The best purification of moonshine from fusel oils. How to clean homemade moonshine from fusel oils

Any business requires skill and a competent approach. You need to be able to prepare homemade moonshine with your own hands so that it does not have an unpleasant taste and smell. A strong alcoholic drink must be cleaned of fusel oils and harmful impurities contained in it, which affect the quality of the final product and can cause poisoning.

How is moonshine cleaned? There are a lot of ways: starting from the well-known potassium permanganate and charcoal, ending with black bread and vegetable oil. One condition: to effectively clean the alcohol distillate, regardless of the selected absorbent, it will turn out if the strength is not too high. Therefore, before processing, it is recommended to dilute it to 40, maximum 50 degrees.

Cleaning moonshine with milk

Cleaning moonshine with milk will help to remove the characteristic smell, improve the taste of the product. It is a safe, reliable, easy-to-perform method. It is allowed to be combined with other methods of cleaning home-made moonshine. It is absolutely environmentally friendly and does not require double distillation.

Purification of moonshine from fusel oils using ordinary milk is performed in the following order:

1. Pour skimmed pasteurized milk (100 ml) into a container with alcohol (10 l) with a strength of 40-50 degrees.
2. Mix. Close the can with a lid.
3. To withstand 5-7 days in a dark cool place. Mix the solution daily (shake).
4. After the set time, carefully drain from the sediment (white flakes), filter through cotton wool, flannel cloth.

To make the cleaning of moonshine more efficient, you can crush and pour charcoal (birch) or coconut charcoal powder on cotton wool before filtering, which absorbs small molecules of fusel oils well.

If the distillate has become cloudy, which occurs when using unseparated homemade milk, it must be subjected to a combined cleaning. In this case, the best option is to clean the moonshine with activated carbon.

50 g of coal are taken per liter, crushed into powder, poured into moonshine. Insist 7 days, stirring twice a day. Drained from the sediment, passed through the filtration material (cotton wool, blotting paper). After double cleaning, the taste becomes softer, the pungent smell disappears.

Cleaning moonshine with soda and salt

Quick cleaning of moonshine from toxic impurities and fusel oils is performed with ordinary baking soda. The advantage of this technology is its short duration, since the preparation of the absorbent solution and the cleaning process itself takes less than a day. The disadvantage is that home-made moonshine, when cleaned with soda, can not be freed from all harmful impurities, which affects the taste of the product. Part of the fusel oils remains in the liquid, and therefore requires additional purification, filtration, distillation.

The technology for cleaning moonshine with baking soda is simple:

1. For a liter of strong drink (40-50 degrees), take 10 grams of soda dissolved in pure water (100 ml). Proportions cannot be broken!
2. Pour the alkaline solution into a can (bottle) with moonshine.
3. Cork, shake well.
4. Let stand 30-45 minutes.
5. Shake again, set aside the capacity of hours for 14 in a cool dark place.
6. Drain carefully from the sediment, filter through cotton wool, folded tightly in several layers. In a watering can on top of cotton wool, it is advisable to once put powdered charcoal or activated charcoal.

A slightly modified version of this method is cleaning moonshine with soda and salt. The practicality of the method lies in the fact that salt softens the water. The taste and smell of the product does not change.

Cleaning moonshine with potassium permanganate

The combined method works much more efficiently, namely, cleaning moonshine with potassium permanganate and soda. Soda removes acetic acid, manganese - fusel oils. Plus, it takes less processing time.

Practice

To exclude from the composition of all harmful substances formed as a result of the interaction of ethyl alcohol and manganese, repeated distillation of the product is required.

Conditions, procedure:

1. Potassium permanganate is diluted in water (200 ml). For a liter of moonshine, you need to measure 1.5 g of dry powder.
2. Prepare a soda solution as described above.
3. The alkaline solution is poured into moonshine. Stir.
4. Pour in the manganese solution, mix again.
5. Defend alcohol for half an hour.
6. Close the container with a lid, transfer to a dark cool place. Leave to infuse for 12-14 hours.
7. During this time, harmful impurities, oils will precipitate. It remains only to filter the product and re-distill.

Thanks to the combined purification, the quality of the final product improves, the unpleasant smell of alcohol disappears, and the taste becomes thinner.

Cleaning moonshine with vegetable oil

Some harmful impurities, including fusel oils, can be removed with vegetable oils. For cleaning, refined sunflower or olive oil is used. It is important that it is not fragrant, otherwise the third-party smell will turn into moonshine.

Purification technology:

1. Moonshine is diluted with water to a strength of 15-20 degrees.
2. For a liter of drink take 20 ml of sunflower oil. Pour a measured amount into moonshine.
3. The container is closed with a lid. Shake the bottle for a minute. Defend for 3-4 minutes and again intensively shake the jar for 1 minute.
4. Transfer for a day to a cold dark place.
5. Before re-distillation, after 24 hours, remove the oil film with harmful substances formed on the surface of the liquid. To do this, a funnel is lowered into a container with moonshine and a thin tube is inserted through it, to the very bottom of the can. The distillate is drained through the tube.

Purified with oil, filtered through cotton wool and charcoal, the moonshine is distilled a second time, separating the fractions at the outlet.

