Bread wine (polugar)- an alcoholic drink with a strength of 35-50 °, obtained by distillation of grain mash. The first mention of it was in the annals of 1517. The drink received the name "bread wine" because the main ingredient for its production are cereals: wheat, rye, barley, buckwheat and others.
Since ancient times, the recipe for bread wine has been simple. Obtaining malt: grain germination, drying and grinding. Malt ground into flour was diluted with hot water to the density of jelly and sourdough (yeast) was added. Then, for 2-7 days, the wort fermented and distilled two or three times. The whole technology of obtaining bread wine repeats the recipe for the production of whiskey.
In tsarist times, polugar was considered the most popular and best alcoholic drink. The strength of the polugar was exactly - 38.5 °, there was a rye aroma in the taste. Nicholas I in 1842 issued a Decree, according to which alcohol was tested for strength in a special way. Bread wine was poured into copper dishes and set on fire, a high-quality polugar should have burned out by half. Therefore, the name went - “semi” - “gar”. For four centuries, from the 16th to the 19th centuries, bread wine was considered the national Russian alcoholic drink. Bread wine was sold in all taverns and taverns, and its production was established in every estate.
The taste of bread wine depends on many nuances: the quality of the water, the malt composition, the quality of the yeast, the material of the equipment, the correct holding of temperature pauses during the mashing stages, the cleaning of the bread wine and, of course, the correct recipe was an important step.
Classic Polugar Recipe - Bread Wine
The recipe for making polugar described below is based on records from old books; any distiller can easily repeat it at home.
Compound:
- Rye malt - 6 kg;
- Water - 24 l;
- dry yeast - 50-60 gr. (350 gr. pressed).
In addition to the indicated malt, you can use any malt in the recipe: from barley, wheat or buckwheat. Rye is a classic raw material for making bread wine. You can prepare a mixture of malts. It is advisable to use spring water for the mash, if this is not possible, then you can take bottled or tap water passed through the filter. You will definitely need a thermometer to maintain the temperature during the mashing of the wort!
Manufacturing process:
- Training. For polugar, well-dried malt is needed, you can use store-bought or home-cooked malt. Grinding should be of medium fraction, do not try to grind grain into flour, problems may arise in the future.
- Saccharification. Pour water into a saucepan of a suitable volume and heat on gas until boiling. Start the process of mashing (saccharification), in which, under the influence of a certain temperature regime, the starch in the malt grains is split into fermentable sugars. Cool boiling water to a temperature of 55 °, add ground malt and stir the mixture thoroughly so that there are no lumps. Raise the temperature of the wort to 62-64°C while constantly stirring the wort. Then cover the pan with a lid, it is desirable to insulate and maintain a temperature pause of 62-65 ° C for an hour and a half. Attention : When mashing, it is necessary to maintain the recommended temperature in the recipe throughout the entire process, otherwise the saccharification of the wort may go badly and in the future there will be a small yield of raw alcohol or the wort will not ferment at all.
- Fermentation. After saccharification, the wort must be quickly cooled to a yeast incorporation temperature of 26-28 °, at home this can be done by placing the pan in a bath of ice water, or using a special device - a chiller. Pour the cooled wort into a fermentation vessel. Set the yeast, previously prepared according to the instructions. Install a water seal on the fermentation tank and put it in a warm place with a temperature of 20-25 ° for fermentation. Typically, the fermentation of malt mash lasts 4-14 days, depending on the raw materials and ambient temperature. You can check the readiness of the mash by taste, it should be bitter, sweets should not be in the taste. Also, the finished mash should lighten and the release of carbon dioxide should stop in it. If everything is ready, then we move on.
- Obtaining raw alcohol. Strain Braga from grains through a sieve or gauze, pour into a distillation cube. The first haul of mash is done at full power. We need to get the maximum moonshine from this shoulder strap. Do not select heads and tails on the first run, complete the selection process at an alcohol strength in the stream of 15-20 °. At the output, we get a cloudy moonshine with a pungent odor.
