Polugar is an alcohol that was drunk in Russia before vodka. But this is not its relative, but rather a distant relative of whiskey, since this drink is a grain distillate (for which it was nicknamed bread wine). Bread wine is made from wheat, barley or rye malt and has a higher strength than fruit wines - 38.5%.

History of bread wine

In the 15th-19th centuries, no one would have wondered what polugar was, because every Russian person knew this alcohol in those days. It was especially popular among aristocratic landowners who, sparing no grain reserves, prepared bread wine, keeping family recipes secret.

The first written mention of this distillate dates back to 1517, but it is known that the drink was produced earlier. It became officially called a polugar in 1842 with light hand Nicholas I. The name is closely related to testing the quality of bread wine - poured into a special ladle and set on fire, the wine had to burn out exactly half.

Landowners not only produced and drank grain wine own production, but also sold it, thereby reducing the consumption of vodka. The monopoly on the sale of vodka belonged to Tsarist Russia, therefore, by order of the Minister of Finance S.Yu. Since 1895, Witte has banned the production and sale of bread wine.

Fashion for old recipes Alcoholic drinks were also included. Some recipes were found, restored and tested. Thus passed the revival of bread wine, which in the last decade has again begun to enjoy, albeit not its former, popularity.

The difference between polugar and vodka and whiskey

Those who have tried bread wine claim that it is an alcohol that resembles a cross between whiskey and vodka. Is this so, the table will help you figure it out:

Insignia		Whiskey	Vodka
the basis	wheat, barley, rye	barley	anything that contains starch
taste	Malt, bread	malty, peated, smoky	alcoholic
color	absent	golden, amber	absent
production method	distillation	distillation	rectification
presence of impurities	fusel oils	fusel oils	does not contain
excerpt	replaced by filtration of milk, bread and charcoal	in wooden barrels from 1 to 10 years (and even more)	2-3 days of stabilization after diluting alcohol

As you can see, bread wine is a drink that is unlike anything else, but has more similarities with whiskey or than with vodka.

Types of bread wines

• Rye polugar - smells rye bread, prepared from selected rye using triple distillation. Polugar rye is cleaned egg white and birch charcoal. Sometimes it is aged in oak barrels, and then the rye polugar is very reminiscent of scotch.
• Wheat malt polugar – smells like rustic white bread; undergoes double or triple distillation. Wheat polugar is soft and pleasant to the taste.
• Buckwheat polugar is transparent, with a honey smell. Buckwheat polugar is prepared from buckwheat malt using double or triple distillation.
• Polugar malt is a modern mixed alcohol from wheat and rye malt. IN different recipes the composition includes: pepper and garlic, cumin and coriander, honey. The Krivach brand has been brought to 41% and 61% strength.

How to drink and what to eat

Bread wine is drunk from lafitniks - small glasses with a capacity of 50-150 ml or shot glasses, pre-cooled to 8-10°C. Traditionally, the glass was not tipped down to drink in one sip - the wine was savored. Only leisurely drinking reveals its originality.

Alcohol will help to emphasize good snack, consisting of meat and pickles. It goes well with all traditional Russian snacks that go with vodka, including jellied meat, lard and pickled cucumbers.

Polugar recipe

By purchasing Old Russian alcohol in a store, you can easily determine its quality. It is enough to rub a couple of drops of bread wine between your palms until you feel the aroma of the bread. It will just be a pity if the money has already been paid, but the drink turns out to be a fake.

To prevent such a situation from happening, gourmet moonshiners have learned to prepare polugar on their own. This is how a recipe appeared, created from ancient records found by historian Boris Rodionov, taking into account modern realities.

Prepare:

• malt (wheat, barley, rye or a combination thereof) – 5 kilos
• yeast – 300 gr. pressed or 50 gr. dry
• clean water, preferably bottled or spring (well) water - 20 liters
• thermometer (up to 100°C)

You need to prepare it like this:

Stage 1. Malt preparation. The raw material in bread wine will be well-dried malt (rye malt is most often used). It can be sprouted from grain or purchased and then ground (not into flour). The grains of ground malt should resemble chaff.