Cleaning moonshine with activated carbon

The next method of cleaning moonshine is the use of activated carbon. This procedure can also be done when distilling a drink. You should buy simple activated charcoal at the pharmacy. We grind the coal to a powdery state, take a funnel and put gauze into it. Pour powdered coal onto gauze and put the funnel to the place from which the moonshine drips. From this point on, cleaning begins. If the mash has already been distilled, then the coal is poured into the finished drink. Proportional ratio: 50 grams of activated carbon to one liter of moonshine. It is necessary to let the moonshine stand for 14 days, while constantly stirring the liquid, and at the end of the cleaning, strain through 3-4 gauze layers.

Cleaning moonshine with egg white

The protein of chicken eggs contains casein and albumin - substances with excellent absorbent properties. Fusel oils bound by egg white precipitate as white flakes.

Process steps:

1. Eggs are broken into a bowl (1 pc. per 0.5 l of drink). Separate the yolks from the whites.
2. Proteins are mixed with a small amount of warm water (100 ml per 1 liter of alcohol product). Beat with a mixer.
3. Pour into moonshine. Stir.
4. The distillate is settled for a week in a cold dark place.
5. In order for the sivukha to be better absorbed by the protein, the mixture is shaken daily with an interval of 12 hours. The day before filtration, do not mix - the sediment should accumulate at the bottom.
6. Filtered twice through dense layers of cotton wool.

Moonshine purified with protein can be drunk immediately, but it is recommended to re-distill it to improve the taste and smell. In addition, cleaning moonshine will be much more effective if you use a combined method - combine proteins with milk or soda.

Cleaning moonshine with rye bread

In previous years, cleaning moonshine with freshly baked rye bread was considered the most effective, practical, and safe. After such cleaning, moonshine becomes transparent, loses its specific fusel taste, characteristic smell.

With this method of cleaning, the following conditions must be met:

1. Moonshine is pre-cleaned with eggs or any other absorbent product.
2. The amount of bread per 1 liter of moonshine is always taken exactly 100 g.
3. The crust is cut off the bread, only the crumb is used.
4. For better interaction with the distillate, the crumb is crumbled.
5. Bread crumbs are poured into a bottle with moonshine, mixed.
6. The container is closed tightly, left in a dark, cool place for 2-3 days.
7. The precipitate is filtered off. Bread pulp does not need to be squeezed. The yellowish tint, in which the moonshine turned, disappears after careful filtration.

To improve the taste, it is advisable to filter the moonshine twice. Then you can start re-distillation.

Cleaning moonshine with a water filter

The easiest and fastest cleaning method is cleaning with a regular household water filter (Aquaphor, Barrier). We drive the resulting moonshine through the filter twice. Be sure to buy separate filters for moonshine.

Cleaning moonshine by freezing

And finally. Moonshine from harmful impurities can be cleaned by freezing. This is the simplest, but quite effective method. All you have to do is freeze the liquor. Water, together with harmful substances, will turn into ice, while the alcohol component will remain liquid. It is poured into another container and the process is repeated until frost forms on the walls of the can.

Sequential actions for cleaning moonshine at home

• Pour 2-3 grams of potassium permanganate into a 3-liter jar, close the container, shake and put in a steam bath up to 70 degrees. After 15 minutes, a precipitate will fall, and a clean drink must be poured.
• Add 8-10 grams of soda per 1 liter of moonshine, mix and leave to infuse for 30 minutes. After that, mix again, after 12 hours drain the drink and remove the sediment.
• Pour moonshine into a container with thick walls, for example, into a bottle of champagne, close and put in the freezer for a couple of days. Impurities with water will freeze, and pure moonshine should be poured into another bottle until the ice has melted.
• Add 50 activated charcoal tablets per 3 liters of moonshine, 2 tbsp. spoons of oak bark, a little vanillin, a little dried bird cherry, insist for a week. Then strain, put another 40 tablets of coal and let stand for a week or pass the liquid through a new water filter several times.
• Beat the protein with water or with a glass of low-fat milk, immediately pour into 1 liter of moonshine. On day 4, the composition should brighten, and impurities will settle at the bottom. Pour clean moonshine into another container.
• In order for moonshine to acquire a pleasant smell, you need to take 400 grams of birch coals per 12 liters of liquid, insist until the coal settles. The drink is carefully drained and diluted with water, crushed raisins with walnuts, parsley and apples are added, and then the moonshine is distilled a second time.

Remember, if the moonshine is cloudy, then there are fusel oils left in it.

EXCESSIVE ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION IS HARMFUL TO YOUR HEALTH

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Many lovers of not only production, but also drinking various alcoholic beverages know that some are drunk easily and do not leave a trace in the morning, while others cause a very strong hangover. The latter is the result of poisoning with harmful impurities that are transferred from raw materials during fermentation or distillation through the apparatus. Such substances are called fusel oils.

Modern equipment largely prevents the ingress of harmful substances into alcohol. But moonshine at home in most cases is far from ideal. Therefore, after preparation, mandatory cleaning of moonshine is required. The better it is done, the safer and tastier the drink will be. There are different ways to clean moonshine that are applicable at home and do not require special equipment.

In addition to fusel oils, methanol and acetaldehyde can enter the body along with low-quality alcohol. They mostly come out with the first fraction, but they can also get into the drink itself. Therefore, it is necessary to filter moonshine prepared at home with special care.

