It is not so difficult to learn how to cook everyday and holiday dishes, but as they say, "Not with bread alone ...".
Our housewives and home-made alcoholic drinks are served on holiday tables.
And let it not shock you, tinctures, liquors, various types of cognac at home are prepared even in aristocratic European families, moreover, recipes are often known only to units of senior family members, servants are not allowed at all.
Home-brew cognac at home: general principles of preparation
Preparing cognac from moonshine at home is not so difficult as it might seem. The preparation of cognac takes little worries, more of them are necessary to prepare the base - moonshine, infusion and aging of this strong drink. But these points will not require additional attention and work from you.
And yet, what are the general principles for preparing cognac from moonshine according to various recipes?
Home-brew cognac at home: necessary raw materials
The main raw material, or rather the basis of any cognac from moonshine, prepared at home is distillate distilled from various products (moonshine). You can buy it ready. But keep in mind that buying moonshine can not only reduce the cooking time, but it is also easy to spoil the final product, as the starting material may turn out to be of poor quality. Therefore, moonshine is best prepared by yourself.
Raw materials and products necessary for the preparation of moonshine and cognac based on it:
• grapes (it is best to take wine varieties), wheat, fruits, sugar, etc.
• fresh pressed yeast, interchangeable with dry, instant;
• purified water.
• activated carbon, potassium permanganate or pasteurized milk. That, with the help of which the obtained distillate can be purified from fusel oils.
• coloring and aromatizing natural components that “ennoble” cognac, allowing you to give the drink a specific taste, color and unique aroma: seasonings, spices, dried walnut partitions, chopped oak bark.
• distilled water. The main product is diluted with it until cognac of the desired strength is obtained.
Home-brew cognac at home: necessary equipment
1. Glass containers or bottles made of dark glass, hermetically sealed. In such containers, not only mash is infused until the distillate is made, but also cognac itself, before overflowing into another container.
2. Moonshine still, in which it will be necessary to prepare the basis for cognac, moonshine.
3. The usual funnel and gauze used in filtering both the source and the final product after infusion.
4. Alcohol meter for measuring product strength.
5. Barrels of oak wood or glass jars, tightly corked bottles or bottles. It all depends on the volume in which you plan to store and maintain a strong drink.
If there is no oak barrel, and you want to get cognac as close as possible to the taste characteristics of the original, you can use a simple trick when holding the drink, putting oak chips in each container until cognac is filled. Such chips are sold on specialized sites and in stores. You can make them yourself. It will take a lot of time to make chips, but it’s worth it, because it is they that will allow you to simulate the aging of a noble drink in barrels, saturate cognac from moonshine, prepared at home with the unique aromas of vanilla and caramel, and also give astringency characteristic only of a barrel aged drink.
How to properly prepare oak wood chips for making cognac from moonshine at home
1. Take a dry oak chock or a small log from a tree trunk or branch and chop into small thin slivers along the fibers, their thickness should not be wider than four millimeters. Alcohol is able to penetrate into the wood only two millimeters.
2. Then dip the prepared chips into cold water and let it stand for about twelve hours.
3. Drain the water and refill the oak chips, but with a soda solution. Soda is taken from the calculation of one tsp. five liters of ordinary water.
4. After twelve hours, drain the water again, and put the chips in a colander and place in a steam bath for the same period of time as when soaking. Water in a saucepan under a colander should be changed periodically as soon as it darkens noticeably.
5. After this, the preforms are dried for the same time in fresh air and only then heated in the oven, spread out on a wire rack, at a temperature of 150 degrees, for about five hours.
6. After twelve hours, the warm-up procedure should be repeated. It is at this stage of processing that the drying oak chips will be fragrant with the pleasant aroma of vanilla and caramel.
7. Having also calcined for four hours, again set aside the “sticks” to rest for twelve hours.
8. Then proceed to the final stage - frying. To do this, put the oven in grill mode or heat it to 200 degrees and fry the wood in the oven until smoke starts to flow.
Home-brew cognac at home: cooking technology
The most delicious cognac is obtained from moonshine of the highest quality, and only if grape moonshine was used for its production, colloquially called "chacha". But cognac from moonshine at home will not be any worse, if you take the usual fruit, sugar or wheat distillate as the basis.