Stage 2. Mashing or saccharification. At this stage, the starch that contains the malt will break down into sugars. For this to happen, the water must first be boiled and then cooled to 55°C. A thermometer will help determine the exact temperature. Deviation from the indicated temperatures by more than 2 degrees in both directions can lead to failure - the malt will not saccharify and the wine yield will be extremely small.

Crushed malt is poured into the prepared water and mixed. There should be no lumps, especially at the bottom of the container. Next, heat the mass to 62-64°C, close the lid and wrap it up. The temperature of the wort should be maintained around 61-65°C for one and a half hours. Therefore, every 15-20 minutes you need to measure it and, if necessary, slightly warm the wort.

Stage 3. Fermentation. At this stage, the yeast must convert the sugar into alcohol. To do this, the sugared wort must be cooled quickly (in 20-30 minutes) to a temperature of 27-29°C. This is done by placing the mash container in a bath filled with pieces of ice, snow, etc.

Next, the mass is placed in a fermentation vat. Dissolved yeast (as recommended on the package) is also added here. The composition is mixed, closed with a lid with a water seal and sent to a room with the conditions necessary for fermentation: no light, temperature 20-27°C (without sudden changes).

Fermentation most often lasts 1-2 weeks. However, it may end in 4-5 days. Therefore, the condition of the mash must be monitored daily, and at the same time, the thick grain mass must be knocked off from its surface. Only after you are completely convinced that the mash has “spent time” should you start distilling it. The taste of the finished mash will not taste sugar, it will be bitter, and at the same time lighten.

Stage 4. First distillation. At this stage, raw alcohol is obtained. To do this, we first filter the mash and then pour it into the distillation cube. There will be no division into factional components at this stage. Distillation stops when the output alcohol contains at least 25-23% alcohol.

After the first distillation, the alcohol turns out to be cloudy and smell sharp. This is how it should be – this is just the beginning.

Stage 5. Second distillation. At this stage, the initial release of alcohol from the harmful substances it contains occurs. Mix all the alcohol obtained at the previous stage, measure the strength and, slowly pouring in water and stirring, bring it to 20%. We pour the liquid into the cube and distill it again, separating in the process the “heads” (12-15% yield - in our case, about 180-200 ml), the “body” (the alcohol that follows the “heads” with a strength of at least 40%) and “ tails" (alcohol with a strength below 40%). We get rid of the non-drinkable, browned “heads”; only the middle part of the distillate is involved in the further process.

According to ancient recipes, malt wine was always distilled and refined three times. If you decide not to stop at double distillation, and do everything as before, then you will need to combine the “body” and “tails” obtained during the second distillation, dilute the composition again to 20% strength and carry out a third distillation. In its process, the alcohol is again divided into fractions using the technology described above.

Stage 6. Cleaning. At this stage, the final elimination of harmful impurities occurs, the formation of the taste and aroma of the wine. Typically, the resulting distillate is purified with egg white and milk, bread and charcoal. However, it is not necessary to use all methods - you can stop at one or two.

Mandatory condition: before purification, alcohol is diluted with water to 45-47%. So he will not lose significantly in strength (contents pure alcohol will not fall below 40%), and the “harmfulness” will be absorbed better.

Stage 7. Dilution, stabilization, storage. The purified distillate is diluted with water to the traditional strength of 38.5%, bottled, corked and sent for a couple of days (or better yet, a week) in a cool room or in the refrigerator. During this time, the taste of the drink stabilizes.

According to this description, you should have approximately 3-3.5 liters of soft and aromatic bread wine. However, the output figure may differ from the indicated one. This depends on the quality of the constituent components and compliance with temperatures during saccharification.

The desire to improve, updating wine experiments with modern nuances, is only one vector of the development path. It’s much more interesting to find out more about the traditions of antiquity by trying to adapt some outlandish old recipe to the realities of our time. Great option will become grain wine, which was favorite drink still distant 17th century. Let's plunge into the past - take a trip back in time!

Bread is the head of everything

Today, among alcohol connoisseurs, bread is often associated with vodka, moonshine or beer, and few people know that it was bread wine, or polugar – its original name – that came first. The first recipe, according to historians, could have appeared back in the 15th century. Until the end of the 17th century it gained universal recognition, even in the 19th century it gained various variations by strength (from 38 to 75°): polugar, foamy wine, three-proof wine, four-proof alcohol, double alcohol.

