How to make cognac at home from grapes and moonshine

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 a private way. You too can try to reproduce this technology, armed with patience and some equipment.

First of all you will need raw materials. For cognac, only white grape varieties serve as raw materials . The best variety is Uni Blanc, but it's in France, and we can use the Gift of Magarach, Ekaterinodar, Levokumsky and Scarlet Terek.

From the collected berries pressed juice, and you need to try to do it so as not to damage the bones that give bitterness and astringency. The juice is fermented without the addition of sugar, and then distilled twice. The product so obtained is poured into oak barrels and left in them for at least two years. Barrels should be only oak, no linden here will do, as only in oak contains those same substances that give the drink its taste and aroma. Two years is the minimum period, the maximum exposure is 70 years. After that the drink is bottled and ... again sent for storage. But this is not cognac. After aging, you need to mix several alcohols of different ages - the resulting mix and will be proudly called cognac.

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

Much easier and several times faster you can make a surrogate - an imitation cognac. Of course, it will not have the same flavor and flavor as French and Armenian drinks, but it will be easy to drink, and you will not be threatened with poisoning, as if you risked buying brandy in a frankly "left" eatery.

How to make brandy from cognac

We will not talk about how to make moonshine. This is a topic for a separate conversation, and besides it is difficult to imagine that a person who decided 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 is better to drive the moonshine out of the grapes. Before you make cognac at home, you will need to stock up an oak bark. Collect it better yourself, and do not buy ready-made packages at the pharmacy. The fact is that you need a spring bark, and in the pharmacy you can not be sure. In June, harvest the bark from thin branches of oak and dry it well in the shade. A half liter of moonshine requires three tablespoons of bark, two teaspoons of burnt sugar, a pair of clove inflorescences and a fifth of nutmeg. The latter must be ground in a mortar or grated. You can add a little bit of vanilla. All this is filled 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 feeding it to the table you need to strain the liquid and pour it into the bottles. If you have "branded" capacities at home, and you put sniffers (cognac glasses) on the table, then it is possible that you will be able to issue your product for the products of let not French, but industrial winemakers.