Oak chips (chips) are sticks or blocks with approximate dimensions of 1 cm by 1 cm by 5 cm. They are used to prepare tinctures from moonshine and vodka. Oak colors the liquid in noble brown color and gives the drink pronounced taste, depending on the degree of burning of the chips. The price varies from 100 to 200 rubles per 100 grams (enough for about 30 liters of drink), but you can easily make it yourself.

We will tell you the correct technology for making wood chips at home, share a good recipe for the tincture and show in detail how best to make it. Not all oak wood is suitable for making a drink, so you should also pay attention to its choice.

The consistency of oak chips may vary. The most universal bars are 1 cm by 1 cm by 5 cm.

Yes, because it costs a penny and is sold in any more or less large locality, and you will have to spend more than one hour of your time on its production. The store offers oak chips of various roasts and varieties, so you can quickly choose the product that you find most pleasant in taste and color.

Even if you are a very active distiller of moonshine, 1000 rubles will buy you so much wood chips that you won’t even think about it for several years. We do not advertise any store, but simply recommend that you do not waste your time and immediately buy a ready-made tree.

Buy several varieties at once to experiment and choose the option that suits you.

Various degrees of oak roasting.

Oak chip tincture recipe

To prepare moonshine tincture you will need ingredients in the following proportions:

• Moonshine - 1 liter.
• Oak chips - 2 grams.
• Sugar - 20 grams.

Moonshine must be taken stronger, preferably 50–55% .

The oak will absorb some of the alcohol from the drink, resulting in a lower strength at the end. This is especially noticeable in oak barrels, where the strength can decrease by 30–40% from the initial one.

The container must be glass. Even food grade plastic is not suitable for us.

Different shades of the finished tincture, depending on the type and roasting of the wood.

Step-by-step instructions for preparing oak chip tincture

Now let's look at the step-by-step instructions for preparing this very tincture:

1. We prepare moonshine with a strength of 50–55%.
2. Pour it into a glass container that has a wide neck. Thanks to it, you can then easily remove the tree from the container.
3. Add oak chips at the rate of 2 grams per 1 liter.
4. Close the container tightly and put it in a cool, dark place for 2-3 months.
5. Check the color of your tincture periodically. If it starts to darken too much, then it makes sense to stop steeping so as not to overexpose the product. In the new batch, you will already know that you will need to add less or more wood.
6. After infusion, filter the moonshine through cheesecloth to remove sediment and wood particles from the drink.

I will place special emphasis on the high strength of the initial raw materials. This is necessary so that the alcohol content of the finished product does not fall below 40 degrees.

If this happens, the drink will have to be diluted, and this is absolutely not a tincture that you can be proud of.

An interesting video prepared by a distilling guru and the author of the channel Moonshine Sanych. Konstantin fully reviews the entire process of preparing tinctures from theory to tasting the finished product. His recipe is different from ours. The choice is yours.

How to make oak chips with your own hands

I’ll note right away that the process is quite hemorrhoidal, but it allows you to save some money and get a unique basis for preparing tinctures. It is best, of course, to use Caucasian oak, but in our case we simply find the most dry oak log and get to work.

1. Choose the driest and hardest oak log you have. It is strictly not recommended to use damp, rotten or rotten wood.
2. We chop the tree into so-called chips with dimensions of 1 cm by 1 cm by 5 cm. These sticks will be our wood chips.
3. We clean the wood using boiling. Pour hot water over the sticks, bring to a boil and cook for 15–20 minutes. Then we refresh the water and bring it to a boil again. We repeat the procedure 3-5 times until the water becomes as clean as possible.
4. We dry the clean cubes in the oven or air grill. 30 minutes at a temperature of 150 degrees will be enough.
5. When the wood becomes dry, we roast it in the same oven. Raise the temperature to 250 degrees and start frying. Depending on the duration of heating, you will get chips of different roasts. The gradation is as follows: 10 minutes - mild, 15 minutes - medium, 20–25 - strong.
6. Having brought the wood to condition, turn off the oven, let the sticks cool and you can start making the tincture.