The popularity of this drink is confirmed by the lines of many works of Russian fiction of those times, the characters of which are not averse to touching the “beautiful”.

The name “polugar” comes from an outdated technology for determining the strength of a drink - annealing, which involved determining the amount of evaporated alcohol under the influence of heat. Since the grain wine “burned out” by half (up to 38°), they began to call it “half-burnt”; Over time, the word was simplified - and this is how polugar arose.

In 1895, polugar was banned from producing independently, monopolizing the production of the drink, which was considered the standard of strength. After technology and exact recipe became inaccessible, a misconception arose that polugar can be obtained by diluting alcohol with a quarter of water.

Depending on the type of grain used during the preparation of the alcoholic drink, the polugar can be malt, wheat or barley. Each case requires a careful approach to the selection of the main ingredients, namely cereals (they must be recent) and water (untreated spring water is best).

Dictionary

• Wort is a mixture of the main ingredient and water aged for a certain period;
• Braga – wort after the end of fermentation;
• Raw alcohol is alcohol obtained during distillation without purification;
• Moonshine cube (distiller, moonshine still) – a device for distillation; alcohol precipitates from the steam formed by heating the mash;
• Distillation (distillation) is the process of evaporation with the aim of condensing the resulting vapor.

Recipe for old polugar

For those who are familiar with the simple technology of making wine at home, but are unfamiliar with moonshine still, this recipe may not seem entirely clear. Although in reality all the complexity is dissipated, and knowledge, experience and high-quality work are multiplied.

Proportions

• malt – 1 kg;
• water – 4.5 l;
• yeast - 1 pack. (for sourdough);
• milk, egg or bread (for cleaning).

Cooking process

Polugar looks quite ordinary, but the taste that lies in its strength and bread origin puts it on par with other noble alcoholic drinks. The advantage of this bread wine is its proximity to people for more than 200 years.

If you take this recipe with its proportions, but instead of distilling the polugar, use a standard water seal used for the production of most wines at home, you will get bread beer - great drink from mash.

Polugar stronger

If you want to get a polugar with a strength above 40°, that is, stronger than a classic polugar, we offer next recipe, which will differ in few but quite important points.

Ingredients

Let's start cooking

This drink reveals its taste characteristics in combination with meat or fish dishes, helping them also replenish with new shades.

Finally

Whatever the recipe turns out to be, whatever the result, still preparing alcohol at home has always been and will be an excellent hobby for lovers of various experiments with tangible products. Today you prepared bread wine, but tomorrow it may already be single malt whiskey or new variety beer, not only making you proud of your work, but also bringing a lot of joy to the surrounding tasting enthusiasts!

The Chronicle of 1517 is the first source that mentions the use of polugar, but it may have been prepared in Rus' before.

Bread wine, the recipe of which goes back centuries, is a strong alcoholic drink (35-50°), prepared by distillation grain mash.

Let's find out how it differs from regular vodka, and how to make this yourself natural drink for home feasts!

Why is bread wine called polugar

This wine is called bread wine because it is prepared on the basis of cereals: rye, barley, wheat and others. And they began to call him polugar back in tsarist times, and here’s why.

Origin of the name polugara

Then optimal strength bread wine was 38.5° - no more, no less! To ensure that the drink was of exactly this strength, in 1842 Nicholas I issued a “Decree on testing alcohol for strength using the original method.”

The wine was poured into a copper container and set on fire: if it was of high quality, half of the liquid should have burned out. Hence the name of the wine – “polugar”, which means “half burnt”.

Not a single royal feast was complete without polugar with a pronounced rye aroma!

For four centuries (from the 16th to the 19th), polugar had the status of a national Russian alcoholic drink. It was produced on any estate, and it could be bought in any drinking establishment, be it a tavern or a tavern.

What is the difference between bread wine and vodka?

Polugar differs from vodka in the following nuances:

1. Production process

Polugar is obtained through distillation, which allows you to preserve the taste of wheat, rye or other grain raw materials. Real bread wine smells and tastes like bread.

Vodka alcohol, for the production of which we use distillation columns, has neither the taste nor the smell of the original raw materials.

