of last summer, on the occasion, I got a handicraft moonshine still. Not to say, of course, that I was not at all going to acquire such a device, but I also had no desire to go buy a factory copy in a specialized store for ten thousand.
And then the case turned up: a friend was sorting out old things in his grandfather’s garage. And among these things there was a long-forgotten distiller. A friend was going to hand it over for scrap, but I was at the right time in the right place and became the new happy owner of this miracle of technology.
This story was sent by our subscriber Dmitry Afanasyevich.
What I was going to do with a moonshine still
The question in the title, of course, is strange, but nevertheless, my goal when buying the device was quite definite. The fact is that I have been making homemade wine for quite a long time.
During the production process, I always have a large amount of pomace, which I used to just throw away reluctantly. But in these same pomace, so much sugar, live wine yeast, and, most importantly, so much grape flavor and aroma, which more practical winemakers use to make chacha, is wasted in vain!
Actually, this drink is called chacha in Russia and the southern republics of the former USSR, and, for example, in Serbia, exactly the same technology drink will be called rakia, in Turkey – crayfish. But for us it is not so important, we will cook chacha.
What ingredients and equipment will be required
As I already wrote, chacha is made from grape pomace. In addition to them, the ingredients will require water and sugar. Sugar can be omitted, but then the amount of the final product will be quite modest.
I squeezed three buckets of Lydia grapes. He made wine from the juice, and put the resulting amount of pulp into a plastic thirty-liter can. I poured about 25 liters of water into the can, poured five kilograms of granulated sugar and put it all in a dark and warm place.
Ready mash.
My moonshine still consists of three parts:
- Distillation cube, made of a milk can, with a volume of 20 liters.
- Sukhoparnik from one and a half liter jars.
- The cooler, which is a copper coil soldered into a stainless steel body. The housing has two openings for supplying and discharging cooling water.
Initially, there was no steamer in the distiller, but I decided to add it in order to increase the fortress in the final drink.
The cooking process
Braga played the next day after I mixed the sugar, water and extracts in one container. Wild wine yeast is not very active, so the result of fermentation had to wait three months.
About twice a week I stirred the contents of the can to prevent souring. I did not install a water seal, instead I closed the lid of the mash tank tightly enough, leaving a small gap to bleed excess pressure.
After the end of fermentation, the mash became transparent, all solid particles precipitated or floated freely on the surface. It tasted completely dry, which means that all the sugar has turned into alcohol. Alcohol is very felt in the mouth.
The resulting semi-finished product is filtered through a colander and filled with a distillation cube by two-thirds of the volume. We assemble the moonshine still and begin to heat the mash. I use a gas stove for this.
Selection of the “body” of Chachi.
Alcohol in the cube will begin to evaporate and, after passing through the cooler, condense, reaching a strength at the outlet at the beginning of selection up to 75%. I collect the first 250 milliliters separately – these are “heads” consisting of various extremely toxic substances. Then follows the selection of the chacha itself, which I stop when the outgoing distillate stops igniting in the spoon from the match.
Alcohol content at the level of 57%.
What result did I get
As a result, I got about two and a half liters of the finished product with a strength of 57-58%. The smell turned out to be so delicately fruity, but I think that it has not fully opened up yet.
The taste of chacha turned out to be completely different from vodka, moonshine, or even the “chacha” sold in the Black Sea resorts. The drink does not cause any unpleasant reflexes, despite the high alcohol content.
There is a fruity aftertaste, but I think the taste content of the drink will change.
Many distillers also produce a second distillation, the resulting chacha, but I am already pleased with the result. What do you think, is it worth re-distilling the drink? Will the taste of chacha worsen from this?
Dear readers, remember that alcohol abuse harms your body. Take care of yourself!