The pan will get very dirty during cooking, so be prepared to do a lot of cleaning immediately after this process. In the oven, it is better to place the tree on special baking parchment so as not to spoil the baking sheet.

The entire production technology takes about 3–4 hours.

For clarity, we recommend watching a video from the author of the channel Distilled. The guy completely shows the whole process from chopping logs to frying wooden sticks, so after watching you shouldn’t have any unnecessary questions.

Which oak chips are better and why?

Different types of wood have their own individual set of flavors and colors. In total, about 300 varieties of this tree are known.

Caucasian oak is used to make excellent barrels for infusing drinks (price about 3 thousand for a 3-liter capacity).

• Choosing a variety. French oak is considered the best, but its price is prohibitively high. Caucasian is also considered very good, and its price is very affordable for the average moonshiner. As a last resort, just take the first dry log in the yard, or at least not the cheapest sticks in a specialized store.
• Choosing a roast. Everyone distinguishes between three degrees - light, medium and strong. Each of them gives off its own aroma and color, so it is best to do a tasting with each.

A well-prepared tree will absorb some of the harmful impurities and alcohol, so the resulting drink will be softer and more pleasant to taste.

If the sticks are bad, then the wood, on the contrary, will release some harmful substances into the liquid, as a result of which the quality of the product and its taste will suffer greatly. Take a responsible approach to the production and selection of oak chips.

Real cognac is very expensive, and not everyone can buy it. Cheap analogues offered in stores are of low quality. Most of them acquire taste through various additives added by the manufacturer.

If you have a good moonshine still, you can produce decent cognac at home. To produce your own cognac at home you will need well-refined moonshine with a strength of 45 degrees, oak chips, a good recipe and a lot of patience. Oak chips imitate the infusion of alcohol in a real barrel and impart noble shades, aroma and astringency to the moonshine used.

Preparing the base

This recipe for making homemade cognac using wood chips will require high-quality moonshine made from grapes. If this is not available, you can use a product derived from fruits, grains or sugar. The main thing in this matter is high-quality distillation and purification of alcohol-containing liquid from fusel oils, aldehydes, ethers and other impurities. Therefore, moonshine should be double distilled and highly purified. Only with such a base can a high-quality homemade tincture - an imitation of cognac - be made.

Preparing oak chips

Oak chips can be purchased in specialized stores, but they are located only in large cities. Purchasing chips through
The Internet is buying a pig in a poke, and the cost of shipping will be quite high. If you know the recipe and have the source material at your disposal, then you can make oak chips yourself.

Harvested oak logs, cleared of bark, are chopped to a size of 15x3x0.5 cm, soaked in water and dried at elevated temperatures. Soaking is carried out during the day, and the water should be changed at least 3-4 times during this time. This will get rid of excess tannins. The soaked wood chips are poured with a soda solution for 6 hours at the rate of 1 hour per 5 liters of water. After the soda bath, the washed pegs are boiled for one hour, using the lowest possible heat to maintain the temperature. After boiling, the oak chips are dried for one day in a suspended state in a ventilated room.

The final stage of preparing oak chips is frying them in an oven preheated to approximately 160 o C. The taste and color of the resulting homemade cognac will largely depend on the degree of roasting of the oak chips.

Recipe for making homemade cognac

To prepare cognac infused with oak chips at home, you will need clean neutral containers (glass is best), the required amount of prepared chips, moonshine with a strength of 45 degrees and time. The amount of oak chips required for 1 liter of moonshine ranges from 30 to 60 grams. The required amount of prepared wood chips is placed in the jar, filled with moonshine, hermetically sealed and put away in a dark, cool place for a period of 3 to 6 months.

At the end of this time, the resulting cognac is bottled and hermetically sealed. In order to color saturate the resulting product, a small amount of caramel is added to the resulting cognac, which will give the drink its usual color. It should be noted that infusion and addition of caramel to moonshine reduces its strength to 2-3 degrees.

The drink production process can be accelerated by adding 0.3 grams per liter of drink. vanilla, a few cloves and sweet peas pepper This recipe will allow you to use the drink in 3-4 weeks.