- Fractional distillation. During this process, raw alcohol is purified from unnecessary fractions. Pour raw alcohol into a cube, dilute with water to 20-30 °. At low power, select drop by drop the head fraction of 150-200 ml. In no case should you drink this "pervach" - this is a poisonous poison. After that, raise the heating power and select the main fraction (“body” or “heart”). It is necessary to select the body up to 40-45 ° in the jet. Next, select the “tails” in a separate container, this fraction can be used in the next stages of the mash.
- Distillate purification. At this stage, the ennoblement of the polugar takes place. Residues of an unpleasant smell and harmful impurity are removed. Bread wine becomes soft with a characteristic aroma. The distillate must first be diluted with water to 45-50 ° and proceed to purification. There are many recipes for distillate purification, but the most popular ones are charcoal purification, milk purification, egg white purification and bread purification.
- Product refinement. Purified moonshine must be diluted to a standard degree - 38.5%. As a result, according to this recipe, you should get 2-3 liters of homemade polugar. Pour into glass bottles and seal. Soak bread wine in “glass” for a week, then you can proceed to tasting a delicious drink prepared at home.
Types of polugar and differences from each other
Initially, malt rye polugar and malt wheat polugar were sold. Unlike these drinks, there were only raw materials, and the recipe and cooking technology for both were the same. Rye Polugar is made from selected rye. The distillate is then triple distilled. Cleaning is done with egg white and filtered through birch charcoal. Rye Polugar has an aroma of transparent bread with a mild taste. Recently, it has been made from a mixture of rye and wheat malts, and garlic, pepper, honey, coriander, and cumin have been added to the recipes. A new version of the Krivach polugar with a strength of 61° and 41°.
The price of a good polugar is very high, therefore, in order to avoid counterfeiting, our ancestors determined the quality of vodka in the following way. A little bit of bread wine was poured into a dry palm, and then with both palms the liquid was vigorously rubbed until completely dry. Then they sniffed the palm, and if the drink was of high quality, then the subtlest bread notes were felt in the smell.
The difference between polugar and vodka
The difference is in many ways. First production: alcohol for vodka is made in, it has no impurities, tastes and odors. Bread wine is made by distillation, which retains the taste of the raw material. High-quality polugar has a bright taste and smell of bread.
It is customary to drink bread wine chilled to 8-10 ° from special faceted glasses (lafitniks) with a volume of 100-150 ml. Unlike vodka, polugar should not be drunk in one gulp, but sipped in small sips to enjoy the taste of homemade drink.
You can eat bread wine with the same snack as vodka. The drink goes well with traditional Russian meat dishes, salty, sour, garlic snacks.
For many modern Russians, and even more so for foreigners, the word "polugar" does not mean anything. That is why some take the name of this revived drink as a marketing ploy, because every six months some new strong alcoholic drinks appear on the shelves. In fact, Polugar is the forgotten ancestor of Russian alcohol, it is nothing more than bread wine, which began to be produced in Russia much earlier than vodka we know.
A bit of history
Vodka is a mixture of alcohol and purified water. In Russia, it appeared only at the end of the nineteenth century. What was used earlier in Russia? Bread wine was the main one. It was obtained from ordinary stills, as, however, the whole world still does. The difference was only in raw materials.
Everyone drives a drink from what is rich. In France, Italy, Spain it is grapes, in Germany wheat is more often used, in England it is barley. Russia has always been rich in rye, so they made bread wine from it. The manufacturing process was not much different from ordinary moonshine or the production of "oak-by-strength" whiskey in Scotland. If you believe the first mentions, then Scotch whiskey was already in 1494. A certain abbot sent a request to King James to allocate barley for the production of a strong drink, then it was called "water of life" - "aqua vita".
In Russia, the first strong alcoholic drinks are mentioned in the book of the Pole Matvey Mikhovsky in 1517. He describes that in Muscovy the inhabitants, distilling honey and cereals, make a "burning liquid" that warms them in severe frosts. The Russians themselves called this liquid bread wine (due to the method of preparation).