Fusel oils in moonshine, it is a secondary product formed during the fermentation of raw materials made from starch, sugar or fruit and is contained in almost all alcohol. In its pure form, they have a yellow or brown color, an oily texture and a characteristic unpleasant odor and taste.

Fusel oil consists of more than 40 different substances. They influence the effects of alcohol consumption. Most of the composition is isoamyl alcohol. It is the most dangerous for the human body. In high concentrations, this alcohol causes alcohol poisoning and severe consequences for the body, and when it comes into contact with the skin in its pure form, it leaves burns. That is why fusel oil is so harmful to the human body.

But not everything is so clear. In some alcoholic beverages, the content of these impurities determines the organoleptic properties. Without them, wine would radically change its taste, and everyone's favorite whiskey and cognac would become just alcohol with water. Therefore, beneficial properties and harm are determined by the composition and concentration of harmful substances. All toxic impurities must be removed, leaving only useful ones.

In order for the prepared moonshine to become safe for consumption and lose its unpleasant odor, it must first be filtered to remove the harmful substances formed in it. Knowing how to clean moonshine from fusel oils, the procedure can be performed quickly enough without prior experience and special equipment. Most often, natural and inexpensive products that are constantly used in everyday life are used for this.

There are two ways to check the content of fusel oils in moonshine. The first is the presence of a characteristic unpleasant odor. To detect it, you don’t even have to carefully sniff it, it is felt immediately. If the check is made after additional cleaning and it may not be so noticeable, then you need to grind a couple of drops of moonshine between your fingers, let the alcohol evaporate and sniff.

The second and most effective is combustion. A little moonshine needs to be poured into a spoon and set on fire. If, after the complete combustion of alcohol, an oily yellow liquid remains, it means that the composition of this drink contains harmful substances and additional purification is required.

How to clean moonshine from smell and harmful impurities

After the first distillation, an unpleasant odor and taste remains. How to remove these consequences? Purification of moonshine from fusel oil is most often carried out by filtration. Alcohol is poured through a filter filled with a purifying agent, or mixed with it and settled until a precipitate forms. Since moonshine can be properly cleaned using several cleaning methods, the following can be used as a filter:

• Coal.
• Potassium permanganate.
• Milk.
• Egg white.
• Freeze.
• Fruits.
• Soda.
• Oil.

In the case of freezing, there will be no precipitation, harmful substances will simply freeze to the walls of the container. And when cleansed with fruits, they absorb all the fusel oils. They are good both as an intermediate cleaning of moonshine and as a final one. The best cleaning method is coal. This filtration has earned wide popularity, as it is the fastest and moonshine is filtered better.

Only cooled and settled moonshine is taken for cleaning. The temperature must be room temperature. The second condition is that moonshine should be of low strength 25 - 30 degrees. To do this, it is diluted with purified water. This is required due to the fact that harmful substances do not come out well from strong alcohol and the better they are separated, the lower the degree of strength

After settling in all cases, except for the use of freezing and fruit, the moonshine is filtered and re-distilled to improve the result of the drink. With the correct implementation of all stages, moonshine will turn out to be “crystal” clean and without an unpleasant odor.

When using a quality moonshine and the double distillation method, purification may not be necessary. But for beginners who have not mastered all the subtleties of distillation well enough, it is better to resort to this purification method for additional safety.

Coal

Coal purification of moonshine is the fastest and most affordable. This is due to the fact that charcoal is a powerful adsorbent. It captures and absorbs all harmful substances, passing only a pure product. For charcoal filtration you will need:

• Activated carbon.
• Funnel.
• Special filters or cotton wool.

The main component is most affordable to purchase at a pharmacy. This charcoal will clean well, but it may contain impurities such as talc or starch. Due to their impact, moonshine can acquire an unpleasant bitterness. Therefore, you can use a different coal. The one used by winemakers is very good. It is sold in narrow-profile stores and is quite cheap. Such a filter will be as effective as possible and will not affect the taste and aromatic properties of the finished product.

You can make your own charcoal. Birch, cedar or beech are suitable for them. The wood is carefully cleaned of bark and core and burned at the stake. Ready coals are completely cooled, cleaned of ash and crushed for convenient use.

Moonshine can be filtered in two ways: by pouring liquid through a cleaning device or by immersing coal directly into the drink. In the first case, you need to make the filter itself. To do this, take a funnel or cut off the top of the bottle with a neck. The narrower part is laid with cotton wool, previously wrapped in gauze, coal is poured on top. We clean the moonshine through this design, pouring it several times with the replacement of the coal layer.

This method requires preliminary preparation of the cleaning agent. Coal must be washed in advance to clean it of dust. If this is not done, then after passing through the funnel, more stringent filtration of moonshine from dirty sediment will be required.

In the second case, activated carbon is crushed and added to moonshine with the calculation of 50 grams per 1 liter of liquid. This mixture should be infused for a couple of weeks, stirring occasionally. After that, the liquid settles for a week at a temperature of about 20 - 25 degrees Celsius while not moving the container, after which it must be drained several times through a cotton filter.

After all stages of purification, the liquid is re-distilled with the separation of the first and last fractions to complete the separation of fusel oils from moonshine.