Spices should be handled very carefully; a large amount of them can completely spoil the resulting product. But you can experiment with the amount of wood chips and infusion time. To do this, different amounts of oak chips are placed in small glass containers (0.5 liter jars are possible) and kept until the drink in one of the jars acquires the desired taste. After this, knowing the required weight of chips and time, you can infuse homemade cognac with moonshine in large containers.

The final process of infusing brandy at home is coloring, oxygenation and bottling. The resulting brandy is pre-filtered. A paper filter and funnel are best for this. Homemade cognac flowing in a thin stream through the filter is not only cleared of sediment, but also saturated with oxygen, improving the taste of the drink. The height of the jet fall must be at least 0.5 m.

As already mentioned, caramel should be used to add color to cognac. How much caramel to take depends on what color the drink will be given. Usually a tablespoon of burnt sugar is added per liter of drink. It is heated over a fire until brown and dissolved in a small amount of a pre-selected product. To better dissolve the caramel, brandy can be heated to 40-50°C. Stir until the caramel is completely dissolved; the resulting color is added to the main container with homemade cognac until the desired color is obtained.

The colored liquid is poured into well-washed, sterilized and dried bottles and tightly closed with corks that limit the evaporation of alcohol from the cognac obtained with such difficulty.

This recipe for infusing moonshine on oak chips using the specified technology is closest in taste to the products of French winemakers. If high-quality raw materials (moonshine) were used, well purified from fusel oils, aldehydes and methanol, then it will be almost impossible for a non-professional to distinguish real French cognac from home-made brandy. Especially if the resulting tincture is bottled from the original manufacturers, and the recipe is not violated.

Hennessy for cheaters:

how to make “cognac” from moonshine?

Recipes proven over generations!

Homemade “cognacs” are one of the most common topics for discussion on homemade alcoholic beverages forums. Their recipes have been perfected over hundreds of years, and now many moonshiners manage to make, if not a complete analogue of real cognac, then a very high-quality replica of it, which, with proper aging, becomes an excellent product, tasty, aromatic and beautiful in its own way.

Let me make a reservation right away - none of the methods listed below will give you “cognac” in the full sense of the word. However, even the low-grade booze that is sold in our stores is not and cannot be cognac. However, it is quite possible to make a wonderful, completely special drink with its own flavor and aromatic properties. And your product will be much better than some Koktebel.

Today we will present two of the most common, thousand-times proven recipes - homemade cognac from moonshine on oak bark “in Latgalian style” and the so-called “country” cognac on oak chips.

Homemade cognac from moonshine - recipes using oak bark and wood chips.

On the forums I came across a phrase that comparing real and homemade cognac is the same as comparing a living and a rubber woman. This approach is completely wrong! Each of these recipes has its own special charm. Cognac made from moonshine on oak bark is not a chemical counterfeit, but a living, noble drink, and, moreover, made with your own hands.
Continuing the analogy: if the original cognac is a pretentious Parisian fashion model, with whom there is nothing to talk about except about Deleuze’s philosophy (and only in French), then our homemade “cognac” from moonshine is a healthy village woman laughter, with which you can go to the hayloft, to the construction site of the Baikal-Amur Mainline, or to Siberian exile.

Cognac from moonshine at home. A little about raw materials.

As already mentioned, you cannot make cognac from moonshine with your own hands, but you can make a good, high-quality original drink. Naturally, this requires three things - high-quality alcohol, the correct proportion of ingredients and long aging.

As for the quality of moonshine, all authors of recipes are unanimous - it should be the highest! A good grain double or triple distillate, or a rectified distillate prepared in a mash column and diluted to the required strength, is suitable. The best cognacs from moonshine at home are obtained if grape alcohol is used for them - chacha or its simplified analogues. Now let's talk about the second essential ingredient - oak. You can make your own cognac from moonshine only if you have specially prepared wood from this tree. Why is this so important? Chips or chips are, so to speak, an ersatz barrel - a common and affordable replacement for oak wine barrels. What will oak give to our drink?