What is called vodka?
Vodka was called bread wine refined in several stages, to which various spices and herbs were added. From a modern point of view, this is a tincture. And there were several varieties.
Sometimes there was vodka without additives, just the wine was distilled, additionally refined in a vodka cube. This drink was very expensive, only wealthy people drank, they know bread wine. Vodka accounted for only 5% of all alcoholic beverages in the country. The processes of distilling and making vodka from wine at that time were subject to different taxes, these were two completely different processes.
Only in 1936, vodka in Russia began to have a different composition. It has become a common mixture of rectified alcohol with purified water. All bottles with a strength of 40% began to stamp the label "Vodka".
Bread wine - polugar
For a long time, polugar was the highest quality and most popular alcoholic drink in Russia. The wine is quite strong - 38.5%, has a unique rye taste. Until 1895, polugar was considered a symbol of the quality of alcoholic products, because its strength was strictly controlled.
In 1842, Nicholas I even issued a Decree, according to which polugars were tested in a special way, that is, by annealing. How did it happen? Ordinary grain wine could have any strength from 38 to 50 degrees, while polugar strictly kept 38.5%. At that time there were no alcohol meters.
The regulated procedure was as follows: the wine was poured into a copper annealer and set on fire using a special technology. Polugar was supposed to burn exactly half. This is where its name came from - semi-garden wine. The poured two "glasses" burned through and merged into one "glass". It was the norm. Later, when alcoholometers appeared, we managed to find out how many degrees in half a fire, it turned out to be 38-39, but not 40 at all.
Where did 40 degrees come from?
Many are convinced that Mendeleev began to dilute alcohol to a point of forty degrees. In fact, this innovation was introduced by the Minister of Finance of that time, Reitern. This was done to facilitate the work of officials. After the introduction of excises in 1863, they painfully deduced tax amounts, multiplying by 38. The minister ordered that the strength of bread wine be 40 degrees. At that time, alcohol meters were already in full use and the “burnout” technology became irrelevant.
In 1895, in Russia, after the introduction of a state monopoly on the production of polugar, it was banned. Vodka began to be produced. Gradually, the recipe for bread wine was forgotten, and only recently the Russian market began to offer this ancient unique drink.
Types of polugar
Initially, only three types of polugar were supplied to the modern Russian market: malt, wheat and rye. Now new varieties have been launched into production: “garlic-pepper”, “rye-wheat”, “honey-pepper”. These new drinks are a bit cheaper as they are not egg white filtered. For the general public, they are quite affordable. The classic polugar is much more expensive and new options are quite suitable for a first acquaintance.
What is the difference between polugar and vodka
For vodka, pure alcohol is taken, which is made in chemically it is absolutely pure, has no extra smells and tastes. To make polugar, bread wine is used. Traditional distillation does not remove the taste of raw materials. Polugar has a rich, bright aroma of bread. The taste of the drink is incomparable to anything. To some extent, it can only be compared with Scotch whiskey. Drinking polugar is not like vodka. If it is better to drink vodka in one gulp, then polugar should be tasted in small sips, so you can better feel the bright, unique taste and aroma of the drink.
Bread wine recipe. Main steps
Rye distillate is needed to make polugar. For mash, they take selected rye, grind it coarsely and fill it with clean spring water. Water does not require additional filtration.
After the mash has matured and is ready for distillation, special distillation copper cubes should be set up. Following the technology, the mash drink is distilled, if required, in several stages. After that, the polugars are cleaned using either egg whites. The result should be transparent.
The resulting polugar has nothing to do with modern vodka. It does not need to be cooled much, at room temperature the bread flavor is better felt.
Polugar from flour
The recipe for bread wine (polugar) includes the following components:
- 2 kg flour;
- 8 liters of water;
- 100 g of yeast;
- 100 g sugar.