2. The process of drinking

Vodka is drunk cold and in one gulp, poured into shot glasses. Polugar is cooled to 10°C, poured into 100-150 gram lafitniks and sipped to enjoy the taste.

But the appetizer can be the same for both vodka and polugar! They are good to eat with pickles, sauerkraut, dishes with garlic and meat, traditional Russian snacks.

The taste of polugar is influenced by many factors: what the malt is made of, what quality of water and yeast are used, what material the devices for its production are made of, how correctly the temperature regime when mashing, like wine is cleared...

And, of course, the correctness of the polugar recipe is important! Let's learn how to make bread wine at home according to an old recipe.

Polugar: a recipe for an ancient intoxicating drink

Ingredients

• — 24 l + -
• Rye malt – 6 kg + -
• — 60 g + -

It is better to use spring or bottled water. If there is no rye malt, we use wheat, buckwheat or barley.

We also stock up on a thermometer to maintain the required temperature when mashing the wort.

How to make bread wine

The preparation of bread wine consists of the following processes:

Malt crushing

Grind well-dried malt using a grain crusher. It should not be ground into flour: it is advisable to obtain a medium grind.

Mashing

Pour water into a saucepan and bring to a boil. Now we proceed to saccharification, or mashing, to break down the malt starch into sugars that can ferment:

1. Cool the water to 55°C.
2. Pour the ground malt into the pan and mix thoroughly to obtain a lump-free mixture.
3. Heat the mixture (mash) to 63°C, stirring it all the time.
4. Close the pan, insulate it and keep the temperature at 62-65 degrees for 1.5 hours.

This temperature must be maintained throughout the saccharification process to ensure successful mashing and fermentation of the wort.

Wort fermentation

Quickly cool the sugared wort to 26-28 degrees, placing the pan in a container with very cold water. You can also buy a chiller and use it to cool the wort. Go ahead:

1. Pour the wort into a bottle where it will ferment.
2. Pour in the yeast diluted according to the instructions.
3. We install a water seal on the bottle.
4. We put the bottle with the wort in a warm place where the temperature is kept at 20-25°C.

The fermentation process can take from 4 days to a couple of weeks: it depends on the maintained temperature and the quality of the raw materials. The finished mash tastes bitter and becomes lighter.

At the same time, carbon dioxide bubbles cease to be released. If so, the fermentation process is complete.

Distillation of moonshine, or raw alcohol

We strain the mash and pour it into a still for distillation. We distill the mash for the first time at full power in order to expel more moonshine, so we don’t take away the tails and heads. We complete the selection when the stream of alcohol has a strength of 15-20°. As a result, we get opaque and sharp-smelling moonshine, or raw alcohol.

Purification of raw alcohol

To clean it of excess fractions, we proceed as follows:

1. Pour the moonshine into the cube and dilute it with water to 20-30°.
2. We select the head fraction drop by drop at low power in a volume of 150 to 200 ml.

You can't try this liquid unless you want to end up in a hospital bed!

Then we increase the heating power and select the main fraction so that the strength of the moonshine in the stream is 40-45°. Afterwards, we select the “tails” into another container, which may be useful in subsequent distillations of the mash.

Distillate purification

To improve the taste and smell of polugar, you need to clean the distillate from impurities. The pungent smell that hits the nose will disappear, a bready aroma and taste will appear, the wine will become soft, pleasant and easy to drink.

To achieve this, we dilute the distillate clean water up to 45-50 degrees and clean it by passing it through a carbon filter. To bring the bread wine to readiness, dilute pure moonshine to a strength of 38.5°. The output should be about three liters of excellent half-gar.

We seal it in glass bottles and keep it for a week.

Then you can start tasting delicious homemade polugar, having a friendly feast.

Now you know how to make your own bread wine, the recipe for which has been tested for centuries! All that remains is to engage in the process of making the polugar and enjoy the result.

Bread wine (half-gar)– an alcoholic drink with a strength of 35-50°, obtained by distilling grain mash. The first mention of it was in the chronicles of 1517. The drink received the name “bread wine” because the main ingredients for its production are cereals: wheat, rye, barley, buckwheat and others.