After distillation, it is necessary to thoroughly clean the moonshine from impurities of fusel oils. For this purpose, potassium permanganate, milk or activated charcoal are usually used.
How to clean moonshine:
Potassium permanganate
Moonshine is poured into a three-liter jar, 5-7 crystals of potassium permanganate are thrown and left to stand for several days. When potassium permanganate is added, the raw materials for the future cognac should have a pale pink color, not brighter and not paler. During the so-called sedimentation, sediment will collect at the bottom of the jar, in no case shake the jar. After moonshine you need to filter. This can be done by passing it through cheesecloth or pouring small parts into a funnel, at the base of which cotton pads or cotton wool are laid.
Activated charcoal
Litter of gauze is placed in the funnel, activated charcoal is placed on it, and then moonshine is passed through the filter collected in this way.
Milk
Milk is poured into the finished moonshine, it must necessarily curl up, after which it is carefully drained from the residue and filtered, as in the above types of cleaning. Milk is taken from the calculation of one glass per three liters of finished moonshine.
After the main product used for the production of cognac at home is cleaned, it is poured into prepared special glass containers in which the components necessary for further production are placed: aromatic and coloring natural substances.
In such a container brandy infused not less than two weeks, but not more than one month. After the drink acquires the desired shade, characteristic of the inherent aromatic component of the bouquet and the corresponding taste, it is filtered and poured into containers designed for long-term storage - "aging".
In production, this process is carried out in high-quality oak barrels. But it’s not convenient to place such a capacity in every apartment. Although you can use the commercially available oak barrels with a displacement of two liters. You can also use glass containers, but still, even in this case, you will need specially processed oak wood: oak chips, commercially available or self-made oak chips. It is thanks to them that they manage to make cognac from the moonshine of the house as close as possible to the original taste.
Maintain cognac at home for up to six months or more. The more years, the more stars of cognac. One year - one star, two years, respectively, two stars and so on.
Home-made moonshine recipe
Ingredients:
• kilogram of white granulated sugar;
• 100 grams of fresh pressed yeast (replaced by 18 grams of instant);
• five liters of filtered water.
Cooking method:
1. Dissolve granulated sugar in slightly warmed water and add yeast. If you use pressed ones, then dissolve them in a small amount of warm sugar water and let stand for about five minutes. And only then add to the required amount of required water.
2. Clean the closed container with the prepared product in a dark place, without drafts, with a constant temperature regime for a week.
3. Then drain the precipitate formed during the fermentation process and distill the mash in a special moonshine.
4. Do not forget to filter the finished product.
Cognac from moonshine at home: recipes
The following recipes and techniques relate to the last, final process of making cognac at home, namely, insisting it with various natural flavors and flavoring components. Moonshine hereinafter is understood, first of all, as a natural wine "chacha", or pure sugar-yeast moonshine, prepared according to the above recipe.
Cognac from home-brew moonshine - "In Latgale"
Ingredients:
• three liters of fifty-degree moonshine;
• pharmacy oak bark - two tablespoons;
• three carnation umbrellas;
• a small pinch of ground cinnamon;
• 0.5 grams of ground nutmeg;
• three table. tablespoons of granulated sugar.
Cooking method:
1. Dissolve granulated sugar in a glass of moonshine in advance, until its crystals are completely dissolved.
2. Then in a clean three-liter jar, put all the ingredients, pour moonshine, add dissolved sugar and, corking well, put the jar in a dark place.
3. Insist for at least two weeks, but preferably not longer than a month.
4. After the brew has become brown and has absorbed all the aromas, filter it and, after bottling, let it stand for at least six months in a cool, dark place.
Cognac from moonshine infused on the walnut shell (partitions)
Ingredients:
• 100 grams of dried walnut partitions;
• a tablespoon of black tea leaves, the highest quality;
• eight clove umbrellas;
• a teaspoon of caraway seeds;
• dessert spoon of vanilla sugar;
• citric acid, very little, on the tip of a knife;
• three liters of self-distilled moonshine.