Bread wine without yeast (moonshine)
In Russia, a strong drink made from rye, wheat, oats, barley with the addition of wild yeast has been popular since ancient times. Now alcoholic homemade drinks are no longer so popular, but for lovers of their own natural product, this recipe will come in handy.
Bread moonshine has a special taste that is not inherent in other similar drinks. It has a slightly noticeable taste of grain, you need to drink it chilled, the minimum strength is 32 degrees. If rye was taken as a raw material, the taste of moonshine turns out to be rich, tart; from wheat sourdough, the drink turns out to be softer. The classic drink does not include the addition of extra spices (cinnamon, anise and others).
Cooking steps
We grow wild yeast. Rinse 4 kg of wheat in running water, pour evenly into a 25 liter container. Pour 2 cm higher with clean water. Add 800 g of sugar and mix thoroughly. Leave in a dark place for 5 days. When you smell a sour smell, you will understand that the yeast is ready.
Syrup preparation. In warm water (15 liters) stir 3 kg of sugar. Pour the syrup into a container with wheat. Cover tightly with a lid. Leave to ferment for 6 days. The temperature should be between 22 and 28 degrees.
Distillation. Braga carefully drain without sediment. Distill on a moonshine still. You should get 3 liters of bread moonshine. Its strength reaches 79 degrees. It is better to dilute the drink with clean water to 45-50 degrees.
Cleaning. Manganese is used to clean the drink from. Add a few crystals to the bottle. After a few days, black flakes will fall out at the bottom. After that, you need to filter the moonshine. Lay several layers of gauze in a watering can, laying it with either cotton wool or crushed coal. On the topmost layer, you need to pour 1 teaspoon of soda and sugar. In a small stream, pass the drink through the watering can. Change the filter after every three liters. To improve the taste, filtered moonshine should be infused for 3-5 days.
Khlebno wine was first mentioned in the annals of 1517. Wine recipes have been known for centuries. This is a strong alcoholic drink that contains thirty-five to fifty percent strength. It is prepared during the distillation of grain mash.
Bread wine is also called polugar. Why is that? Due to the fact that it is prepared from cereals, it was called bread wine. And he was called a half-garr back in tsarist times.
Origin of the name Polugar
In tsarist times, there was always one fortress of wine, this is 38.5 degrees, no more, no less. In order for the wine to be just such a fortress, a decree was created in 1842 on checking alcohol for strength in a very interesting way. Alcoholic drinks were poured into a copper container and set on fire. When it was of good quality, half of the liquid should have evaporated. From this came the name "polugar". During the period of the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, this drink was the national Russian alcohol. It was prepared on almost every corner, and it could be purchased from any merchant.
What is the difference between bread wine and vodka?
Bread wine differs from vodka in such shades.
- Manufacturing process
Bread wine is obtained by distillation. It retains the taste of wheat and grain raw materials well. Proper bread wine tastes and smells like wheat.
In order to prepare alcohol, special cleaners are used. Therefore, it has neither the taste nor the smell of the feedstock.
- drinking process
As we know that vodka is drunk in one gulp and cold. And bread wine is cooled to ten degrees, poured into glasses and drunk in small sips. So we get great pleasure from the pleasant taste and smell. But the choice of snacks can be treated the same way, it is suitable for both vodka and wine. These drinks are good to eat with pickles, cabbage, garlic and meat. Traditional Russian dishes.
Many factors influence the taste and aroma of bread wine. For example, what the malt is made of, the quality of water and yeast, as well as the correct temperature regime, and what material the device for making wine is made of.
And of course, the recipe itself. If you follow all the instructions and rules, polugar will cook very tasty and fragrant.
Recipe for an ancient intoxicating drink
In order to make bread wine, we need the following ingredients:
- Purified water twenty-four liters;
- Rye malt six kilograms;
- Yeast dry sixty grams.
It is desirable to use purified water. If rye malt is not available, use wheat or buckwheat malt. Prepare immediately a thermometer in order to measure the temperature when mashing the wort.
