Homemade Moonshine from Jam

Cooking method

1. Step 1:

   

   Get all your ingredients ready. Any jam works, or fruit and berries mashed with sugar — the jam can even be fermented or crystallized, and you can mix different jams for one batch of mash. Use fresh, compressed (cake) yeast; you can also use wine yeast. You can leave the yeast out entirely, but then fermentation will take much longer to start and finish.

2. Step 2:

   

   Add the jam to your fermentation container.

3. Step 3:

   

   Crumble the yeast and add the sugar to it.

4. Step 4:

   

   Cover with warm water. To avoid killing the yeast, the water should be no warmer than 104°F (40°C). Also, don't use filtered or boiled water — the water needs to be "live" (raw). Wait for the yeast to become active (a foamy cap appears) and pour it into the fermentation container as well.

5. Step 5:

   

   Top up with more (also raw) water and stir gently.

6. Step 6:

   

   Fit a disposable glove over the top and set it in a warm place — no cooler than 68°F (20°C).

7. Step 7:

   

   Thanks to the yeast, fermentation should start fairly quickly and the glove will inflate. It can take 10 to 16 days. When fermentation finishes, the glove deflates again — that means the mash is ready to distill.

8. Step 8:

   

   Strain the mash.

9. Step 9:

   

   Assemble your still. If your model uses them, hook up the cold-water cooling hoses.

10. Step 10:

    

    Pour the mash into the still and set it over the heat. Once the temperature reaches 158°F (70°C), turn on the cooling water, and don't let the temperature rise above 176°F (80°C). Collect the moonshine in a separate container. It's technically ready to drink at this point, but it has a strong "raw spirit" smell, so a second distillation is recommended for a cleaner product.

11. Step 11:

    

    For that, dilute the finished moonshine down to 20% ABV. If you don't have a hydrometer, use 400 ml of clean water per 1 liter of moonshine. Pour the diluted moonshine back into the still and distill again, but collect and discard the first and last 100 ml in a separate container — these "heads and tails" are heavily loaded with fusel oils and unsafe to drink. Pour the remaining moonshine into bottles and let it rest for a few days.

12. Step 12:

    

    Please drink responsibly!