In the distant nineties, I was happy to go to work abroad. The relatively large money that I received for hard work, being away from my homeland, warmed up my soul.
So I traveled for 15 years, and then began to earn extra money in my village, making repairs to apartments. But over time, his health deteriorated – his torn back began to bother him.
I decided to do something lighter. I was advised to breed bees. Having allocated almost all the accumulated money for the purchase of bees, hives and related funds, I started an apiary.
At first everything was fine – the bees collected a decent amount of honey. May honey was sold quickly, but the honey collected at the end of the summer remained unsold. What to do in this situation, I could not figure out. In addition, one bank fermented.
What ingredients are required
Once, digging on the Internet, I saw a video on how to make moonshine from honey. “This is an idea,” I thought, “at least it won’t stand as a silent reproach to my efforts.” I had no experience in moonshining, but I thought that if you wish, you can overcome everything.
As it turned out, only water, honey, and yeast were needed for moonshine, and from the devices – a large saucepan and, of course, a moonshine still.
I had fragrant honey collected by bees from a sunflower field. Taking a three-liter jar of honey, which they decided to ferment, and heated it in a water bath so that it would be easier to remove the honey from the jar. For the fermentation process, I asked a neighbor for a huge pot (20 liters).
Having poured honey and 15 liters of water there, which he collected from the well. They wrote on the Internet that the taste of the finished product will also depend on the quality of the water itself.
When choosing yeast, I opted for dry baker’s yeast. In the future, I tried others, but with dry yeast, fermentation began faster and was more intense.
For every 5 liters of liquid, I added 20 grams of yeast.
The process of making mash
At first, I did not learn how to quickly dissolve honey, then I heated the water to about 60 degrees, and after that the honey quickly dissolved. Yeast should also not be immediately poured into the main container. It is better to dissolve them in a liter jar of wort, and then pour into a common container.
The video said that the yeast still needs top dressing from ammonium phosphate. It can be found in stores that specialize in selling beer. But I never had to buy it.
In order for the yeast to begin to multiply, they also need oxygen. But in the process of heating the water, oxygen evaporated, so in order to replenish the water with oxygen, it was necessary to pour the mash into other containers, and the water had to be poured from a great height.
As it turned out, you need to fill the container for mash no more than ¾ of the part. Since this proportion was not observed for me, after 3 days the mash climbed out of the pan.
I had to take about 3 liters of liquid into another pan so that she behaved calmly and did not misbehave. The next time I cooked the mash in a barrel with a screw cap.
After fermentation, the barrel should stand warm for about a week. The main thing is that the temperature at this time should be in the range from 16 to 30 degrees. Otherwise, the bacteria may die, or simply stop multiplying if the temperature is too low.
Then the mash needs a cooler temperature. It can even be lowered into the basement, if there is one. Refrigeration time is about 2 weeks. At this time, the mash becomes light, and a precipitate falls out. Carefully pouring out the contents of the barrel, leaving sediment at the bottom, you can start distillation.
What result did I get
Since I had the skills to work with locksmith tools, it was not difficult to make the distillation apparatus itself.
The main difficulty was to find a large 40-liter waste milk can. The rest is just a matter of hands and technology.
Moonshine turned out to be of high quality, but of course there was no smell of honey left in it. I got the same amount of moonshine from a 3-liter jar of honey.
Conclusion
The honey is not gone. My bees have done a good job. Soon the bees will collect the next batch of May honey. I hope that it will be possible to implement it in its natural form.
Of course, I do not claim that I am a master, and perhaps someone does not agree with such a translation of honey. But why did the honey start to ferment, and what did I need to do to prevent this from happening?
If you have any comments about the process of home brewing, I am ready to listen to them and take them into account.