Polugar preparation consists of the following processes:
- First you need to grind the malt, for this we use a grain crusher. But do not overdo it, it should not look like flour, medium grinding is better;
- Then pour water into a special container and boil. And then we begin to rub the malt starch into sugar so that it can ferment well. To do this, you need to cool the water to fifty-five degrees. When cooled to the required temperature, pour in the malt and mix well so that there are no lumps. We heat the mixture to sixty-three percent. When the mixture has warmed up, we close the container and insulate it with something so that for an hour and a half the temperature does not fall, but stays at 62-65 degrees;
- In order for the wort to begin to ferment, it must be cooled to 26-28 degrees. To do this, you can take the container in which the wort is located, put it in cold water and cool it quickly. Pour the must into a bottle in which it will ferment. Dilute the yeast according to the instructions and pour it into the bottle. We make a water seal on the bottle. Then we take the bottle to a warm place where there is a temperature of twenty - twenty-five degrees. The fermentation process takes from four days to several weeks. It all depends on the quality of the products used and the temperature at which the wine ferments. To understand that the fermentation process is over, you need to carefully look at whether there are bubbles or not. When they are no longer there, then the fermentation is over;
- At the last stage, we will be engaged in the distillation of alcohol. To do this, the mash is poured into a cube for distillation. The first time we distill at full speed to get more moonshine, so we do not select tails and heads. We complete the selection when the jet begins to have fifteen to twenty degrees of strength. In the end, we get a slightly cloudy moonshine with a pungent smell.
Now you need to clean the alcohol. To do this, we do this:
- Pour moonshine into a cube and dilute with water to get a fortress of twenty to thirty degrees. At a low speed, we select the head fraction, somewhere between one hundred and fifty - two hundred milliliters. You can’t taste this liquid, you can end up in the hospital. Then we increase the power, and select the main fraction. We make sure that the fortress of moonshine is forty - forty-five degrees. And in another container, we cast the tails, which can be useful for the next hauls of the mash;
- In order for the aroma and taste of bread wine to turn out good, you need to clean the distillate from additives. The pungent smell that immediately hits the nose will turn into a pleasant aroma of bread. Bread wine will become pleasant and soft, which will be easy to drink. To get such a result, you need to dilute the distiller with water to forty-five - fifty degrees, and pass it through a charcoal filter. So that the wine is already completely ready, we dilute pure moonshine to 38.5 degrees. The result should be about three liters of finished bread wine. We close the bottle with polugar well and keep it for a week.
Now we know the recipe for real bread wine, which has been tested for centuries. Try to cook it yourself at home, as we understand it is not difficult. Taste and treat your friends to excellent bread wine.
For most of our contemporaries, the word "polugar" does not mean anything, although 150 years ago all the inhabitants of the Russian Empire understood its meaning. The tsarist, and then the Soviet vodka monopoly, this drink prevented from receiving excess profits. Unwanted alcohol was artificially removed from the market, prohibiting production. In the past few years, interest in bread wine (the second name for polugar) has revived. Not all ancient recipes have been lost; modern production technology has been developed on their basis.
Polugar (bread wine) is a double-distilled distillate made from barley, rye or wheat malt with an ABV of 38.5%. Unlike cognac or whiskey, which are aged for several years in oak barrels, the quality of polugar is improved by natural purification methods: charcoal, bread, milk, etc. The drink is ready to drink 3-5 days after preparation.
From the 15th to the 19th century, bread wine was the national Russian alcoholic drink. The first written mention dates back to 1517. Polugars were mainly produced by rich landowners for their own needs according to recipes that were passed down from generation to generation. In 1895, by order of the Minister of Finance of the Russian Empire, S. Yu. Witte, bread wine was banned, replacing it with a mixture of rectified ethyl alcohol with water - ordinary vodka, the production of which was established by the tsarist monopoly.