Cooking method:
1. In a three-liter glass jar, lay the walnut partitions washed under water, tea, caraway seeds, cloves and vanilla sugar.
2. Pour all the ingredients with moonshine, mix well and add citric acid.
3. Close the jar tightly with a capron lid and remove to insist.
4. After seven days, filter the tincture through cheesecloth, laid out in a sieve or funnel.
5. Pour the cleaned cognac into containers prepared for long-term storage and tightly closing it, put in a dark place for “aging” for several months, from three or more.
Moonshine Cognac on Lavrushka and Oak Bark
Ingredients:
• three liters of moonshine, strength up to 60 degrees;
• two tablespoons of large-leaf tea;
• three leaves of lavrushka;
• five peas of allspice;
• chopped pharmacy oak bark - 4 tables. spoons;
• incomplete tsp cinnamon
• a small pinch of vanillin;
• carnation, one umbrella.
Cooking method:
1. In a glass container with moonshine, put all of the indicated ingredients, shake thoroughly, and repeat this several times. Tightly closed, put the drink "ennobled" in a cool place without access to light for two weeks.
2. Strain the brewed drink, and, pouring it into a specially prepared container, put it in storage.
Cognac from moonshine, instant
Ingredients:
• one liter of finished, about 50 degree, moonshine;
• pea allspice;
• one leaf of lavrushka;
• half a teaspoon of dry loose tea;
• one third tsp baking soda;
• 50 grams of sugar;
• a small bag of vanillin.
Cooking method:
1. Put boiled poured into a small enameled pot of moonshine.
2. Add in turn: pepper, a leaf of parsley, tea leaves, baking soda, sugar and vanillin.
3. Cover the pan with a lid and stand on the stove turned on until the temperature of moonshine rises to 75 degrees. You can allow the temperature to rise to 77 degrees, but not higher.
4. Turn off the heat, best off the stove and wrap with thick cotton, linen, or other "natural" towels, fabrics. Let it brew for five to fifteen minutes.
5. After pouring the contents of the pan into a jar and leave to cool.
6. When the brew is completely cooled, filter, bring its strength to an acceptable 40-45 degrees and, pouring into prepared bottles or barrels, tightly cork.
7. At the very least, after five days, the first test can be taken.
Home-brew cognac at home: tricks and tips
• To infuse cognac, sugar can be burnt a little before laying in a jar. Then the cognac will acquire an interesting viscous consistency and original color.
• To clean both moonshine and brandy obtained from it, you can use cosmetic cotton pads, using them instead of gauze or cotton wool, putting four in a funnel at once. As the discs become dirty, they change.
• Small pieces of orange or lemon zest added to the original product will give the cognac a special aroma.
• An unexpected effect can be obtained if a small handful of pine nuts are added to the cognac during the infusion process.
• Another secret of technology, requiring more exposure not from brandy, but from the master who cooks it. Wash the shells of pine nuts, cherries and apricot seeds, dry and warm them for about 15 minutes in a red-hot oven (oven). Crush, not in powder, of course, but in small crumbs and pour into a glass container. The shell should fill it about 1/5 of the volume, add up to 4/5 strong, "with a margin", moonshine (50-55 degrees). A bottle or bottle is wrapped in paper to prevent light from entering and refrigerated for a week. An analogue of the water lock used in the fermentation of wine is needed, in its simplest form it is a cork with a through hole and a short elastic hose inserted into it. We put on such a miraculous cork on an already slightly aged cognac and with all our strength we pull the air out of the bottle with our mouth. We bend the hose so that the air "does not return", we fix it with a clothespin and put it in the refrigerator for two days. We take out the bottle and shake it off, remove the cork and leave it at room temperature, waiting for the fine chips to settle completely. Put on the cork again, draw out the air, hold it with a clothespin and put it in the refrigerator. The procedure is repeated for a month.With a certain patience, cognac is infused for 30-40 days, at the end it is only necessary to filter, reduce the degree of pure water to usual indicators and add a tablespoon of molasses. The difficulty, in addition to the process itself, is that the temperature in the refrigerator is a relative concept and it may take a little longer to extract such cognac from moonshine at home.
