Chacha, it’s wine, it’s cognac alcohol - a product that can be prepared at home.
Ideally, of course, use your own crop. For lack thereof, purchased berries will also go into business.
With a balanced approach and proper adherence to the recipe, you get a great drink, high strength and excellent taste.
And how much pride will be added to the owners by the fact that crystal clear alcohol - a grape chacha at home, is made with your own hands!
Chacha from grapes at home - the necessary equipment
To make a chacha, you will need a large bowl, basin or pan for the preparation of oilcake, one or more containers for fermenting the wort, on the neck of which a water seal is installed, and a distillation apparatus.
In addition, you must have gauze or a sieve for filtering the finished wort, an alcohol meter and a device for measuring acidity.
Manganese, charcoal or activated carbon, a funnel and cotton wool may be required to clean the distillate. Also stock up with special filter paper.
Grape chacha at home - grape selection
When choosing grapes, it is worthwhile to dwell on varieties with high acidity. It is not recommended to use tender Turkish or Iranian grapes; Crimean, Krasnodar and Caucasian varieties of "wine berry" are best suited.
Which variety is best to take? It is difficult to answer this question, as they say, this is a matter of taste. When using early white grape varieties, you will get a light chacha with the most pronounced aroma of freshness and a slight “acidity” in the aftertaste. Dark and late varieties, as well as slightly dried grapes give the drink soft tones with a voluminous deep aroma. Chacha is most saturated if you mix several varieties of "wine berry".
Chacha is based on mash and the quality of the product itself depends on how it is delivered. Braga can be made from fresh grapes or the cake left over after making wine or juice.
Fresh grapes are not recommended to be washed before use, as there is a white coating on the surface of the grapes containing wild yeast, which provides a quick, natural fermentation. But if there is no certainty that the crop was not treated with chemicals, it is better to rinse it. Bunches prepared for making chachi carefully inspect, picking off all the leaves and rotted berries. After that, grapes are crushed by hands, turning into a cake. It is possible to crush both separated berries and whole clusters together with ridges.
When using pomace left over from making wine, if they have already participated in fermentation, it should be noted that they need to be taken twice as much. They have already given some of the substances necessary for making a chachi to the wine.
Fermentation of grapes
To obtain a high-quality product, fermentation is recommended without sugar. But in most cases it is still added, contrary to all the rules, in order to speed up fermentation or increase the yield of the final product.
Yeast is rarely used; they, like sugar, accelerate the process of active fermentation. As mentioned above, it is better to use wild yeast located on the surface of grapes. If for some reason you still need to add yeast, take only alcohol, in no case put wort on baker's yeast!
The quality of the water added to the wort plays an important role. You can not enter distilled, and it is advisable to pass the tap through a multi-stage filter or allow it to settle. Heavy impurities will settle, and the chlorine used to process it will evaporate.
The temperature regime of fermentation affects both the taste of chacha and its aroma. It is advisable to carry out the process at a low temperature, from 14 to 20 degrees. It can take a long time, from one to one and a half months, and leads to the formation of esters and aldehydes, enhancing the aroma of the distillate. You can withstand a higher temperature regime, from 20 to 30 degrees, but at the same time the quality of the final product will suffer, the precious aroma, which is well known for a well-prepared chacha, will be lost.
Properly placed mash, subject to the temperature regime, should be covered with bubbles, gurgle well, and the pulp in it will float to the surface. Throughout the time of fermentation, pulp should be given special attention. So that it does not become moldy, the must must be mixed daily, trying to lower the pulp to the bottom.
Braga is considered to be finished when the bubbles ceased to appear in it, the pulp settled on the bottom, and the liquid brightened significantly. If you bring a lit match to the neck of a container with a fermented braga, it will not go out. The readiness of the mash is also established using a device suitable for these purposes - a hydrometer. After lowering it into a well-fermented raw material, when the device reads less than 1.002, the mash can be safely put on the stage.
Distillation of mash
Distill mash for chachi like ordinary moonshine. For distillation, you can take the fermented wort as it is, with cake and sediment. You can carry out the distillation in two stages - first overtake the expressed wort, and then cake with precipitation. The acidity of the distilled product should not be lower or more than 3.2-3.0. You can check its level with a special device - a pH meter.
Ready wort is poured into a distillation apparatus - a cube, and put on moderate heat. The first 10% of the product must be drained, this is the so-called pervak or "head". Draining does not mean throwing away, this almost pure alcohol of high concentration can be used for external use or for technical purposes. Then the main fraction of the future chacha is selected, with constant monitoring of its strength by an alcohol meter. Collect distillate is stopped when the degree decreases by forty degrees. In the absence of an alcohol meter, you can use the old "grandfather" method to determine the strength - set fire to the distillate in a spoon. If it burns, then its strength is still sufficient. The last part - the "tail", is collected separately.
The primary distillate is necessarily diluted in half with pure water and distilled again, also breaking up (dividing) into fractions. A ready-made chacha is collected after the “pervak” until the strength of the drink is reduced to forty degrees.
After the initial distillation, chacha, made at home, should be cleaned.