The word "polugar" appeared thanks to the original method of quality control, which was officially introduced by Nicholas I in 1842. Bread wine was poured into a special ladle (pictured) and set on fire. After burnout, the volume of the remaining liquid was measured, if it was half the original (half burnt out), then the drink successfully passed the test.
Bucket for checking the quality of polugar Calling Polugar vodka is wrong, because the cooking technology is closer to moonshine, whiskey and cognac. The difference is shown in the table.
| hallmark | Polugar | Vodka |
|---|---|---|
| Raw material | Grains: barley, wheat, rye (most common) | Any food starch-containing raw materials: grain, potatoes, sugar beets, peas, etc. |
| Technology | Distillation - still distillation | Rectification is an industrial method for obtaining alcohol. |
| Organoleptic properties | Raw materials influence the taste and aroma | Softened taste of alcohol or no taste at all |
| impurities | Standard set of fusel oils for cognac and whiskey | Almost free of foreign impurities |
Polugar was drunk from special faceted glasses (lafitnikov) with a volume of 50-150 ml. The optimum serving (serving) temperature is 8-10°C. Not necessarily a glass was knocked over in one gulp, often the taste of bread wine was simply enjoyed, sipping in small sips to catch a pleasant aftertaste. The drink goes well with traditional Russian meat, salty, sour, garlic and pepper dishes.
Traditional stack Recipe for bread wine (polugara)
The proposed cooking method was created on the basis of old recipes described in pre-revolutionary books, and adapted to the equipment of a standard kitchen so that anyone can reproduce all the steps at home.
Ingredients:
- malt (barley, rye or wheat) - 5 kg;
- water - 20 liters;
- dry yeast - 50 grams (or 300 grams pressed).
The choice of malt is not of fundamental importance. But in most old Russian recipes, rye is used; it is this cereal that can be considered a classic raw material for bread wine. Spring or well water is ideal. It is better to first defend ordinary tap water for a day, then pass it through a purification filter without reverse osmosis. You will also need a thermometer to measure the temperature of the wort!
Cooking technology:
1. Preparation of malt. Polugar is made from well-dried store-bought or homemade malt.
First, the grains need to be ground to coarse grains, but it should not be flour, otherwise problems will arise in the next step. Many shops sell ready-made ground malt, this is the best option for beginners who are just learning the basics of distilling.
Properly ground malt 2. Mashing. Mashing is the process by which the starch in malt is broken down into sugar by the action of water and heat.
Pour water into a saucepan, put on the stove, bring to a boil. Then cool to 55°C, add malt and mix until the mass is homogeneous. The main thing is to prevent the formation of lumps at the bottom of the container. Heat the wort to 61-64°C, mix well again.
3. Fermentation. Yeast converts sugar into alcohol.
Cool the wort to 28°C, then pour into a fermentation tank. Add the yeast diluted according to the instructions on the sachet, mix, install a water seal and transfer the container to a dark place with a temperature of 18-27°C.
The simplest water seal 
Factory water seal Depending on the sugar content of the malt, the quality of the yeast and the temperature in the room, fermentation lasts from 4 to 16 days. Once a day, you need to remove the water lock, stir the wort with a clean hand or a wooden stick, then install the lock back.
Bread mash ready for distillation is bitter in taste without sweetness, it becomes lighter and the water seal does not gurgle for 1-2 days. When these signs appear, you can proceed to the next step.
4. First distillation. It is done in order to get a maximum of raw alcohol from the mash.
Pour the mash into the distillation cube of the moonshine through a colander with a fine strainer to remove all undissolved particles of malt (grain), which can burn during the distillation process. Filtered pellets can be fed to livestock.
Overtake the mash over low heat without separation into fractions. To complete the selection of distillate when the strength of the output in the jet falls below 25 degrees. You will get a cloudy liquid with a pungent odor, this is normal. We will deal with the refinement in the next step. Measure the strength of moonshine, determine the amount of pure alcohol. For example, 2 liters of 55% contains 1.1 liters of pure alcohol.
cloudy distillate 5. Second distillation. Cleans the product from harmful impurities.