Since ancient times, the recipe for bread wine has been simple. Production of malt: grain germination, drying and grinding. Malt ground into flour was diluted hot water until the jelly becomes thick and add starter (yeast). Then, for 2-7 days, the wort fermented and distilled two or three times. The entire technology for producing bread wine follows the recipe for whiskey production.

In tsarist times, polugar was considered the most popular and best alcoholic drink. The strength of the polugar was exactly 38.5°, and the taste had a rye aroma. Nicholas I in 1842 issued a Decree according to which alcohol was tested for strength in a special way. Bread wine was poured into a copper vessel and set on fire; a high-quality polugar should have burned out by half. That’s why the name came from – “semi” – “gar”. For four centuries, from the 16th to the 19th centuries, bread wine was considered the national Russian alcoholic drink. Bread wine was sold in all taverns and taverns, and its production was established in every estate.

The taste of bread wine depends on many nuances: the quality of the water, malt composition, the quality of the yeast, the material of the equipment, the correct temperature pauses during the mashing stages, an important stage was the purification of the bread wine and, of course, the correct recipe.

Recipe for classic polugar – bread wine

The recipe for making polugar described below is based on notes from old books; any distiller can easily repeat it at home.

Compound:

• Rye malt – 6 kg;
• Water – 24 l;
• dry yeast – 50-60 gr. (350 g pressed).

In addition to the specified malt, you can use any malt in the recipe: barley, wheat or buckwheat. Rye is a classic raw material for making bread wine. You can prepare a mixture of malts. It is advisable to use spring water for mash; if this is not possible, then you can take bottled or tap water passed through a filter. You will definitely need a thermometer to maintain the temperature while mashing the wort!

Manufacturing process:

1. Preparation. For polugar, you need well-dried malt; you can use store-bought or home-made malt. It needs to be ground into cereal in a grain crusher. The grinding should be of medium fraction, do not try to grind the grain into flour, problems may arise in the future.
   
2. Saccharification. Pour water into a saucepan of suitable volume and heat on gas until boiling. Begin the mashing process (saccharification), in which, under the influence of a certain temperature, the starch in the malt grains is broken down into fermentable sugars. Cool the boiling water to a temperature of 55°, add ground malt and stir the mixture thoroughly so that there are no lumps. Raise the temperature of the wort to 62-64° degrees, constantly stirring the mash. Then cover the pan with a lid, preferably insulate it and maintain a temperature break of 62-65°C for an hour and a half. Attention : When mashing, it is necessary to maintain the recommended temperature in the recipe throughout the entire process, otherwise saccharification of the wort may go poorly and in the future the yield of raw alcohol will be small or the wort will not ferment at all.
   
3. Fermentation. After saccharification, the wort must be quickly cooled to the yeast pitching temperature of 26-28°; at home, this can be done by placing the pan in a bathtub with ice water, or using a special device - a chiller. Pour the cooled wort into a fermentation container. Add yeast, previously prepared according to instructions. Install a water seal on the fermentation container and place it in a warm place with a temperature of 20-25° for fermentation. Typically, malt mash fermentation lasts 4-14 days depending on the raw materials and ambient temperature. You can check the readiness of the mash by taste, it should be bitter, there should be no sweetness in the taste. Also, the finished mash should lighten and the release of carbon dioxide should stop. If everything is ready, then we move on.
   
4. Obtaining raw alcohol. Strain the mash from the spent grain through a sieve or cheesecloth and pour into the distillation cube. The first distillation of the mash is done at full power. We need to get as much moonshine as possible from this distillation. During the first distillation, do not select the heads and tails; complete the selection process when the alcohol strength in the stream is 15-20°. The output will be cloudy moonshine with a pungent odor.
5. Fractional distillation. During this process, we purify the raw alcohol from unnecessary fractions. Pour the raw alcohol into a cube and dilute it with water to 20-30°. At low power, withdraw dropwise the head fraction of 150-200 ml. Under no circumstances should you drink this “pervach”; it is pure poison. After this, raise the heating power and select the main fraction (“body” or “heart”). You need to take the body up to 40-45° in the stream. Next, take the “tails” into a separate container; this fraction can be used in the next distillations of the mash.
   
