Many moonshiners sincerely believe that the easiest and cheapest way to make brew for moonshine is the classic old-fashioned recipe “sugar, yeast and water.”
Perhaps, in the winter, I would agree with them, but in the summer there is another, no less budgetary way, only the quality of the product at the output will noticeably differ for the better.
Recently my wife and I bought a cottage with a fairly large garden. Mulberry trees gave us the most inconvenience, when the berries fall on a white car and leave stains that are not so easily washed off.
However, I found a use for these berries. I can only say that I am very pleased with the result.
The story was shared by my subscriber Daniel.
The benefits of mulberry mash
Using the fruits of the mulberry tree for the preparation of mash, I immediately solved several acute issues that often bother any moonshiner: a large amount of the necessary raw materials, its availability and cost. Mulberry has a lot of advantages:
- If you have a tree nearby, then there will be many, many, unbelievably many fruits.
- If not, then buying berries is not difficult. In my city, grandmothers often sell them near the metro, and they cost mere pennies.
- For the preparation of mulberry mash, even yeast is not needed.
As I understood later, mulberry mash is the most budget option that you can think of. And, most interestingly, moonshine from such mash is significantly different from what can be obtained from sugar.
Mash preparation
Since I have my own tree, all I had to do was pick the berries. Naturally, I was not going to climb trees, so I did the following: I just drove the car out of the yard, and laid a 3×4 oilcloth under the tree for a day.
The quality of the berries themselves was of little interest to me, so the beaten, rotten, bitten by wasps fruits completely suited me.
During the day, a total of almost 20 kg of berries attacked the oilcloth, this is due to how many of these fruits there are on one tree. Berries often fall, this is greatly facilitated by the birds that “graze” on the trees.
Berries should never be washed! Otherwise, the natural yeast will be washed off.
After collecting the berries, I placed some of them in a 20-liter bucket. I didn’t weigh it, but I loaded the bucket with about a third, about 7 liters. Then I simply filled the whole thing with water and covered it with a sealed lid with a pre-installed water seal.
Fermentation
Many moonshiners prefer to add sugar to increase the amount of alcohol in their product, others add yeast to speed up the fermentation process. I don’t do either.
Sugar can simply spoil the product, and then there will be no sense from the mulberry. At the output, we get ordinary sugar mash, only purple.
Yeast, in my opinion, is not needed at all, since there is enough natural yeast on the surface of the berries, and I have nowhere to rush.
I did not stir the mash and did not open the lid, despite the recommendations of many “experts”
Braga ferments for about two weeks at room temperature. It should also be taken into account that a high layer of foam rises during the fermentation process, so it is necessary to leave a small air gap between the mash and the container lid, otherwise the foam will begin to flow from the water seal.
Race and result
I distill this mash a little differently, not like sugar. It’s all about the tails: if the tails must be completely removed when distilling sugar mash, then there is one important nuance with mulberry. Tails are not only a source of fusel oils, but also the original aroma of mash.
I perform the first haul in a classic way, carefully selecting heads and tails. The heads go to kindling the brazier, while the tails are drained into a separate container. Next, the mash is distilled again, and again. It turns out moonshine of a decent degree of purification without any foreign odors.
Then we play with tails. The tail fractions obtained from the first stage must be re-distilled.
And add the resulting purified rectificate to the final drink. It turns out a very interesting homemade vodka, with a light berry aroma. And very cheap. What recipes for the most budget drinks do you know?