Potassium permanganate

Cleaning moonshine with manganese does not require additional costs, but is considered not the most effective. A solution of potassium permanganate is not able to take away all the harmful substances formed during the fermentation process, and some of the fusel oils will remain. At the same time, other hazardous substances harmful to the body are released from the reaction of raw alcohol.

But this method is still common. For its use, 2 grams of potassium permanganate per 1 liter of alcohol are dissolved in water. At the same time, it must be necessarily cleaned and boiled. The resulting solution is poured into moonshine and left for one night. In the process of settling, a precipitate falls out, and the drink itself brightens. After that, it must be carefully drained and re-distilled.

It has long been believed that it is quite difficult to clean moonshine at home in this way. There are other, safer methods for this. For example, using fresh rye bread. It should be just recently cooked, as the old one gives an unpleasant aftertaste. For 1 liter, you need 100 grams of bread crumb without crusts. It will need to be crushed, pour into a container with moonshine and mix. The resulting mixture is infused for a couple of days. After that, the bread is removed. Such moonshine will acquire a yellow tint and in order to remove it, you will need to filter the drink a couple more times, and then re-distill.

Milk

Purification of moonshine from fusel oils with milk is used as a finishing step. If it is used in intermediate cleaning, milk residues can burn in the still and give an unpleasant taste. For this cleaning method, you need to choose only a pasteurized product with a low percentage of fat content. For 1 liter of moonshine, 10 milliliters of milk will be required. For the process to be carried out correctly, you need:

• Mix milk with moonshine that has gone through several stages of distillation.
• Seal the container.
• Insist for a week in a dark place at room temperature.
• Stir the first 5 days.
• For the last couple of days, do not touch the container until a precipitate in the form of flakes falls out.
• Pass moonshine through a cotton filter.

Purification of moonshine in this way is also used in factory production, therefore it is the most effective tool. Only in such conditions, not pure milk, but casein is added. This is a protein that is actively involved in the cleansing process.

If, after filtering, moonshine still retains a cloudy tint, then it can be removed with lemon or orange zest. For this, one fruit per two liters of alcohol is enough. To use a product with a low fat content, you can take powdered milk. It must be prepared a couple of hours before cleansing and completely cooled. If after a week the precipitate does not fall out of the flakes, you can add a little lemon juice or dry acid.

Egg white

Another eco-friendly way to clean moonshine from fusel oils at home is egg white. According to its principle of action, it is very similar to the milk method, since the composition of the egg includes casein. All harmful impurities along with it will precipitate in the form of white flakes.

For mixing, you need to take 1 protein per liter of moonshine 50% strength. Although many believe that this volume can be cleaned and 2 liters. It must be carefully separated from the yolk and mixed with a quarter of a glass of water and beat well. It should be boiled, but not hot, but warm. After that, the mixture is poured into moonshine and clogged. The container is infused in a dark, cool place for a week. The first day the mixture is shaken twice, after which it is left alone.

After precipitation, the moonshine must be carefully drained and filtered twice from the remaining white flakes. This method, as well as milk, is used for final cleaning. If it is applied between two distillations, then at the end of the process there may be a strong deterioration in the smell of moonshine with the appearance of a characteristic aroma of sulfur. Since it will not be possible to clean moonshine from this in the future, it is better to use the protein method at the very end.

Freeze

Purification of moonshine by freezing is a very controversial method. It is believed that during strong cooling, all harmful substances formed in the process of obtaining mash freeze on the walls of the container with a frost coating. Alcohol, on the other hand, has a lower freezing point and remains pure and liquid. The container is placed in a very cool place for a period of 12 hours to a day. During this time, moonshine should not only be cleansed of such harmful fusel oils, but also increase its degree of strength.

In fact, it is unlikely that it will be possible to clean alcohol from impurities in this way. Indeed, the lower the ambient temperature drops, and as a result, the drink itself, the greater the strength of the moonshine will be. Only fusel oils will not separate. And all because the higher the degree of alcohol, the worse it is cleared of harmful impurities. Some manufacturers practice this method specifically to increase the alcohol content in the drink. Therefore, to obtain high-quality and tasty alcohol, it is better to use other more proven methods.

Fruits

No worse than other natural ingredients, fruits are cleansed of harmful impurities. For normal purification, this method is used after the first distillation. And to give the drink a more persistent fruity aroma, such cleaning can be used at the last stage. For high-quality removal of fusel oils, moonshine of the first distillation of a small fortress is used, approximately 25 - 30 degrees.

For 2 - 3 liters of alcohol, 1 apple and 1 orange are added along with pre-washed and separated zest. Fruits are cut into small pieces, apples are peeled and core. One of the fruits can be replaced with fresh peeled medium-sized carrots.

The zest is removed after a day of infusion. The remaining fruits lie for another 1 - 2 days. An indicator of the completion of the process is the exfoliation of fibers from the fruit. After that, all the ingredients are removed from the moonshine, and the resulting drink is filtered before re-distillation. With the final infusion, the exposure time can be increased up to 5 days. Cleaning with fruits is a very affordable method that gives moonshine a special flavor, but not the most effective, since the quality of the resulting moonshine changes with long exposure.

