Moonshine from sugar and dry yeast

Even if offhand: 1 kg of sugar now costs 50 rubles (average for Russia) – the average yield of alcohol from this amount is approximately 0,51 liters (96%) or 1,1 liters of moonshine with a strength of 40%. I now buy alcohol for about 125 r / liter (in Russia, perhaps an order of magnitude more expensive). Savings, if you calculate in your mind, are obvious – 1 liter of sugar moonshine will cost you about 60-70 rubles. Of course, you still have to assemble or buy a high-quality moonshine still, acquire the necessary equipment, yeast and other components, but it’s still more profitable to drive a home-made product.

Therefore, I am sharing with you a time-tested recipe for moonshine on sugar, which is probably the simplest and most accessible to a beginner and not only a moonshiner. Of course, you can drive fruit moonshine, for example, calvados or chacha, here the costs are generally minimal if you have your own garden land, but it is sugar, as well as starch (grain, etc.) moonshine that is ideal for further ennobling it. Alcohol, as you understand, I take for these purposes – I prepare Becherovka, Limoncello, Peppercorns and other tinctures.

Preparation for moonshine

Before starting our moonshine brewing, I recommend taking care of the cleanliness of all equipment, especially the fermentation tank – it must be rinsed well with hot water and dried. This is very important, as the slightest impurity can ruin the final product.

As a fermentation tank, you can use whatever you like and depending on your needs (a three-liter jar, a plastic barrel or even a cistern). BUT! Do not put the mash in a galvanized dish, as long-term contact of the contents with zinc oxidizes the latter, and zinc oxides are very harmful to health. Also, do not use plastic containers that are not marked “for food”.

The easiest way to get and reasonably use milk plastic cans for 25-38 liters. Any dishes made of glass, porcelain, aluminum, stainless steel and enameled metal are also suitable.

Sahara recipe

First, of course, you need to prepare the mash. To do this, we will mix water, sugar and yeast. However, foreign microorganisms live on sugar, no matter how pure it is, so first we will prepare sugar syrup – during the boiling process, all third-party microorganisms will die.

I recommend inverting sugar syrup – breaking down sugar into glucose and fructose. The fact is that yeast first breaks down sucrose into monosaccharides (glucose, fructose, etc.) and only after that they process them into the desired ethyl alcohol, as well as carbon dioxide, as a waste product. Thus, by adding an acid or an invertase enzyme to the syrup, we will significantly speed up the fermentation process, as well as improve the organoleptic qualities of sugar mash and, as a result, the final product. Now about everything in more detail.

Calculation of the proportions of ingredients

As mentioned earlier, from 1 kg of sugar we get approximately 1,1 liters of moonshine with a strength of 40% with an error in both directions. Some moonshiners recommend increasing the amount of all ingredients by approximately 10-15%, since the actual yield of sugar moonshine, for various reasons, may differ slightly from the theoretical one.

For every 1 kg of sugar, you need to add: 4 liters of water (plus another 0,52 liters if the sugar syrup is inverted), 20 g of Saf-Levure dry yeast or 100 g of pressed yeast.

Thus, to prepare 5 liters of 40% moonshine, we need:

• Sugar – 6 kg;
• Water: 24-27,12 l;
• Dry yeast – 120 g (600 g pressed)

It is on this number that we will focus further. I also recommend downloading a small calculator for sugar mash – just enter the amount of sugar in kilograms in the yellow cell:

Download mash calculator 

Preparation of sugar syrup and its inversion

To prepare ordinary sugar syrup, you need to take water and sugar in a 1: 1 ratio, that is, 6 l: 6 kg, mix them and bring them to a temperature of 90 degrees on the stove. Boil the syrup at this temperature for about 30 minutes, stirring constantly and removing the foam. This sugar syrup can already be added to the mash, but the fermentation will be longer.

The easiest way to invert the syrup is to add citric acid to it in an amount of 0,3% to 0,8% of the amount of sugar in the syrup. Other proportions of sugar-water are also used: for 1 kg of sugar, you need to take 520 ml of water. The inversion process is as follows:

• add 3,12 kg of sugar to 6 liters of water, bring to a boil;
• add 18-48 g of citric acid;
• boil the syrup for 1,5-2 hours at a temperature of 95-100 degrees under the lid.

Water preparation and yeast activation

Ideally, the water should be perfectly clear, without taste or smell. If your tap water is not chlorinated and meets all food standards, then feel free to use it. If the situation is reversed, just let it stand for a couple of days. It is best to use spring water with its subsequent filtration and settling.

It is impossible to boil or distill water for mash! This leads to a decrease in the level of oxygen that yeast cultures need to live.