Purification of the primary distillate
The primary distillate can be cleaned using several proven methods: through special paper, activated or charcoal, and also with potassium permanganate.
When using charcoal or activated carbon, it is placed in a funnel on a cotton wool laid in it and a distillate is poured into a thin stream. The slower it drains, the cleaner the chacha will turn out.
Cleansing with potassium permanganate requires not only patience, but also accuracy. For each liter of distilled product, you need to take at least 50 ml of hot drinking water and 2 grams. potassium permanganate. The potassium permanganate dissolved in hot water is poured into the primary distillate and allowed to stand for at least 10 hours, after which it is carefully filtered through a cotton wool placed in a funnel.
The purified chacha is distilled repeatedly. Before this, the moonshine still is thoroughly washed, and the distillation is carried out in the same manner as for the first time, with cutting off the “head” and “tail”.
The "head" can be used for domestic needs, and the "tail" can be used for re-distillation.
Homemade grape chacha: a simple recipe without yeast from juice
Ingredients:
• 15 kg of ripened grapes, preferably the Rkatsiteli variety;
• 5 kg of sugar;
• filtered drinking water - 15 liters.
Cooking method:
1. Mash the selected grapes well with your hands, trying to crush each grape.
2. In the resulting mass, add water, pour in granulated sugar. Mix well and transfer to a container prepared for fermentation. Be sure to install a water seal on the neck and place it for fermentation in a room with a temperature of 14 to 25 degrees.
3. After fermentation is complete, when carbon dioxide stops passing through the water trap, drain the prepared wort through a sieve or gauze folded in several layers. Pour the filtered wort into a cube, and tie a slightly well-pressed cake in a cloth bag and hang it inside the moonshine. Cake will saturate the distillate with a grape aroma.
4. Distill the wort over low heat, cutting off the "head" - that is, drain about 100 ml of distillate, and collect the main fraction in a separate container until the strength decreases below 40 degrees. Gather the remaining "tail" in a separate bowl and set aside.
5. Clean the primary distillate using one of the methods described above and set up for secondary distillation. Despite the fact that the moonshine was cleared, the head and tail are also cut off during repeated distillation.
6. Cool the distilled chacha again and bring it to the desired strength. To lower the strength, dilute the chacha with boiled cold water.
7. After this, pour the distillate into the bottles and let it brew for 10 days to two weeks, then drain, very carefully, without loosening the residue, about the thickness of the little finger, drain from the bottle to the selected “tails”. After this, the chacha will be ready completely.
Homemade grape chacha: a simple recipe with squeezed yeast
Ingredients:
• 10 liters of non-fermented pomace;
• 5 kg of sugar;
• 30 liters of filtered drinking water;
• 10 gr. fresh spirit yeast.
Cooking method:
1. Warm the water to 30 degrees, dissolve the yeast crushed by hand in it, add sugar. Again, mix everything thoroughly so that the sugar crystals dissolve and introduce the mixture into squeezes, mix. If you use raw materials previously involved in fermentation, take it twice as much, at least 20 liters.
2. Pour the prepared wort into a fermentation tank, install a water lock and place it in a room with the desired temperature. Keep in mind that the process is going well, the air temperature in the room should not fall below 14 degrees and be above 28 degrees. With the wrong mode, the activity of the yeast decreases, and the wort does not ferment.
3. Distill the fermented wort twice on a moonshine with intermediate distillate filtration. During both primary and secondary distillations, cut off the “heads” and “tails”.
4. Leave the prepared chacha for half a month, pouring it over a clean container.
Homemade grape chacha: a simple recipe made from oilcake, sugar and yeast free
Ingredients:
• Grapes of any variety or mix of several varieties.
Cooking method:
1. Place the bunches of cooked grapes in a large pot, mash the berries well with your hands. Cover the container with gauze and put it in a room with the temperature recommended above.
2. Every day, mix the cake well, trying to lower the cap that has risen up to the bottom.
3. After about a week, when the whole cake rises, filter the fermented juice and distill it twice. After the initial distillation, be sure to clean the distillate with manganese or charcoal.
4. The remaining extracts can be reused or used to flavor the distilled chacha, tied in a gauze bag and suspended inside a moonshine.
5. After the second distillation, pack the chacha in clean glass containers and let it brew for a couple of weeks.
Making grape chachi at home - cooking tips and tricks
• If you are harvesting chachi on your own, do not do it immediately after rain. Wait a few days for the berries to catch wild yeast.
• Frozen grapes wander faster. Place the selected clusters for several hours in the freezer. Thaw the berries in a container in which you will crush the grapes.
• Crush the "wine berry" preferably with gloves to protect the skin from exposure to fruit acid.
• Do not clean distilled distillate with milk; it may affect the taste of the product. This method is good when working with less high-quality raw materials made from beets, a mixture of berries or sugar candy types of mash.
• If you want to give the drink a light cognac shade, insist distilled chacha in oak barrels or add a few oak chips to the glass container.
• Simple recipes and necessary equipment suitable for making homemade grape chacha are not at all so unavailable; there are many specialized forums where you will be told what and where to buy.