Soda

This product is in every home and is very popular with distillers for cleaning moonshine after the first distillation. Its advantage is that cleaning does not require a long wait of several days. For one liter of moonshine, 10 grams of soda will be required. They need to be dissolved in half a glass of purified water. The mixture is poured into alcohol and shaken thoroughly. The container should be allowed to brew at rest for half an hour to an hour. After that, the mixture is shaken again and placed in a dark, cool place for 12 hours. During this time, it forms a precipitate, into which not only soda falls, but also harmful fusel oils absorbed by it.

Cleaned moonshine must be carefully removed and additionally filtered through a cotton or ordinary kitchen filter. After that, the alcohol is re-distilled. Although this method is fast, it is not efficient enough. Since soda cannot completely separate fusel oils, additional filtration and a second high-quality distillation are required when cleaning with soda.

Oil

This method of cleaning is also not particularly difficult, but requires great dexterity to remove. Oil envelops the harmful substances contained in moonshine with a film that raises them to the surface. Thus, the sediment does not fall out, but floats up, leaving pure moonshine in the lower part of the container.

For this method, you need refined sunflower or olive oil. Others are not suitable, as they most often have a pronounced characteristic aroma that can be transferred to the drink. For 1 liter of moonshine, 20 milliliters of oil is taken. The liquids are thoroughly mixed and left in a sealed container for half an hour. After that, the jar needs to be shaken again and left to infuse for another day in a cool place. A funnel is carefully inserted into the resulting stratified mixture and a tube is lowered through it to the moonshine, through which a clean liquid is drained.

The disadvantage of this method is that the oil, like other natural additives, cannot sufficiently remove fusel oils, and after this technique additional purification, filtration and distillation will be required.

In general, each of the methods has different efficiency and required time costs. Eco-friendly methods will always be easier to use, but not of sufficient quality for such alcohol to be considered quality and safe. Some, such as a carbon filter or oil cleaning, are a good intermediate step, but not a standalone way.

The most effective is still considered complete rectification or high-quality double distillation in compliance with all the rules and technologies. It is they who provide the highest quality and safest product to use, which does not cause a painful hangover and serious health problems.

Purification of moonshine is a rather important stage that allows you to radically improve the taste and aromatic properties of the product. After the first and second distillations, and even after the high-quality separation of the “heads” and the use of a steamer, the finished alcohol will contain a sufficient amount of oils and other benzene compounds that will spoil the aroma of moonshine.

It is worth noting that the use of serious methods for cleaning moonshine from fusel oils can make it pointless to create moonshine from fruits: aromatic oils, for which the creation of fruit or berry mash was started, will be removed after successful cleaning, and you will get almost pure alcohol. Therefore, the use of methods for cleaning moonshine at home will be appropriate only if you strive to get the purest alcohol possible; in the case of fruit, berry mash, it’s enough just not to use a steamer.

Consider the main methods of cleaning moonshine at home.

One of the main and most popular methods for cleaning moonshine is the use of activated carbon, which can be easily bought in tablets at any pharmacy. Activated charcoal is an ideal absorbent, it was created specifically to absorb various contaminants.

A distinctive feature of this material is that it contains a large number of tiny pores, therefore it has a colossally large specific surface area per unit mass (1 gram of activated carbon has about 1500 m 2 of surface). In addition, activated carbon tablets can be further crushed in a mortar, which will further increase the area of ​​​​contact with alcohol.

Purification of moonshine with activated carbon is carried out in the following two ways.

In the first case, during the distillation itself, alcohol from the refrigerator passes through a layer of activated carbon. To do this, paper is placed in the funnel, on which crushed activated carbon is poured. This method is fast enough, but not very effective: the coal in the passage is quickly contaminated, the edges remain clean. In addition, it is impossible to use a large amount of coal.

In the second case, activated carbon is added to a container with alcohol after distillation. To do this, activated carbon in the amount of 50 grams per 1 liter of alcohol is crushed into powder (a simple coffee grinder can be used), after which activated carbon is poured into the container and left for 1, 2 or even 3 weeks. After that, the alcohol must be filtered - for this, cotton wool is used between two layers of gauze, or an ordinary water filter that retains the crushed activated carbon powder.

All world companies for the production of brandy, cognac and are engaged in the purification of alcohols with charcoal. As a rule, purification is carried out directly during distillation: alcohol passes through a 3-5 meter column of coal immediately after the refrigerator, and enters the collection container already purified. It is believed that charcoal purifies alcohols and moonshine even better than activated. However, using it, of course, at home is not as convenient as activated. Well suited coal type BAU-A, BAU-MF, as well as coal "Akvasorb".

Cleaning moonshine with milk

The author of this site is extremely negative about cleaning moonshine with milk and considers this method to be unscientific rubbish. However, the high popularity of this method forces us to at least mention the very practice of some moonshiners of using milk to clean moonshine.

People who missed chemistry classes at school and who are confident in their talent as moonshiners claim that moonshine is easily cleaned with milk. According to them, after pouring milk into the moonshine, a precipitate forms, which supposedly characterizes the fact that the milk has taken on all the fusel oils and dirt. In fact, milk will curdle even in perfectly pure alcohol, since milk, like any protein, simply coagulates from alcohol. Long protein molecules begin to break down, stick together into lumps, and the lumps begin to fall. And the point here is not at all in fusel oils - this is how any protein reacts to alcohol. Even one cocktail is based on the principle of milk coagulation - "" - where simple cream falls into the same mass simply from strong absinthe.