Yeast is suitable for any intended for making moonshine (not wine!). The French yeast “Saf-Levure” and “Saf-Moment”, which are intended primarily for baking, have proven themselves very well, so it’s not difficult to get them. Alcohol from them turns out good quality.

Before adding them to the wort, the yeast needs to be activated: pour the right amount into a vessel you need volume and pour water at a temperature of 35-39 ° C, but preferably 28-31 ° C, so as not to destroy our yeast cultures, wrap the container with a warm cloth and wait 20-40 min (during this time you can mix water and sugar syrup). Pressed yeast is also better prepared – dissolved in part of the wort (water with sugar syrup).

Baking yeast can be very foamy, so a defoamer is needed. It is best to use half a dry cookie from the store or the same amount of ground crackers. Some use baby shampoo or vegetable oil – I do not recommend. You can also use pharmaceutical preparations that are used in the food industry as defoamers, for example, the Bobotik preparation containing semicticon. Saf-Moment yeast also acts as a defoamer.

Mash preparation

Pour inverted syrup with water, in our case it is 27,12 liters. The syrup can be poured warm, but everything is calculated so that the initial mixture has a temperature of 27-30 ° C – the optimal conditions for the vital activity of yeast cultures. The fermentation tank should be filled no more than ¾ – foam will be released during the fermentation process, but, again, defoamers can be used.

Before adding prepared yeast, it is necessary to provide them with optimal working conditions. To do this, we need top dressing. From non-mineral: bread, dried fruits (cleaned of dirt, preservatives and grind), juices, malt or steamed grains. For 50 liters of wort, half a crumbled loaf of rye bread or 0,5-1 liter of juice with or without pulp is enough.

It will not be superfluous to add vitamin B1 (thiamine) – 1-2 mg for each kg of sugar. Nitrogenous agricultural fertilizers are used as mineral fertilizers: diammonium phosphate ((NH4) 2HPO4) diluted in warm water at the rate of 3,3 g per 1 kg of sugar or ammonium sulfate (NH4) 2SO4 at the rate of 1,5-2 g per 1 kg and superphosphate Ca (H2PO4) 2 * H2O and CaSO4 at the rate of 3-4 g per 1 kg. Urea (carbamide) (NH2) 2CO is also good at the rate of 0,8 per 1 kg of sugar. All this must be added to the wort before the yeast is added.

Fermentation

After the wort is ready, it must be provided with a constant temperature of 28-31 ° C. To do this, we wrap the fermentation tank with a fur coat, coat, blanket, etc. or use special heat-insulating materials. If you decide to put Sam’s production on stream, get an aquarium heater – just set the thermostat to 30 ° C and enjoy life. The yeast itself also emits heat, so the temperature of the mash must be constantly monitored – if it rises above 35 ° C, it must be cooled, otherwise the yeast will die.

The water seal, which I described in the article on making cider, is not necessary to put on sugar mash – it will be enough to leave the lid on the fermentation tank a little ajar. But the water seal will save you if the entire fermentation process takes place in the apartment – the mash does not smell very good, and the water seal tube can be brought out into the window or sewer pipe.

In this state, if you did everything right, the mash will ferment from 48 to 80 hours, depending on the type of top dressing, the sugar syrup used (inverted or not) and the temperature regime. Every 12 hours, the wort is recommended to be intensively stirred for 1 minute – this is necessary to remove excess carbon dioxide in the mash.

Signs of the readiness of the mash

Braga is ready if:

• carbon dioxide ceased to be released (if you put a water seal, then this is easy to track), you can bring a lit match to the surface of the mash and if it does not go out, then CO is not released;
• the top layer of the mash began to lighten, and the yeast began to precipitate;
• the taste of mash is bitter-sour, sugar is not felt;
• alcohol is felt in the wort, both in smell and taste.

It is necessary that these signs appear in a complex, that is, 2-3 at the same time.

Degassing and clarification of braga

This process is needed to improve the taste of sugar moonshine. First, remove the insulation and let the mash stand for 24 hours in the cold. The yeast should precipitate, after which the naturally clarified mash can be drained from the sediment (decanted) through a rubber tube. To degas the mash, that is, remove all carbon dioxide from it, the decanted wort must be heated to 50 ° C – this will also kill the remaining yeast that did not fall into suspended animation when the wort strength reaches 12%.

There are several ways to brighten the braga. You can wait until all the yeast has precipitated – this is a long time. The second and faster option is to use coagulates: gelatin, bentonite, etc. I wrote about the use of gelatin in an article on making plum wine (almost at the very end). For sugar mash, it is better to use bentonite – natural white clay, which is sold separately or as a cat litter. Tested and working: Pi-Pi-Bent, WC Closet Cat, Kotyara, CatSan.