The resulting distillate is diluted with water up to 20% and distilled again, dividing the yield into fractions: “heads”, “body”, “tails”. Collect the first 12-15% of the yield from the amount of pure alcohol (“heads” or “pervach”) in a separate container. This is a harmful fraction containing acetone and other hazardous substances, it is dangerous to drink it, but it can be used for technical needs.
Then select the main product (“body”) until the fortress in the jet drops below 40 degrees. This distillate is the ultimate goal. Weaker output ("tails") can be collected separately, using new portions of mash, but it is not suitable for making polugar.
6. Cleaning. Eliminates the remnants of harmful impurities, while leaving a characteristic aroma and mild taste.
Four cleaning methods are considered traditional for bread wine: charcoal, bread, milk and egg white. Methods can be combined or use only one. A description of each of these techniques can be found through a search on the site. Before cleaning, polugars should be diluted with water up to 45-50 degrees, so that absorbent substances better absorb harmful impurities.
7. Fine-tuning. Bring the strength of refined bread wine to the standard - 38.5%. Then pour the drink into bottles for storage, close tightly with corks and keep for 2-3 days in a dark, cool place before drinking to stabilize the taste.
Finished bread wine Depending on the starch content in the malt, the success of the grouting and the technology of distillation according to the proportions in the recipe, 3.5 liters of home-made half-gard are obtained with a slight smell of raw materials and a pleasant mild taste.
Polugar is a product from the "Everything new - well-forgotten old" series. It was with this drink that a century and a half ago our ancestors accompanied their meals and treated guests. And today, for most of us, this word does not mean anything. The invention of rectification and, as a result, the production of vodka, which received a state monopoly, replaced the traditional polugar for the times of Tsarist Russia.
What is polugar
Polugar or bread wine is a double-distilled grain alcohol produced in Russia from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The traditional strength was 38.5°. Wheat, rye, barley, less often buckwheat served as raw materials for a strong drink. Because of such a cereal base, the drink was called “bread wine” for a long time, later it was called polugar.
The second name "polugar" is connected with the method of measuring strength or, as our ancestors used to say, "kindness". For this, special devices were invented: a bottle and an annealer. In the annealer, the polugars were ignited and the burnt-out volume of liquid was determined from the applied marks. To meet the mandatory strength of 38.5 °, alcohol had to burn out exactly half: “semi” - “gar”. The volume and scale of the annealer itself were determined by decree of Emperor Nicholas I, as we would say today, standardized.
Polugar appeared much earlier than vodka and differed from it for the better:
- grain crops served as raw materials;
- only natural cleaning methods were used: bread, coal, milk;
- the finished distillate had the aroma of the feedstock.
bread wine recipe
According to ancient sources, culinary and household books of tsarist times, modern gastroenthusiasts and household historians have tried to restore the recipe and production of bread wine. After translating traditional weight measures into modern ones and a little adaptation, a fairly simple recipe for making a bread polugar was obtained:
- malt (from rye, barley or wheat) - 2.5 kg;
- distilled water - 10 liters;
- dry yeast - 25 grams or pressed - 150 grams.
From the type of cereal chosen as the basis for the polugar, the recipe will not change. The method of preparation is the same, but the smell of the finished drink will be different. In traditional distillation in Russia, rye and wheat were most often used. They were preferred due to their soft and noble taste. Barley, buckwheat were used much less frequently. And often not in the form of a monosort, but as an additive to decorate wheat or rye polugar.
No less attention was paid to water. In original times, they took water from a well or spring. Nowadays, bottled is suitable at home. Tap water can be passed through a filter and allowed to settle.
How to make your own bread wine
Malt preparation
You can get malt in different ways: germinate yourself or buy ready-made. The first method is more time consuming and requires skills. There are many instructions for sprouting and malting grains in the public domain, with which you can make a completely authentic polugar.
In the absence of time for such subtle manipulations, ready-made malt can be purchased. It is sold in specialized stores or on the market. Many grain producers also deal in malt. Be careful: the shelf life of green malt is 3 days, white - several months.