1. Tannins. Dissolved substances of the tannin group give the drink astringency and a peculiar bitter aroma, which softens with aging.
2.Aromatic acids. During the biosynthesis of lingin contained in wood, natural flavors are released. There are many of them, but first of all these are syringaldehyde (gives a smell similar to lilac) and more pronounced vanillin. Imagine, it is found not only in vanilla beans and store-bought bags, but also, for example, in cinnamon, cloves, olive oil, coffee, and, of course, oak wood.
3.Lactones and phenolic compounds. Also an important element in the bouquet of drinks aged in barrels or on wood chips. When wood is heat treated, furan substances are formed in it, giving our cognac that same “caramel” aroma.

Oak is the main component of homemade cognac

So, oak is tannins, vanillin and caramel. If chips and chips are not used, these tastes and aromas must be imparted to the drink artificially. Therefore, recipes for homemade cognac from moonshine on oak bark often include additional ingredients - for example, natural wine, vanilla sugar or pods, caramel syrup.

In general, enough theory, let's move on directly to recipes for homemade cognac from moonshine.

Cognac in Latgalian style. A recipe proven over generations!

Latgalian tincture is the most common way to refine moonshine “like cognac”. The recipe was invented in Latgale - a historical region of modern Latvia, which has a long tradition of moonshine brewing. There are extremely many variations of this drink, but there is one classic recipe that has been used for generations and always gives a good, sustainable result. We will bring him.

Ingredients:

• 3 liters of moonshine, minimum double distillation, diluted to 50 degrees.
• Oak bark (sold at the pharmacy) - 2 tablespoons. I recommend pre-soaking the bark for 10 minutes in boiling water, drying it, and only then putting it in the drink, otherwise it will contain too many tannins. You can also replace the bark with an equal amount of oak chips.
• 3 cloves.
• Nutmeg (whole) - 1/5 part or ground - on the tip of a knife.
• Coriander - 1 crushed grain or ground - approximately 0.5 grams.
• Sugar - 3 tablespoons.

Preparation:

1. Sugar must first be dissolved in a small amount of moonshine, as an option - make it simplecaramel syrup .
2. We put all the ingredients in a jar, pour in the moonshine and add the syrup, shake everything well and set aside in a dark place.
3. The infusion time is from two weeks, but not more than a month, so that the alcohol base does not draw too many tannins from the bark. When you insist on the battery, the time is reduced to a week - 10 days, but this is not a very correct method, it is better to wait.
4. After the tincture has acquired a brown color and a bright aroma, it must be filtered, bottled and kept for at least six months in a dark place.
   They say that after two years of aging, Latgalian cognac becomes especially pleasant. With each month of rest, the drink becomes richer, softer and more similar to real cognac!

   Homemade cognac from moonshine. Country style recipe

   This version of the drink is, in principle, similar to the previous one, but it uses much more ingredients, and there are many variations in preparation - for every taste. I will describe recipes that use oak chips, so before making cognac from moonshine using this method, you will need to prepare the material. Well, or buy it in special stores. How to prepare and burn oak chips is written at the end of this article.

   Ingredients:

   • Good moonshine 45-50 degrees - 3 liters;
   • Medium roast oak chips - 6 pieces, 10 cm long and approximately 4x4 mm thick.
   • Sugar - 2 tablespoons (for caramel syrup);
   • Rose hips - 15 small berries (read educational program on rose hipsin this article );
   • 3-4 black peppercorns;
   • A teaspoon of large-leaf black tea (it’s better to take a good one, since cheap ones can be colored);
   • St. John's wort - 1 small sprig or level teaspoon of ground pharmaceutical grade. It is better to use less of this ingredient rather than more.

   Preparation:

   1. Make caramel syrup - light brown.
   2. Place all the ingredients in a jar, add alcohol, add caramel, and close the lid tightly.
   3. Leave in a dark place for a week, then remove the prunes (if you are using them) and vanilla.
   4. The total infusion time is from two weeks to a month (no more), the jar needs to be shaken periodically.
   5. When the aroma has become pronounced and the color is dark enough, the liquid must be filtered through several layers of gauze, then through a cotton filter.
   6. Leave to rest in the bottle for at least 3 months, preferably longer, in a dark, cool place, so that the tannins in the drink soften, the flavors become friends and rounded, and the aroma becomes softer. If a precipitate appears after settling, filter again.

