The strawberry moonshine sticks to memory for its softness and berry aroma. But there are two nuances in its preparation. If you don’t understand them, you can spoil the valued raw products. We’ll look over the right recipe for a high-quality brew with good yield.
2.2 lbs/1 kg of strawberries contains 1.2-1.5 oz/35-45 grams of fructose. This means that without adding sugar from 11 lbs/5 kg of berries you can obtain 250 ml of pure strawberry moonshine with the potency of 40 degrees. I recommend adding sugar thus increasing the yield up to 0.8-9 gl/3.3-3.5 liters (40%). Moreover, the bright pleasant flavor will remain. Any further increase of sugar proportions weakens the smell.
Without yeasts (only with wild ones) strawberry brew ferments for 25-40 days, with distilling yeasts – 5-12 days, but a part of aroma gets lost. If you are in no hurry, making the brew with wild yeasts is for the best. However, you still should have some distillers yeast at hand, in case wild yeasts will not start.
Ingredients:
- Strawberries – 11 lbs/5 kg
- Water – 4 gl/15 liters
- Sugar – 6.6 lbs/3 kg (optional)
- Distilling Yeasts – 0.5 oz/15 grams of dry or 2.64 oz/75 grams of compressed (optional)
Strawberry Brew Recipe
1. Mash unwashed berries (it’s very important in case of using no yeasts) until you get a homogeneous mass.
2. Pour the obtained brew into a fermentation container. Add water, sugar, yeasts (optional), then stir it up and install airlock on a bottleneck.
3. Leave the container in a dark place with a temperature 64.4-77°F/18-24°C. First 3-4 days you should take off the airlock and stir the brew with a clean hand. Depending on the choice of yeasts (store-bough or wild) the fermentation lasts for 5-40 days. When the brew gets brighter and bitter without any sweetness and there’s sediment at the bottom, you can go to the next step.
Getting Strawberry Moonshine
4. Filter the brew through 2-3 layers of gauze and pour into a distillatory vessel of a moonshine still. Squeeze the contents of gauze, pour the liquid part into a vessel, you won’t need dry husks.
5. Distill the strawberry brew. Finish drawing off the distillate with potency dropping below 30 degrees.
6. Dilute the obtained moonshine with water up to 50% for its potency to drop to 18-20% and then distill it once again.
7. Draw off the first 150 ml into a separate container. This harmful distillate called “heads” contains methanol and other hazardous admixtures. Drinking it is highly dangerous.
8. Finish the distillation while the potency drops below 40 degrees. That’s the main product for which the whole process was started.
9. Dilute the strawberry moonshine with water up to 40-45%. Let it mature for 2-3 days in a dark cold place before trying it.