6. Distillate purification. At this stage, the polugara is refined. Leftovers unpleasant odor And harmful impurities are deleted. Bread wine becomes soft with a characteristic aroma. Pre-dilute the distillate with water to 45-50° and begin cleaning. There are many recipes for distillate purification, but the most popular are: purification with charcoal, purification with milk, egg white and purification with bread.
7. Product development. Purified moonshine must be diluted to a standard degree - 38.5%. As a result, this recipe should yield 2-3 liters of homemade polugar. Pour into glass bottles and seal. Keep the bread wine in glass for a week, then you can proceed to tasting delicious drink cooked at home.
   

Types of polugara and differences from each other

Initially, malt rye polugar and malt wheat polugar were sold. The only difference between these drinks was the raw materials, and the recipe and preparation technology for both were the same. Rye Polugar is made from selected rye. Then triple distillation of the distillate is done. Purification is done with egg white and filtered through birch charcoal. Rye Polugar has the aroma of transparent bread with mild taste. Recently, it began to be made from a mixture of rye and wheat malts; garlic, pepper, honey, coriander, and cumin were added to the recipes. A new version polugara “Krivach” with a strength of 61° and 41°.

The price of a good vodka is very high, so in order to avoid counterfeiting, our ancestors determined the quality of vodka as follows. A little bread wine was poured into a dry palm and then the liquid was vigorously rubbed with both palms until completely dry. Then they sniffed the palm, and if the drink was of high quality, then the subtlest notes of bread could be felt in the smell.

The difference between polugar and vodka

There are many differences. First production: alcohol for vodka is made in , it contains no impurities, tastes or foreign odors. Bread wine is made by distillation, which retains the taste of the original raw material. A high-quality polugar has bright taste and the smell of bread.

It is customary to drink bread wine chilled to 8-10° from special faceted glasses (lafitniks) with a volume of 100-150 ml. Unlike vodka, polugar should not be drunk in one gulp, but sipped in small sips to enjoy the taste of the homemade drink.

You can enjoy bread wine with the same snack as vodka. The drink goes well with traditional Russian meat dishes, salty, sour, garlicky snacks.

Polugar is a product from the “Everything new is well forgotten old” series. It was this drink that, a century and a half ago, our ancestors accompanied their meals and treated their guests to. But today this word means nothing to most of us. The invention of rectification and, as a result, the production of vodka, which received a state monopoly, replaced polugar, traditional in the times of Tsarist Russia.

What is polugar

Polugar or bread wine is a double-distilled grain alcohol produced in Russia from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The traditional strength was 38.5°. Raw materials for strong drink Wheat, rye, barley, and less often buckwheat were served. Because of this cereal base, the drink for a long time called “bread wine”, later called polugar.

The second name “polugar” is associated with the method of measuring strength or, as our ancestors said, “kindness”. For this purpose, special devices were invented: a flask and an annealer. A half-gar was set on fire in the annealer and the burnt volume of liquid was determined by the marks applied. To meet the mandatory strength of 38.5°, the alcohol had to burn out exactly half: “half” - “gar”. The volume and measuring scale of the annealer itself were determined by decree of Emperor Nicholas I, as we would say today, standardized.

Polugar appeared much earlier than vodka and differed from it for the better:

• grain crops served as raw materials;
• were used only natural ways cleaning: bread, coal, milk;
• the finished distillate had the aroma of the original raw material.

Bread wine recipe

Based on ancient sources, culinary and economic books from tsarist times, modern gastroenthusiasts and historians of everyday life have tried to restore the recipe and production of bread wine. After translating traditional weights into modern ones and minor adaptations, we got a fairly simple recipe for making bread loaf:

• malt (from rye, barley or wheat) - 2.5 kg;
• distilled water - 10 liters;
• dry yeast - 25 grams or pressed yeast - 150 grams.

The recipe will not change depending on the type of cereal chosen as the basis for the polugar. The preparation method is the same, but the smell of the finished drink will be different. In traditional distillation in Russia, rye and wheat were most often used. They were preferred due to their soft and noble taste. Barley and buckwheat were used much less frequently. And often not in the form of a single variety, but as an additive to decorate wheat or rye polugar.

No less attention was paid to water. In original times, they took water from a well or spring. Nowadays, bottled is suitable for home use. Tap water can be passed through a filter and the sediment allowed to settle.

