The separation of the distillate into fractions is a necessary stage in home brewing, which ensures the production of pure and safe alcohol.
Fractional distillation is indispensable if you want to make delicious moonshine without fusel oils and impurities hazardous to health.
To qualitatively perform the selection, it is most convenient and easiest to use a thermometer.
Description of fractions
Heads
The popular name is “pervak” or “pervach”. The strongest, foul-smelling faction. Includes poisonous substances with a low boiling point: ethers, acetone, aldehydes, methyl alcohol. It is impossible to use it inside, it is best to pour it out immediately after selection. Some moonshiners use the “head” fraction for grinding and technical needs.
Body
The main part of the distillate, for the sake of which a laborious process is started. Otherwise called the “heart” of moonshine. Theoretically, the fraction should include only alcohol and water, but in practice it also contains a certain percentage of impurities. To improve the quality of the drinking fraction, you can use folk cleaning methods.
Tails
The “final” part of moonshine, which includes fusel oils and ethyl alcohol. Turbid, has a sharp unpleasant odor and taste, low strength (below 40%). Less dangerous than the “head” fraction, but ingestion is highly discouraged. It can be used to enhance the degree of the second batch of mash (add to it immediately before distillation).
Selection process
The distillation of moonshine begins with intensive heating of the mash, carefully monitoring the readings of the thermometer. After reaching the mark of 63 ° C, the heating force is sharply reduced and the temperature is slowly brought to 65-67 ° C. At this stage, the lightest fractions begin to stand out – poisonous “heads”.
They are taken dropwise, not allowing the distillate to turn into a jet. Approximate amount: 10-15% of the total volume of moonshine. If there is no thermometer at hand, when distilling sugar mash, you can use the popular formula: 1 kg of sugar accounts for 30 to 50 ml of “heads”.
After separating the “pervak”, the heating intensity is slightly reduced. The evaporation of ethyl alcohol – the “body” of moonshine – begins at 72-74 ° C, it is actively released as a distillate after 78 ° C. At this moment, they begin to select the “heart”, finishing it at a temperature of 85 ° C.
Then proceed to the separation of the “tails” and the completion of the distillation process. In addition to temperature, when selecting the last fraction, you can focus on the fortress.
The beginning of the allocation of “tails” is considered to be a drop in the degree to 35-40%. If the use of the last fraction is not planned, you can finish the distillation after collecting the “body”. It is impossible to dilute alcohol with “tails” to reduce the strength of moonshine; clean water is used for these purposes.
Relevance: 08.03.2019
Tags: vodka, mash, moonshine