   As we can see, making cognac from moonshine at home is not so difficult; the drink turns out beautiful, aromatic, with a multifaceted taste. The longer you store it, the better it will be!

   Preparing oak chips at home

   Now let's talk about an ingredient included in many homemade cognac recipes from moonshine - oak chips. This is how it is done.

   1. Take a dry oak log or log from a trunk or thick branch.
   2. The wood is carefully split along the grain. It has been proven that alcohol penetrates wood by 2 mm, so the optimal chip size is 4x4 mm.
   3. The wood chips are placed in cold water for 12 hours.
   4. After this time, the old water is drained, and the chips are filled with fresh water, into which you need to put soda - about a teaspoon per 5 liters.
   5. After 12 hours of infusion, the water is drained again, the wood chips are placed in a colander and placed in a steam bath - they need to be steamed, not boiled.
   6. Our raw materials also steam for about 12 hours, over low heat. When the water that is boiling in a saucepan turns brown, it needs to be drained and replaced with fresh water.
   7. Now the chips need to be pulled out and dried in air for the same 12 hours.
   8. The next stage is warming up. The tree should be placed on a wire rack and placed in the oven at a temperature of approximately 150 degrees. Keep for about 4 hours.
   9. After another 12 hours, repeat the procedure. At this stage, a pleasant smell of vanilla and caramel should appear. We hold it again for 4 hours, let it rest for another 12.
   10. And the final stage is the actual roasting. To do this, you need to turn on the oven at 200 degrees, if available, set the grill mode. Bake until the wood chips begin to smoke. Once this happens, you're done!

   
   

   As we can see, preparing oak chips for cognac from moonshine at home is a rather long process, but not very labor-intensive. This is advisable if you plan to make a lot of oak-aged drinks. This material can be stored indefinitely in a warm, dry place and can be used as needed.
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Anyone can buy real French cognac! But many people love good cognac. The point is not only in the complex and lengthy preparation process, but also in the elementary inconveniences that are associated with obtaining a homemade drink. Even if you are the ownermodern moonshine still of new generation , you simply may not have free space in your apartment to place an oak barrel.

The problem can be solved quite simply if you have a pure distillate and a great desire to make cognac. It is necessary to infuse the drink with oak bark, which you can buy at the pharmacy. But it is not so easy to find this product in modern stores, and the cost is even higher than specialized ones oak chips or wood chips for refining moonshine.

Homemade cognac is easy!

How do oak chips work? They imitate aging moonshine in a real barrel, namely, they repeat the process of soaking and firing a container made of valuable wood. Chips sold in, have high quality characteristics. They are able to give the drink a noble oak note, a unique aroma and astringency, which is so valued in real cognac!

Before you start producing a noble drink, you need to select a raw material or base. There are no special restrictions here. Despite the fact that the original cognac is made from grape moonshine, you can also use fruit, grain and the simplest - sugar.

What causes the coloring of the drink? This tree contains unique tannins that change color, aroma and taste. They are converted into an environmentally friendly dye under the influence of alcohol, namely ethyl alcohol. Both bark and oak wood are of equal value. Below we present different recipes for homemade cognac to make it easier for you to choose the right one.

To achieve spectacular notes of vanilla, fruit, chocolate or flowers, you should infuse the moonshine on the chips for varying amounts of time. There are recipes, if strictly followed, you can get the expected results. Only if you don’t have time to wait long should you useflavoring additiveson a natural basis. They can be used alone or in combination with oak chips. Thus, concentrates will give the alcohol aroma and taste, and the wood will give the necessary rich shade.