Using milk to clean moonshine is a vicious practice that spoils the final taste of the drink, adds unnecessary compounds to the product, while leaving all the fusel oils and benzene compounds in place. From a purely chemical point of view, milk is not capable of purifying alcohol, so that supposedly “experienced moonshiners” who cook “according to my grandmother’s recipe” would not say. Alas, science is not on their side.

Purification of moonshine with potassium permanganate (manganese, potassium permanganate).

Cleaning moonshine with potassium permanganate, or rather, potassium permanganate, is an even more vicious practice than using milk. With milk, you just spoil the drink with new fats, proteins and other impurities that are an integral part of the protein drink. When using potassium permanganate, you are poisoning your drink with potassium hydroxide and manganese dioxide.

Homegrown moonshiners, poorly familiar with chemistry and physics, offer this method of cleaning moonshine with potassium permanganate. Potassium permanganate is poured either directly into the container with alcohol itself, or potassium permanganate is preliminarily diluted in water, and the already concentrated solution is poured into a container with ready-made alcohol. According to these "specialists", a precipitate in the form of black-brown lumps that appears after a few hours is a sign of a high degree of purification of moonshine.

In fact, this is complete heresy. Potassium permanganate is one of the strongest oxidizing agents available to mankind, it can even oxidize water. What does he, in fact, do when alcohol is added to an aqueous solution. The following reaction occurs:

2K 2 MnO 4 + 2H 2 O -> 2KMnO 4 + MnO 2 ↓ + 3KOH

Quadrivalent manganese oxide MnO2 precipitates into a dirty brown precipitate.

Of course, potassium permanganate is able to oxidize fusel oils, esters and benzenes, however, it cannot selectively oxidize only them. The price of such a cleaning is the high content of potassium hydroxide inside the alcohol after such a “cleaning” and manganese compounds.

Thus, cleaning moonshine with potassium permanganate is not just pointless, but extremely dangerous. And the arguments from the series “We clean it all our lives and nothing!”, “My grandfather drank such moonshine all his life and did not die” are classic manifestations of ordinary human idiocy.

Cleaning moonshine with alkali (cooking and baking soda)

The third way to clean moonshine from unfortunate chemists is to clean moonshine with soda. A huge number of forums, websites and blogs describe the process of cleaning moonshine with soda. Sites steal information from each other, rewrite it, spend a lot of time retelling a useless recipe, however, no one gets around to checking this recipe even with a 9th grade chemistry book.

This dangerous recipe is that soda supposedly needs to be added to alcohol. Say, after adding soda to alcohol, a precipitate appears at the bottom - these are the “pollutions” that, they say, the soda caught. It is recommended, after adding soda, to clean the moonshine from this sediment by filtration.

Now let's turn to science, and see what exactly happens if water is added to alcohol.

It is noteworthy that alkali does not react with alcohol directly. But an aqueous solution of alkali reacts extremely aggressively to any fats (including flavors and impurities). It would seem that it should be so! But as a result of the reaction, glycerin and .. soap are formed!

Ask any person involved in soap making how exactly the soap base is created. Soap is really "boiled" from fat (remember the movie "Fight Club"), adding lye and water. The result is a first-class soap, similar in type and smell to household soap.

On a huge number of sites on alcoholic beverages and home brewing, it is written that “this method<>tested over the years, a lot of people prefer it, ”although even a superficial study of the issue suggests that such texts are written by extremely illiterate and not scientifically savvy, illiterate ignoramuses.

Cleaning moonshine with an Aquaphor water filter

Water filters (both Aquaphor and Barrier filters) are based on activated carbon, respectively, there is no fundamental difference between using a simple column with activated carbon and an Aquaphor water filter. Cleaning moonshine using Aquaphor or Barrier filters is simply more convenient, but much more expensive. It is much cheaper and more cost effective to pass alcohol through a vertical tube filled with activated carbon.

Moreover, this does not mean at all that the use of Aquaphor filters for cleaning moonshine is pointless - it's just that the filters are quite expensive, and their efficiency is comparable to ordinary activated carbon tablets.

Cleaning moonshine with a gas mask

Gas masks differ from each other in various cassettes that contain a variety of absorbents. Some still use asbestos as an absorbent. Therefore, almost any gas mask will spoil moonshine rather than make it better.

Summarizing

So, to sum up the article.

• The most effective and inexpensive method of cleaning moonshine from fusel oils should be considered charcoal and activated charcoal. Coconut charcoal, which is part of the activated one, also showed itself well.
• The use of potassium permanganate to clean moonshine leads to the appearance of acetaldehyde and heavy metal salts inside the moonshine. Moonshine becomes toxic and dangerous.
• The use of alkali (including baking soda) leads to the appearance of glycerin and soap bases.
• The use of water filters as tools for cleaning moonshine is not without meaning, however, compared to simple activated carbon, this method loses in terms of economic feasibility.
• Cleaning moonshine with a gas mask in 9 cases out of 10 leads to mail and poisoning of moonshine.