How to make your own bread wine

Malt preparation

You can get malt different ways: germinate yourself or buy ready-made. The first method is more labor-intensive and requires skills. There are many widely available instructions for sprouting and malting grains, with which you can make a completely authentic polugar.

In the absence of time for such delicate manipulations, ready-made malt can be purchased. It is sold in specialized stores or on the market. Many grain producers also produce malt. Be careful: shelf life green malt- 3 days, white - several months.

The malt will need to be ground to a medium-sized grain. A grain crusher is suitable for this, food processor, blender. There is no need to turn it into flour.

Mashing malt

Mashing was a method of saccharification of starch. To decompose starch polysaccharide into simple sugars, suitable for feeding yeast, used only water and a special temperature regime. At this stage, it is necessary to control the temperature with an accuracy of one degree. Therefore, the use of a thermometer is mandatory.

1. Place all the water in a large saucepan on the fire and bring to a boil. Take a thermometer and wait for the water to cool to 55-60°C.
2. Time to add malt. Let's pour it in in small portions, constantly stirring the contents of the pan. It is necessary to avoid the formation of lumps and burning of the mass.
3. Now bring the temperature of the contents of the pan to 65°C and close the lid.
4. Now our task is to maintain the temperature of the “malt porridge” within 60-65°C for an hour and a half. To do this, the pan can be tightly wrapped in a blanket. At temperatures below 60°C, starch will not break down completely, and a small amount of sugar will affect the quality of fermentation.

Wort fermentation

At this stage, we finish preparing the wort and ferment it. Cool the brewed malt to 26-28°C - a temperature comfortable for yeast activity. We activate the yeast according to the instructions attached to it and add it to the wort. It is better to do this immediately using the container in which the mash will stand.

We put the mash under the water seal and put it in a dark place with a temperature of 20-28°C. The average fermentation time is 2-3 weeks. Throughout this time, the mash must be stirred. Do this quickly and always with a clean object (hands) so as not to introduce bacteria.

By the end of the second week of fermentation, you need to start monitoring signs of readiness of the mash. The taste of the mash turns from sweet to bitter. The yeast precipitates and the surface becomes lighter. The surface calms down: the processes of hissing and foam formation stop.

First distillation

When all the signs indicate that the mash is ready, you can proceed to distillation. We drain the spent mash from the sediment and filter through a cotton-gauze filter. This will help remove large sediment from the remaining malt.

We distill the mash at low temperatures to extract the maximum amount of alcohol. We do not divide into factions. We drive out the alcohol until almost last straw until the strength in the stream drops below 30°. The resulting raw alcohol has a cloudy color and a specific smell.

It is necessary to measure the volume and strength of the resulting distillate. Multiplying these two indicators, we get the pure alcohol content. This will be required in the next step.

Second distillation

Before re-distillation dilute the raw material to 20°. To clean the drink from impurities and odors, we separate fractions during the second distillation. Selection of heads will help get rid of poisonous technical alcohols. The number of heads is 12-15% of the pure alcohol content.

The field of heads is expelled by the body - the main part of the distillate. This is bread wine. Its amount is about 70% of pure alcohol in the raw material after the first distillation. We expel the body to 40° strength in the stream. Everything else is tails and is not used in the semi-garden.

Polugar cleaning

Before the start of cleansing activities, the bread wine is diluted to 45-50°. In this case, the molecular bonds are weaker than in alcohol, and substances bind more easily.

For cleaning polugara only use natural remedies that do not affect the taste and smell of the drink: coal, milk, bread crumb, egg yolk. The methods are practically no different from each other. You need to mix one and a half with an adsorbent that will absorb the remaining impurities.

The only difference is the method of using coal. Here, in addition to mixing, you can build coal column. You will need a funnel and cotton pads.

Finishing touches

We bring the drink to a nominal strength of 38.5°. Now the finished bread wine can be bottled for future storage. By the way, you can use polugar after 3-4 days. Unlike its famous relatives cognac and whiskey, it does not require long aging.

Half-gars from different malts differ from each other taste qualities. Wheat reminiscent of the taste of freshly baked white bread. Polugar rye smells like rye crust and butter. Buckwheat drink is considered unique taste for large originals. Each moonshiner will eventually be able to find his own taste.

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