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The best drink for a man is cognac! I began to understand cognacs a long time ago and was sure that French cognacs are the best, and especially Courvoisier (Courvoisier, from 3614 rubles per bottle).
I tried all exposure options:
- VS;
- VSOP;
- XO;
- Extra Old.
But the cost of the last cognacs in the list reaches 10 Euros per bottle. And on the forums of moonshiners, people claim that their cognac turns out no worse, and if everything is done correctly, it is even better than the French original.
Story from my subscriber Artem.
Why do we need oak barrels
To get my own cognac, I needed to buy oak barrels. It is known that cognacs and brandy are infused for years in special oak barrels.
During the storage of cognac distillates in such containers, various complex sugars and tannins (tannins) pass into the liquid. In this case, the distillates acquire a brown tint.
The so-called young barrels are not appreciated by winemakers, because at first they release large volumes of tannins and the drink acquires the taste of an ordinary tree. This taste even received a special name “plinth”.
Of course, all barrels are “young” at some point – this is the law of nature. However, even the quality of a young tree can be influenced. After the cooper has made a barrel, it must be prepared in a special way so that it performs its function better when storing and aging alcohol.
How to buy the right oak barrel
There are several options for purchasing barrels:
- directly from a private master, cooper;
- at the cooperage plant;
- in a specialized store.
When buying a barrel, you need to understand what kind of oak it is made of. The most common and well-known species of oak are:
- French;
- American;
- German;
- Caucasian and others.
I bought my first barrel in a simple specialized store. As it turned out later, buying such barrels is very dangerous because, firstly, they almost always leak, and secondly, they often have to be brought to mind.
Thirdly, the wood from which they are made is not known how it was aged, how the staves were cut (the boards from which the barrels are made), whether they were burned correctly from the inside.
All these problems can be avoided by buying a barrel directly from the manufacturer, but they do not like to work with private traders who buy one or two 5-liter barrels.
I chose the most correct option for purchasing a barrel – directly from the cooper. Of course, I rummaged through many forums on the Internet until I found a man in Taganrog who makes barrels from local rock oak, and who has real reviews for many years on several forums.
Correctly sawn riveting
Yes, its barrels are expensive, but the service life of a small barrel can be up to 20 years, and over time, the drink in it only gets better.
So, I bought three 10-liter barrels. In the store they cost 5 rubles, for my exclusive copies I paid 000 rubles for a 7-liter barrel plus delivery of 000 rubles.
Barrel preparation
The first thing I did was evaluate the assembly of the barrels. To do this, you need to carefully examine all the staves on the barrels, how the wood fibers are located, how the bottom staves are made, how tightly the staves are fitted to each other, whether the hoops are correctly fitted.
In short, when viewed from the fibers, you can see whether the barrels are assembled from straight staves and bent on special machines, or they are immediately sawn into the shape of a barrel.
After checking the rivets, for two weeks I poured water from the tap to a full barrel and changed it daily.
Properly placed hoops
After soaking it with tap water, I prepared a solution of hot water with soda at the rate of a tablespoon per liter of water. I filled the barrel and left it for 4 hours, until the water cooled completely.
I then rinsed the keg several times and kept it under running water for 2 hours.
After washing, I prepared a solution consisting of 2 liters of dry red wine and, diluted to 20 degrees, 8 liters of alcohol. I kept this solution in a barrel for one week.
In order not to lose alcohol, after soaking, I used the settled liquid in a distillation column for distillation.
An important step in the preparation of the barrel, which many people miss – the first exposure
Few experts talk about it, but the first brandy obtained in a prepared barrel comes out of poor quality due to the strong release of tannins into alcohol. Therefore, the ideal option for finishing the preparation of the cask is the infusion of the first brandy for two months.
And only after such an end did I fill in the correct distillate and in 3-4 months I received the most excellent Hand Made brandy.
Evaluate the color of the brandy after the second barrel aging.
Why do you think special oak is usually used in casks, in particular “rocky” oak?