Important! Clay should be as clean as possible and not have any odors, otherwise you will ruin your homemade moonshine. Before clarification, the mash must completely ferment!

For 20 liters of mash, 2-3 tablespoons of bentonite are enough, which must first be ground, for example, in a coffee grinder or blender, and then dissolved in 250 ml of warm water. Mix well and wait until the clay becomes a homogeneous “sour cream” mass. Pour the resulting suspension into the mash and stir vigorously for several minutes, while the mash should not be cold.

Important! Do not try to drain the sediment containing bentonite into the sewer, cement plugs form in the pipes, which can only be broken mechanically!!!

Braga is clarified with bentonite for about 15-30 hours, after which it becomes almost transparent and has no yeasty smell. We drain the mash from the sediment through a tube and proceed to distillation.

Detailed process of clarification of mash with bentonite:

Distillation (distillation) of sugar mash

The principles of fractional distillation are described in this article. I recommend you check it out first. The first distillation will separate all insoluble impurities from our mash, including harmful ones. You can already drink it, but it is not recommended.

First distillation

There are two options: drive fast and hard, without crushing – this is important if you did not lighten the mash or did it poorly. If everything is done according to Feng Shui, I recommend immediately selecting the “heads” and “tails”. We put the mash on a small fire and wait until the first drops flow – these are “heads” or “pervak” and they need to be collected somewhere around 50 ml per kilogram of processed sugar (30 ml can be taken during the first distillation), in our case it is 300 ml. It is better to immediately pour Pervak ​​away from sin – it is very dangerous for health.

After selecting the “heads”, we collect the “body”, the middle fraction, for the sake of which we started all this. We select the “body” until the strength of the moonshine drops below 40%. You can use the folk method: blot the distillate with a piece of newspaper and set it on fire – while the sam is burning, you can safely collect it.

Having collected the “body”, we proceed to collect the “tails” – we drive to the last, while alcohol is felt in the distillate. The last fraction contains a lot of fusel oils, so you can’t drink it, but you can add it to the next mash to increase the yield of the product.

Intermediate cleaning

Before the second distillation, crude alcohol (CC) must be purified. This can be done in many proven ways, but the best and easiest way to do this is with oil and activated charcoal, while first cleaning with oil and then with charcoal.

Cleaning moonshine with vegetable oil

Fusel oils tend to dissolve in other oils. We’ll take vegetable refined. We dilute the SS to 15% of the fortress (before the second distillation, the SS must be diluted to 15-20%) and pour it into a container with a tight lid. Add 20 ml of oil for each liter of diluted CC and mix vigorously 3 times with an interval of 1-2 minutes. Then we let the SS stand for 12-24 hours and drain it through a straw to get rid of the oil layer that will collect on the surface of the container.

In the purified CC oil, there will still be small particles, so our mixture should be filtered a couple of times through a dense gauze or cotton filter, and then cleaned with activated carbon

Purification of moonshine with activated carbon

We have already considered in detail activated carbon as a means for cleaning moonshine. Read this article and choose the most suitable method for yourself. I recommend building a makeshift charcoal filter with BAU-A charcoal and running CC through it a couple of times. On average, coal absorbs up to 90% of esters and about 80% of fusel oils.

Let’s start the second race.

Second distillation

The principle is the same as in the first distillation – we separate the “heads” and “tails” from the main fraction. At the same time, we select the “heads” at the minimum temperature: first, we heat the SS to the first condensate, and then reduce the heat until the sam begins to drip at a speed of 2-3 drops per second. We select 50 ml for each processed 1 kg of sugar. We change the receiving capacity and select the “body”.

This time I recommend to select the “body” until its strength at 20 ° C reaches 45%. We select the tails to the victorious one and add them, it is possible with intermediate cleaning, to the next stage.

Finishing the distillate

The resulting distillate, and this will be somewhere plus or minus 2,4 liters of sam with a strength of 50-60% of our 6 kg of sugar (please do not cling to the wording, each will have a very different yield, which depends on a dozen variables), you need to dilute to the fortress we need. To do this, use our alcohol dilution calculator with water and read the article on how to do it correctly. For tinctures, I recommend diluting moonshine from sugar to a strength of at least 45%, but it is better to leave it as it is.

In order for the distillate to become more stable, it should be kept in bottles for another 3-4 days and only after that it should be served at the table or made into tinctures. To soften the taste, it can be heated on the stove until the first signs of evaporation appear. Then cool and bottle. This method will result in a loss of 1-2% alcohol, but the distillate will become much softer and more balanced.

That’s it, now you know how to drive moonshine out of sugar at home and use it as a worthy alternative to purchased alcohol for tinctures. Starch and other fruit distillates are on the agenda – subscribe to the Rum Diary updates so you don’t miss out. Good luck in your endeavors!