To obtain high-quality alcohol and moonshine, it is better to use double or triple distillation and distillation. Be sure to use a steamer capable of catching 60-80% of all oils during distillation. It is imperative to throw out the “head” - that is, the first 50 ml from each liter of mash. In the "body" after the first and second distillation, there will still be a small amount of aromatic compounds, which are best simply removed with activated carbon. This will avoid clogging your moonshine with harmful substances. World alcohol producers filter their products with coal, without any newfangled methods using milk, bread or a chicken egg (there are such methods!)

It is not worth trusting people who argue their technology for making moonshine with the phrases “they have cooked this way all their lives”, “no one has died yet”, “it has always been like this”, is not worth it. It is better to once again open a textbook on chemistry and physics than go to the forums of uneducated moonshiners who have hardly completed nine grades of a rural school.

One of the most traditional (after mead) strong alcoholic drinks of our Russian origin is moonshine. The principle of its production is similar to those by which distillates of all foreign types are distilled: cognac, whiskey, rum, gin.

If we remove from the word the negative meaning given to it during the years of Soviet power, when they fought hard against moonshine (the state monopoly on alcohol), moonshine is a solid, high-quality drink. If you expel and clean it by technology.

There are several ways to clean moonshine:

Chemical cleaning

For cleaning (for any method) take the product of the first distillation, cooled to room temperature. The technology, at first glance, is not simple, but having done it once, it will not be difficult to clean it in the future. For each liter of prepared liquid, a simple solution is taken: 2 g of potassium permanganate per 50 ml of boiled water. After the manganese crystals have dissolved, the solution is poured into moonshine and left for 10 hours.

Sediment remains at the bottom of the container. Strain the liquid through cotton wool or flannel. Flannel is a regular cotton fabric that is great for filtering like this. Distill the solution again. After that, it is recommended, it is written about this a little lower.

Fractional purification (distillation)

Alcohol above 45 degrees is difficult to get rid of unnecessary impurities, so it is better to dilute it to 40 degrees. The resulting is poured into the apparatus and heated to 60 degrees Celsius. Then reducing the intensity of heating, slowly bringing it up to 85 degrees Celsius. At the same time, about half of the harmful impurities leave the solution.

But formic and acetic acid, amyl alcohol, valerian-ethyl ester are still present!

The first fraction obtained for ingestion is unsuitable and even dangerous, it can be used for kindling and other similar purposes. Its volume is from 5 to 8% of the total.

When the liquid boils, the heating intensity is reduced, bringing the temperature to no higher than 97 degrees Celsius. At the same time, the second fraction is expelled, which is used to prepare the drink.

About 10% of the haul is the tail fraction, unsuitable for consumption! It is better to control this with the help of an alcoholometer (hydrometer), read the article "" about how to use it. When the distillate went below 40 degrees - this is the final fraction, it can be overtaken again. Save the result of distillation below 40 degrees for technical purposes, the rest is a good product.

Second chemical treatment

The most affordable and practical way is charcoal cleaning. To do this, you can use activated (sold in a pharmacy) or charcoal. It is believed that better cleaning - charcoal. You can buy it in the store, but it will not be difficult to cook it yourself.

The wood of birch, pine, linden, spruce is most suitable for this. To obtain coal, the wood is heated, restricting the access of air, until it burns out completely, then the resulting coals are cooled. Grind to powder.

Coal, 50 g per liter, mixed with liquid, infused for 2-3 weeks, shaking several times a day. After that, they leave it alone for a week, waiting for the coal to fall to the bottom.

The settled nectar is filtered through cotton wool or flannel. Basically, the moonshine is ready to drink. But to improve the taste, you can infuse the resulting liquid per liter: 50 g of raisins, a pinch of St. John's wort - 3-4 days. If consumed in moderation - fun and without a hangover!

Biological treatment

The scientific name for the biological purification of a drink is coagulation. After the first distillation, pour in fresh milk, beaten egg white or kefir. The mixture coagulates, the sediment gradually falls to the bottom of the container. Carefully filtered moonshine is distilled, a crystal clear drink is obtained. The article "" details all the nuances of this method.

After repeated distillation, the liquid is diluted to a strength of 40 degrees, and purified with fresh rye bread. To do this, it is broken into small pieces, put in moonshine (100 g per liter). Bread gluten cleans moonshine from the last remnants of fusel oils.

frostbite

The method is simple: when the temperature drops, the components in the liquid below 40 degrees (and this is fusel oils) freeze. It remains to pour a quality product, filter it again. This is a method that requires more time, but with a guaranteed quality of the final product.

In order to get rid of extraneous odors for sure, you can perform the following procedure: 30 g of raisins and 4-5 finely chopped violet roots are taken per 1 liter of liquid, all this is insisted for 10 days.

Gluing

This method is exotic and expensive. To clean moonshine, Karluk glue (made from sturgeon swim bladders) is used. It is preliminarily diluted in water to the consistency of a gel, and added to the settled moonshine. The glue gradually settles to the bottom of the container, binding the fusel oils.

The cleaning method is of high quality, guaranteeing a clean drink. The problem is that karluk is hard to come by, as sturgeon numbers have dropped dramatically in recent years.

Unconventional methods for cleaning moonshine

Tannin or oak chips are great for cleansing the drink. Tannin is a substance found in the core of oak wood. These components improve the taste and remove unwanted inclusions from the liquid.

