Contents
Many years ago, I went to meet my girlfriend’s parents. I was very worried. “Smotriny” took place in the country, my father was a colonel of the missile forces, my mother was the dean of the faculty of foreign languages … Then I took flowers for the ladies, cognac for my father and drove off.
It turned out to be quite nice people. They treated me to homemade pies, breathtaking borscht. And in the evening Sergey Ivanovich treated me to a delicious drink – Calvados of his own preparation.
That girl and I never got married, but I still have the recipe for that wonderful apple wine.
My good friend, and also my subscriber Vyacheslav, told me about the preparation of this aristocratic drink. I myself have tried his Calvados more than once and I can say with confidence that you, having prepared it, will not regret it!
How I decided to make moonshine from apples
The decision to use apples as a raw material for moonshine was prompted by my “innate” practicality. When I was at a dacha in the countryside, it was painful to see how negligent neighbors simply dumped excess crops into ditches and pits.
It is useless to fight against the cluttering of the village with beliefs. Then I began to pick up the surplus grown apples. No one was against it, especially if I took them out myself.
As a result, I turned out to have a lot, if not excellent, but still quite suitable raw materials for moonshine.
What apples to use for moonshine
Of course, the most delicious drink will turn out if you make it from the sweetest and ripest fruits. But these were not always given. Yes, and those that I grew on my site, I wanted to eat, and not turn them into a “burda”.
It turned out that “padanki” – fruits that fell from trees, are quite suitable for this. They, as a rule, have already reached technical ripeness, gained the required amount of sugars and were quite juicy.
The main task is to prevent long lying on the ground or in the grass. Therefore, I carried out my raids on the neighbors’ plots quite often.
The collected apples need to be sorted out, selecting the strongest ones.
Important. If there is rot, it must be cut off. But I categorically do not recommend washing the fruits, since their surface contains many spores of wine yeast. Of course, not as much as on grapes, but quite enough to start fermentation.
Tails-sticks and seeds from apples must be removed. Their presence in mash can greatly spoil the taste of the drink.
How to put the mash and overtake it correctly
Moonshine from apples, depending on their quality and availability, can be made in three ways:
- Squeeze the juice, ferment and overtake it.
- After chopping apples, make mash, which must be distilled in a special way.
- Make an ordinary yeast mash, and when distilled, give it the flavor of apples.
I will tell about each of them in more detail.
The first way: the best, which will make the perfect drink.
After squeezing the juice out of apples (only cold pressing is suitable!), place it in a container with a water seal and leave for several days to ferment at a temperature of 22-28 ° C. The result will be an excellent cider, which will simply need to be distilled twice.
At each distillation, it is necessary to separate the distillate into fractions, selecting “heads” and “tails”.
The resulting moonshine with a strength of about 60-70% vol. by itself will have a slightly yellowish color and an amazing, fresh baked apple flavor. The distillate must be diluted with clean water up to 40% vol. then the aroma will open “in full force.”
The second way: if there is no juicer
If the apples are not very juicy or there is no way to squeeze enough juice out of them, you can simply chop them on an electric grater or even a meat grinder.
I do not recommend doing this manually – the volumes are large, and the labor costs, most likely, will not pay off with the pleasure of eating “homemade Calvados”.
Having crushed apples to the consistency of a semi-liquid slurry, it is necessary to dilute it with water to a liquid state, so that later it can be filtered through gauze or a sieve.
You can add a little sugar – about 0,5 kg per half a bucket of apples. The resulting mass must be placed for fermentation under a water seal at a temperature of 22-28 ° C.
The distillation is carried out as in the first case. Due to the lower concentration, the aroma will be poorer than using the first method, but you can improve it by adding some chopped fresh apples to the wort during the second distillation.
The third way: if there are not enough apples
In this case, ordinary yeast mash is put in the following proportions:
- 1 kg of sugar;
- 5 liters of water;
- 20 g dry or 100 g live yeast.
After fermentation, during the second distillation, chopped fresh and dried apples must be added to the must. The more there are, the better the taste and aroma will be. You can add two or three cinnamon sticks. This slightly “levels” the sensations of sugar mash.
After you have distilled the mash, you need to infuse the resulting drink in a wooden barrel for two weeks. This will give color and a unique “calvados” flavor.
The result pleased
When I made my first apple moonshine, and I did it according to the second method, I was delighted with how close in its properties it turned out to be to those brandies that I bought in retail chains.
Of course, next time I made a larger batch and aged it for a month in a barrel. The result is great. The drink acquires a golden caramel color and amazing softness. Real brandy.
In the absence of a barrel, moonshine can be aged on specially prepared oak chips. Such methods are also used, but personally I prefer the barrel. It is not so saturated in color, but there is no rigidity, as from wood chips, and the true taste and aroma of a noble drink is acquired.
Excessive alcohol consumption is harmful to your health. Take care of yourself!
But that’s my personal opinion. If someone knows how else to improve the properties of the drink, write. I am happy to read!