The malt will need to be ground to a medium-sized grain. For this, a grain crusher, food processor, blender is suitable. It doesn't need to be turned into flour.
Mashing malt
Mashing was a method of saccharification of starch. To decompose starch polysaccharide into simple sugars suitable for yeast nutrition, only water and a special temperature regime were used. At this stage, it is necessary to control the temperature with an accuracy of one degree. Therefore, the use of a thermometer is mandatory.
- We put all the water on the fire in a large saucepan and bring to a boil. We take a thermometer and wait for the water to cool down to 55-60°C.
- Time to add malt. Pour it in small portions, constantly stirring the contents of the pan. It is necessary to avoid the formation of lumps and burning of the mass.
- Now we bring the temperature of the contents of the pan to 65 ° C and close the lid.
- Now our task is to keep the temperature of the "malt porridge" within 60-65 ° C for an hour and a half. To do this, the pan can be tightly wrapped with a blanket. At temperatures below 60°C, the starch will not be completely broken down, and a small amount of sugar will affect the quality of fermentation.
Wort fermentation
At this stage, we finish the preparation of the wort and ferment it. We cool the boiled malt to 26-28 ° C - a temperature comfortable for the life of the yeast. We activate the yeast according to the instructions attached to it and add it to the wort. It is better to do this immediately using the containers in which the mash will stand.
We put the mash under a water seal and put it in a dark place with a temperature of 20-28 ° C. The average duration of fermentation is 2-3 weeks. Throughout this time, the mash must be mixed. Do this quickly and always with a clean object (hands) so as not to introduce bacteria.
By the end of the second week of fermentation, you need to start watching for signs of readiness of the mash. The taste of mash from sweet becomes bitter. Yeast precipitates, and the surface brightens. The surface calms down: the hissing and foaming processes stop.
First distillation
When all the signs indicate the readiness of the mash, you can proceed to distillation. Drain the mash from the sediment and filter through a cotton-gauze filter. This will help remove coarse sediment from the rest of the malt.
We distill the mash at a low temperature in order to extract the alcohol to the maximum. We do not split into factions. We expel alcohol almost to the last drop, until the fortress in the stream drops below 30 °. The resulting alcohol - raw has a cloudy color and a specific smell.
It is necessary to measure the volume and strength of the resulting distillate. Multiplying these two figures, we get the pure alcohol content. This will be required in the next step.
Second distillation
Before re-distillation, we dilute the raw material to 20 °. To purify the drink from impurities and odors during the second distillation, we separate the fractions. The selection of heads will allow you to get rid of poisonous technical alcohols. The number of heads is 12-15% of the pure alcohol content.
The field of heads is expelled by the body - the main part of the distillate. This is bread wine. Its amount is about 70% of the pure alcohol in the raw after the first distillation. We expel the body to 40 ° fortress in the jet. Everything else is tails and is not used in polugars.
Polugar cleaning
Before the start of cleansing activities, bread wine is diluted to 45-50 °. In this case, the molecular bonds are weaker than in alcohol, and the substances bind more easily.
To clean the polugar, only natural products are used that do not affect the taste and smell of the drink: coal, milk, bread crumb, egg yolk. The methods practically do not differ from each other. It is necessary to mix one and a half with an adsorbent that will absorb the remaining impurities.
The only difference is the way coal is used. Here, in addition to mixing, you can build a coal column. You will need a funnel and cotton pads.
Finishing touches
We bring the drink to a nominal strength of 38.5 °. Now the finished bread wine can be bottled for future storage. By the way, you can use polugar after 3-4 days. Unlike eminent relatives of cognac and whiskey, it does not require long exposure.
Polugars from different malts differ from each other in taste. Wheat reminds the taste of freshly baked white bread. Polugar rye smells like rye edge and butter. Buckwheat drink is considered a unique taste for great originals. Each moonshiner will eventually be able to find his own taste.
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