Suffice it to mention that cognac spirits are necessarily aged in oak barrels for several years, before being bottled. Tannin gives the drink astringency and all the famous cognac aftertaste: apricot, cherry and other tones, for which everyone appreciates the drink.

Moonshine is produced using the same technology as cognac. For cleaning, 5-10% of tannin powder or oak chips are added to the liquid, depending on the volume, and kept for 10 days.

There is another option of insisting on oak cubes. Saw cubes 2-3 cm, pour spring water several times, changing it after 2 hours. Then pour for three hours with a solution of baking soda (1 tablespoon per 5 liters of water). Washed, poured with boiling water. When the cubes have cooled, they are dried.

Then roast in the oven for 3 hours at a temperature of 160 ° C. They put it in a container with moonshine (5-8 cubes per 3 liters), insist for a week (more is possible, this is just the case when longer is better).

Cleaning moonshine with soda

Take 5-10 g of soda per 1 liter of liquid, add water with 2-3 manganese crystals diluted in it, pour it into the solution, hold for 20 minutes. Once again, the same amount of soda is added, kept for 12 hours. The resulting moonshine is filtered through cotton wool or coal.

Tincture on pine nuts

If, after all the purifications, you insist moonshine on pine nuts, you will get a drink of the greatest purity, with a pleasant aroma and color. Nuts are poured into the container in a volume of 3% to the total, insisted for two weeks.

During the infusion, the remaining harmful impurities will be absorbed by the walnut bark. The drink will get a rich brown color and a light aftertaste with a hint of cedar aroma. The use of the drink in small doses has a therapeutic effect, similar to the tincture of cedar bark.

Giving the drink a pleasant taste and color

After the purest drink is obtained, it will not be superfluous to give it a pleasing color to the eye.

Colors that can be given to moonshine:

• brown (cognac) color: 1 tablespoon of tea per liter of liquid;
• brown (saturated) color: pine nuts;
• blue: yarrow flowers;
• green: mint leaves, parsley;
• orange: orange peel, walnut septa (other than color, good for health, in small amounts);
• yellow: lemon peel.

herbal balm

Another recipe for adding flavor and beneficial properties to a drink, personally tested. The drink has a guaranteed pleasant taste close to cognac. A purified and filtered distillate is taken in a volume of 3 liters.

Ingredients that are laid in the liquid:

• 2 bay leaves;
• 6 black peppercorns;
• 1 tablespoon of sugar.

The rest in pinches:

• parsley
• spurge
• lovage
• St. John's wort
• calendula
• oregano
• rose hip
• bird cherry
• basil
• Melissa

The solution is infused for 1 week and filtered. And now on your festive table, there is a drink with a taste similar to five-year-old cognac!

And finally, watch an interesting video about moonshine, taken from the YouTube channel of the user GrazhdaninPoet. It has nothing to do with cleaning moonshine, but viewing, unlike drinking alcoholic beverages, does not hurt!

One of the main causes of abstinence (hangover) is the poisoning of the body with fusel oils contained in the alcohol taken.

Apparently, it’s worth starting with the fact that products with an alcohol content above 40 percent “release” fusel oils very reluctantly. And therefore, before cleaning, it must be diluted with pure spring or distilled water to 32-35 percent. Second: only moonshine that has cooled down and settled (preferably at least a day) is subject to cleaning, and not just kicked out.

How to clean moonshine with potassium permanganate

Potassium permanganate crystals are added to the moonshine (about 0.5 teaspoon per three-liter jar) and mixed thoroughly. After settling, upon reaching the absolute transparency of the liquid, moonshine is poured into a clean container with a hose, in much the same way as gasoline from a fuel tank into a canister, in no case affecting the bottom layer with sediment.

Purification of moonshine with activated carbon

The second mandatory step is filtering. Required:

• activated carbon (1 pack per 3 liters)
• funnel
• filter paper (or paper towels).

Filter paper is placed at the bottom of the funnel, onto which activated charcoal powder is poured. Coal is covered with a second layer of paper. To avoid the effect of "floating", the top napkin is slightly loaded along the edges.

After filtering, moonshine should be diluted with water to 26-28 percent alcohol content and subjected to. After it, the cleaning process must be repeated. In principle, you can immediately use the resulting product without much damage to health. But if you subject it to tertiary distillation and tertiary purification, the output will be a drink with a minimum content of fusel oils.

How to clean moonshine even better: using charcoal

Birch charcoal is crushed to a state of fine crumbs, poured into moonshine (one handful of coal per three-liter jar of moonshine), after which the jar is tightly closed. During the week, the liquid is vigorously shaken daily, and then left for another 10-12 days in a “resting state”.

How to clean moonshine with milk

On an industrial scale, not milk is used, but milk protein - casein. It is a powder that adsorbs fusel oils and other unwanted impurities. The result is a highly purified product.

Great-grandfathers used fresh milk and egg white. Part of the fusel impurities coagulates and settles to the bottom. But the cleaning quality leaves much to be desired.

Another old-fashioned method: freezing

It was noticed: when freezing vodka, water, freezing to the walls of the barrel, takes fusel impurities with it. It remained to carefully separate the unfrozen vodka.