Recipe for moonshine on oak bark
This method of refining is attractive for its simplicity. It will take a minimum of effort and time to radically change the aroma and color of the distillate. As a result, you will receive, of course, not cognac, but a drink with a mild taste that will resemble a noble product. For 3 liters of finished drink you will need:

• Moonshine - 3 liters. It is advisable to take an already diluted product with a strength of about 45%.
• Oak bark - 3 tbsp. l.
• Allspice – 10 peas
• Natural honey – 1 tbsp. l.
• Carnation in buds – 5 pcs.
• Oregano (dry herb) – 1 tbsp. l.
• St. John's wort (dry) – 1 tbsp. l.
• Vanillin – 1 gr. or on the tip of a knife

It is necessary to mix all the herbs and bark in a large container; it is advisable to choose glass that is neutral. At the next stage, everything is filled with moonshine and covered with a lid. You should stir once at the very beginning. Then the container will need to be shaken once every 4 days without opening. At room temperature, the distillate with such additives should infuse for about 15-16 days. After this period, the drink must be filtered. Any homemade filter made from special paper or cotton-gauze pad is suitable for this purpose. At the next stage, moonshine made from oak bark is bottled and sealed. In this form it can be stored for quite a long time. To improve the taste, it is recommended to drink the drink 10-14 days after filtration.

Herbs are necessary for softening. If you don’t like some ingredients, you can exclude them, or even remove everything except moonshine, vanillin and oak bark. Even if you have access to an oak tree, you should not harvest the bark yourself. Pharmacy products have already undergone all the necessary cleaning and disinfection procedures, so they are the preferred option.

Moonshine recipe with oak chips

Qualityoak chipsare an inexpensive but effective way to make homemade cognac. Compared to bark, this product most accurately recreates a drink that is as close as possible in taste and aroma to cognac aged in real oak barrels. However, there are some nuances. In this case, it takes longer to infuse the distillate, and you also need to carefully prepare the chips before cooking. But the result is undoubtedly worth it!

Oak chip preparation technology

At the first stage, you need to remove excess tannins from them. To do this, the wood chips are soaked and then processed at elevated temperatures. You need to take logs, remove the bark from them and chop them into logs, then into pegs. The optimal dimensions are: 10 cm in length and 2 cm in cross-section. The prepared wood chips are soaked in cold water. 24 hours will be enough, during which the water should be changed three times.

After soaking, the chips are filled with a soda solution made from 5 liters of water and 1 tbsp. l. soda Next, you need to leave the semi-finished products in this form for 6 hours. After this, the wood chips are thoroughly washed and placed in a large container. Water is added to it. All this must be boiled for about 50 minutes over low heat. After this, the well-washed wooden pegs are dried naturally for 1 day. The dry wood is laid out on a baking sheet and placed in the oven for 2 hours, preheated to 150-160°C. This process should result in a characteristic brown color. Browned wood chips are stored in a dry, well-ventilated area. High humidity has a detrimental effect on oak chips. Gardeners often harvest cherry, apple or pear wood for this recipe.

For those who find the whole process too long and labor-intensive, we offer a simpler one - buy ready-made oak chips in the storeat an affordable price.

Infusing oak chips in moonshine

This process is divided into 3 main stages:

Calculation of oak chips per 3-liter jar

Everyone in the household has this container. And it is with such a small volume that it is worth starting experiments with oak chips. For a standard jar or bottle of the same capacity, 15cm bars are best suitedx 3 cm x 0.5 cm. As for quantity, 9 pieces will be enough. It should be taken into account that when using such a number of chips, the useful volume decreases by 202.5 ml. Those. 2800 ml remains instead of 3000 ml. To obtain a decent aroma and color, you can take only 6 pieces, increasing their number if necessary. So you can simultaneously infuse moonshine in four 3-liter jars and place 6,7,8,9 chips in them, respectively. This way you can determine the exact number to obtain the drink that you like best in terms of its flavor and aroma properties.

Grape brandy or chacha are best suited for making homemade cognac. Using such raw materials, you bring the taste, aroma and color of the drink as close as possible to those of real French cognac. According to these recipes, it is best to keep oak chips in moonshine for 6 months. But after 3 weeks, the drink softens significantly and acquires a specific taste and a dark tint. Therefore, if time is running out, or you are on the eve of a festive event, you can serve the distillate on oak chips within 3-4 weeks. Don’t be afraid to experiment, and you are guaranteed to find your own recipe for homemade aromatic cognac!

