How to make cognac at home from grapes and moonshine

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Let's talk about how to make cognac at home. In principle, there is nothing impossible in this - the first cognacs in France were made in private. You too can try to replicate this technology with patience and some equipment.

First of all, you will need raw materials. For cognac, only white grape varieties serve as raw materials. Uni blanc is considered the best variety, but this is in France, and here you can use Gift of Magarach, Yekaterinodar, Levokumsky and Scarlet Tersky.

Juice is squeezed out of the collected berries, and you need to try to do it in such a way as not to damage the bones that give bitterness and astringency. The juice is fermented without adding sugar, and then distilled twice. The product obtained in this way is poured into oak barrels and left in them for at least two years. Barrels should only be oak, no linden will do here, since only oak contains the very substances that give the drink its taste and aroma. Two years isthe minimum term, the maximum exposure is 70 years. After that, the drink is bottled and … again sent to storage. But it's not cognac either. After aging, you need to mix several spirits of different ages - the resulting mix will be proudly called cognac.

Now you know in general terms how to make cognac at home, but the question is, do you have the strength and patience for this? This is a very laborious process.

It is much easier and several times faster to prepare a surrogate - an imitation of cognac. Of course, it will not have the same taste and aroma that French and Armenian drinks differ in, but it will be easy to drink, and you will not be in danger of poisoning, as if you risked buying cognac in an openly "left" eatery.

How to make cognac from moonshine

We won't talk about how to make moonshine. This is a topic for a separate discussion, and besides, it is difficult to imagine that a person who decides to learn how to make cognac at home does not know how to get alcohol.

In the most extreme case, you can buy food alcohol, or even just vodka, but it's better to drive moonshine out of grapes. Before you make cognac at home, you will need to stock up on oak bark. It is better to collect it yourself, rather than buying ready-made packages in a pharmacy. The fact is that you need spring bark, and you can’t be sure about the pharmacy collection. In June, gather bark from thin oak branches and dry well.her in the shade. One and a half liters of moonshine requires three tablespoons of bark, two teaspoons of burnt sugar, a couple of clove inflorescences and a fifth of nutmeg. The latter must be crushed in a mortar or grated. You can add a little vanilla. All this is poured with moonshine and left in a dark place for two weeks.

Now you know how to make cognac at home. It remains to add that before serving it on the table, you need to strain the liquid and pour it into bottles. If you have “branded” containers at home, and you put sniffers (cognac glasses) on the table, then it is possible that you will be able to pass off your product as the product of industrial winemakers, if not French.