Due to their low sugar content, peaches are considered not the most suitable raw materials for home brewing. But these fruits have one significant advantage – a persistent aroma, which, subject to the cooking technology, is transferred to the finished distillate. The main thing at the very beginning is to properly make peach mash.
You can put fruits of any variety and condition on moonshine. Even overripe or rumpled ones will do, just not rotten and moldy (spoiled parts need to be cut out).
Ingredients:
- ripe (overripe) peaches – 5 kg;
- sugar – 0,5-1 kg (optional);
- water – 3 liters and another 4 liters for each kilogram of sugar;
- yeast – 100 grams pressed or 20 grams dry (optional).
Depending on the variety and growing region, peaches contain up to 8% sugar, but usually less – 5-6%. This means that even with the maximum sugar content from 1 kg of raw materials, 80-85 ml of peach moonshine with a strength of 40% will be obtained, from 5 kg – approximately 430 ml. To increase the yield, you can add sugar (1 kg will give 1,1-1,2 liters of 40% distillate), but the aroma will not be so bright. You have to compromise between quantity and quality.
Making moonshine from peaches without sugar is advisable only if there are a lot of fruits (more than 10 kg) and they are sweet. In all other cases, I advise you to add sugar, otherwise the output will be scanty.
On alcohol or ordinary yeast, peach mash will win back in 4-10 days, on wild or wine – in 20-50 days. But any artificial yeast noticeably spoils the aroma of fruit moonshine, so if there is nowhere to hurry, it is better to put the mash on wild (located on the peel of the fruit) or wine yeast.
Peach mash recipe
1. Divide unwashed (if wild yeast is used) peaches in half. Take out the bones, remove (cut or scoop out with a spoon) the slightly dark sinewy flesh that came into contact with the stone, and all spoiled, rotten or moldy parts.
Attention! If you leave the bones and places of their contact with the pulp in the mash, the moonshine will turn out bitter. Ideally, you need to remove the skin as well (peel the peaches like potatoes), but this is a very laborious process.
2. Grind the pulp in any way possible: by hand, through a meat grinder or with a construction mixer. You should get a homogeneous, slightly liquid substance.
3. Mix 2 liters of water and sugar, bring to a boil, boil for 3-5 minutes, removing foam from the surface. Cool the finished syrup to room temperature and combine with peach pulp in a container with a wide neck. Add the remaining plain cold water according to the proportions in the recipe, add yeast (optional), mix.
If the mash is without sugar, just pour 3 liters of cold unboiled water.
4. Cover the container with gauze or a thick cloth to protect it from flies and other insects. Transfer the mash to a dark room with room temperature and leave for 2-3 days. Stir with a wooden stick or clean hand 2-3 times a day.
After 8-20 hours, the mash should ferment. Signs: foam on the surface, hissing, characteristic sour smell. If this does not happen, then the yeast did not work, you will have to add others.
5. Pour the peach mash into a fermentation tank. Fill to a maximum of 75% to leave room for foam. On the neck, install a water seal or a rubber glove with a hole in the finger.
6. Leave the mash in a dark (or cover) room with a temperature of 18-26°C. Depending on the selected yeast and sugar content, peach mash fermentation lasts 4-50 days. Then the water seal stops bubbling (the glove deflates), a layer of sediment appears at the bottom, and sweetness is not felt in the taste, only a slight bitterness. This means that the mash is ready for distillation.
Technology for obtaining peach moonshine
7. Drain the washed mash from the sediment through a tube into the distillation cube, you can additionally filter it through gauze so that the remnants of the skin and pulp do not burn when heated, spoiling the taste.
8. Overtake the first time without fractionation. Finish the selection of moonshine when the strength in the stream falls below 30%.
9. Measure the strength of the entire distillate. Determine the amount of pure alcohol (strength in percent divided by 100 and multiplied by volume). For example, 2 liters of 45% moonshine contains 0,9 liters of pure alcohol.
10. Dilute the peach distillate with water to 20%, then redistillate. The first 8-15% of the yield from the amount of pure alcohol (in our example 70-135 ml) should be collected separately. This is a harmful fraction that should not be drunk. Stop collecting the main product when the strength in the stream falls below 45%.
11. Dilute peach moonshine with water to the desired strength (usually 40-45%). Close tightly and leave for 2-3 days in a dark, cool place before tasting to stabilize the taste.