The ability of oak barrels to improve the quality characteristics of many classic distillates is used when aging cognac, whiskey, Calvados and some wines. Not every moonshiner has the opportunity to purchase and store oak barrels at home. Does oak chips allow moonshine masters to solve the problem of aging their own drinks? chips.

Similarities and differences between oak barrels and chips

If the chips are prepared correctly and have been fired and soaked like a barrel, with their help the moonshine will acquire the necessary qualities:

• soft taste;
• vanilla, fruit, chocolate shades of aroma;
• beautiful coloring.

Experienced moonshiners believe that using oak chips instead of barrels cannot count on an identical result. In addition to transferring tannic, extractive, and aromatic substances to the alcoholic beverage, which wood chips handle, the porous inner surface of the barrel ensures gas exchange.

However, craftsmen, using oak chips, ensure gas exchange without adding moonshine to the container by a third and, thereby, creating an air gap.

Wood selection

Botanists count about 600 varieties of oak. Which one
Is it suitable for aging moonshine? The answer to this question, like many others in moonshine, depends on the prevailing stereotypes and marketing tricks of traders. You shouldn't chase rare breeds. The wood of the ubiquitous pedunculate oak is perfect for making chips. Even experts have difficulty distinguishing its aroma from European rock (in our country it is often called Caucasian), white American and other exotics.

The much stronger taste and aroma qualities of aged moonshine depend on other factors:

• what part of the trunk was used (the best is considered to be taken closer to the core);
• parts of a living plant or stained dead wood were taken (fresh raw wood contains a lot of tannins, and from dead wood they have already been washed. This determines the duration of heat treatment);
• age of trunks and branches (oak wood older than 30 years is preferred).

Moonshiners living in climatic latitudes where they do not grow
oaks are forced to use purchased joinery as raw materials: oak parquet, plinth, paneling. The main thing is to make sure that they are not processed in any way. Before cutting them into wood chips, it is better to plan off the surface layer.

You can buy ready-to-eat chips. They vary in size, degree of roasting, and type of oak. There are also exotic offers: wood chips made from Jack Daniel's whiskey barrels.

Making chips

Cut pieces of dry wood into pieces up to 10 cm long, which are split into small pegs. Alcohol penetrates to a depth of 2 mm, so the optimal transverse size of the chips is 4x4 mm.

Next appointment? soaking. It is better to do it in two stages. First, in clean cold water for 12 hours, then, changing the water and adding 1 tbsp. spoon of baking soda per 10 liters of water, another half a day. When finished, rinse.

Heat treatment can be done in two ways: boiling or steaming.

1. Cook the chips over low heat for about 1 hour after boiling.
2. Steaming is more labor-intensive and time-consuming (up to 8 hours), but gives a high-quality result. Do they use special steam dishes for this? pressure cooker or sieve, colander.
   If you do not thermally treat the chips, you are guaranteed to get moonshine with a strong smell of wood and an astringent taste, ironically called “plintusovka”.

After finishing the heat treatment, the wood chips should be dried and fired. For roasting, use a grill, barbecue, or gas burner. A good result is obtained by slowly simmering the chips in the oven at t? 150C for 5-6 hours. It is worth making blanks of varying degrees of firing: from light tanning to strong charring, for creative experiments in obtaining moonshine aromas:

• light roasting gives floral, fruity notes;
• average? spicy, caramel;
• strong? smoky and chocolate tones.
  Store chips in a tightly sealed container.

Proper infusion of oak chips takes a long time: from 2 to 6 months or more. The color and aroma of aged moonshine gradually develops. Attempts to speed up ripening by heating, turning wood chips into sawdust, worsen the quality. Add from 5 to 30 grams per liter of distillate. chips. Constant monitoring and tasting will tell you the required period of infusion of the drink and the rate of adding chips, taking into account your preferences.

As a rule, oak chips are not reused. Distillates made from various raw materials are suitable for infusion: sugar, grain, apple, grape and others.