Moonshine is a fairly popular homemade drink containing alcohol. It can be prepared with and without yeast, as well as with the addition of honey, corn or potatoes. The most experienced moonshiner pays most attention to the purification process. After all, the taste, color and aroma of the product will depend on this. In addition, after a quality cleaning of moonshine with charcoal, vegetable oil, violet root, soda and so on, you can forever forget about a hangover.
Raw materials for mash
Bakery or spirit yeast? It is best to take the second option, as it will provide a very quick preparation of mash with a minimum amount of foam and the absence of an unpleasant yeast smell. If you use ordinary baker's yeast, the color of the mash will be cloudy, and the drink itself will acquire an acidic smell of fungus. Alcoholic yeast is bought in specialized stores.
Water must be clean. The best option would be the key from the well. You can use tap water, but then it will have to stand for three days.
Sugar is sometimes used brown, but more often - just the usual white. Sometimes, instead of sugar, candy or jam is put in moonshine. Keep in mind that caramel candies should be only with the same filling.
For purification, most often take activated charcoal, which is purchased in a pharmacy. Cleaning moonshine with coal at home is the best option.
Recipe
In order to make high-quality moonshine, you should get the right tools. You will need a container in which the mash will roam, a distiller, an electric stove, a hydrometer and a bottle dryer.
The simplest and most popular way to make a drink is to mix the mash with sugar and spirit yeast. Usually, two kilograms of granulated sugar and two hundred grams of yeast are taken per ten liters of heated and purified water. First, sugar dissolves, and only then yeast is introduced. They are pre-diluted in water and poured into an already prepared liquid. The capacity in which the mash will be prepared should have a neck. A water seal in the form of a rubber glove is put on it. It is from it that you can determine the readiness of the mash. Initially, the glove is inflated and remains in this form for several days. As soon as she falls, this will mean that the mash is ready.
After a week, the residue is drained from the container and the top of the drink is removed. The rest is called the body, which will be used in the future for the preparation of an alcoholic drink. If the mash starts to produce too much foam, then a piece of rye bread crust is thrown at it. Instead, you can try to pour a small amount of vegetable oil.
Very often beginner moonshiners ask: how much alcohol can you get from one kilogram of sugar? It’s easy to count. Usually, three kilograms of granulated sugar and ten liters of ready-made mash turn out three liters of fairly strong moonshine. Then it is slightly diluted with water to achieve an acceptable fortress of forty degrees, and then moonshine becomes even more.
How to make a filter from coal
You will need a regular plastic bottle. It should be absolutely clean and not too big. An ideal option would be a one and a half liter capacity. Using a sharp knife, carefully cut the bottom and drill a small hole in the lid. The cap is re-screwed onto the bottle. After that, a sufficient amount of cotton wool is taken and tightly packed in the neck. Double gauze is laid on top and coal is laid. Thus, when the liquid passes through gauze with cotton, all fusel oils will remain on the compress.
Clean without filter
Some moonshiners prefer not to waste time on the filter, but simply add coal to the drink. Typically, no more than fifty grams of sorbent is used for each liter of liquid. Within two weeks, the container is occasionally taken out and shaken. On the fifteenth day, the composition can be passed through a piece of cotton wool, packed in gauze. It has proven itself to clean the moonshine with charcoal for barbecue, which is also often added directly to alcohol.
There is an opinion that this method does not give a good cleaning, since the sorbent, after it absorbs the waste, after a while gives it back to the liquid.
Activated Carbon Composition
Using this sorbent is not the best option for moonshine. It contains excess impurities in the form of starch or talc. But it can be purchased at any pharmacy, which is important for a city dweller. Not every person is able to independently prepare charcoal so that it is enough for a sufficient amount of moonshine.
In addition to pharmaceutical coal, you can use the product used for distillation. And also a good filter, which is located in the device for water purification, proved to be not bad. Some people clean moonshine as follows: they pass liquid several times through a plastic container designed for water. Such devices can be found in every kitchen.
The coal contained in the filters is obtained from coconut. Unfortunately, it sometimes contains ion-exchange resins. Beginning winemakers, as a rule, do not know which charcoal is better for cleaning moonshine. In the literature on moonshining, it is often advised to use a sorbent from coconut. And the worst option is coal from a respirator.
Birch or coconut
They are considered one of the best charcoals for making moonshine. You can get birch charcoal by burning branches in a fire. Then the coals are sent to a metal container and tightly closed with a lid. Without oxygen, the coals stop smoldering and quickly go out. Similarly, material is obtained from walnuts or coconut.
The latter product has small pores and very low consumption. Therefore, it is quite advantageous to use it. The only drawback is that acquiring coconuts and preparing sorbent from them is a rather expensive pleasure.
Birch charcoal cleaning
Large pieces of burnt birch are necessarily crushed into smaller ones. Then they are used, like activated carbon, for cleaning moonshine with charcoal at home or added to the column to filter the drink.
The finished device can be purchased at a specialty store. This equipment is quite inexpensive and affordable for any moonshiner. Approximately one liter of beverage per hour passes through this column.
Quick way
As soon as the time comes to cleanse the drink, find a stump of trees such as beech, cedar or birch. Making charcoal for cleaning moonshine with your own hands is quite simple. Parts of the tree should be cleaned of bark and cut off unnecessary branches. Then the wood is set on fire and, as soon as the coals are formed, they are pulled out of the fire. Burned wood should be put into the container very quickly and covered with a lid. Thus, there will be no access to oxygen, and the coals will cool off quite quickly. Then they are kneaded to a powdery state and poured into an alcoholic drink. Coal powder must be in moonshine for at least seventy hours. Then the liquid is filtered through gauze with cotton wool.
Other methods
In addition to cleaning moonshine with charcoal, you can use other fairly popular methods.
- Sometimes moonshiners use milk powder. It perfectly removes the smell and softens the drink.
- Baking soda and salt effectively remove fusel oils.
- A beaten egg works no worse than milk powder. It also gives softness to the liquid and brightens it well.
- Crusts of rye bread are able to slightly color the moonshine and give it a pleasant aroma.
Nevertheless, the best way is still cleaning the moonshine with coal at home.
Terms of use
Before proceeding with a wood sorbent purification, some features of this method should be considered:
- Its quantity should be limited. If you overdo it with coal, it will affect the taste of moonshine not for the better.
- This type of cleaning is very well suited for moonshine made using ordinary baker's yeast. As a rule, such a drink has a rather specific smell and a cloudy color. Thanks to charcoal and activated carbon, its quality is noticeably improved.
- It is extremely important to use a high-quality sorbent for cleaning moonshine with charcoal. For example, in a pharmacy you can buy a product of animal origin. In this case, the drink is obtained with a specific taste and smell. To prevent this, the sorbent should be checked on a small amount of moonshine.
- You can’t keep coal in the drink for too long. It has the ability to return back all the resins that it has previously filtered.
- Before using charcoal, it should be washed under running water to wash away dirt and dust.
- When placing whole, poorly crushed tablets in a liquid, it should be borne in mind that the composition will have to be constantly removed and shaken, otherwise a complete cleaning will not work.
- If for some reason the sorbent does not help, then a second distillation should be done.
- The cleaning of moonshine with charcoal for barbecue has proven itself well. The resulting drink will have a light aroma of smoked meats and the smell of a fire.
Thus, you can use any coal that is only at hand. In addition, there are other ways, in addition to cleaning moonshine with charcoal, which have also proven themselves well among fans of moonshine brewing.