Time to make ‘ Tsoika ’

   … as promised in a prior posting there would
be an upcoming entry describing the making of what is called here
‘Tsoika’ and what we in the States call ‘moonshine’.

     As you can see in the first picture you take all the plums and
grapes you have and place inside the heater section of the ‘still’.
This particular one has about a 100 liter capacity.

      

   The blue barrel in the background is the condenser. The steam
comes from the heater and passes through a coil that is submerged
in water. This is where the vapor is cooled down to form a liquid.

     In the second picture you can see the complete assembly with
the tube connecting the heater section to the condenser. The tub
on the right hand side is used to drain out the plums after they
have extracted all they can from the respective batch.

     

   Also, you can see the big wooden vats in the foreground. All toll
there is about 2300 to 2500 liters of plums and grapes. So it
will take about 25 batches to finish all that is there. Each batch
is taking about 3 hours which they mentioned is longer than it
took last year. They are planning on going around the clock till
it is finished. The nights are starting to cool off, so being near the
fire ought to be nice.

     In the third picture you can see the tsoika/moonshine as it
leaves the condenser. This tsoika/moonshine is from the first
distilled batch.

               

     At this point they said that the alcohol content is an average
of between 40 to 45 %. Also, at this stage the name they call the
liquid is ’Vodka’. They know it is not actually vodka,
it is just the name they use. What will be done with the ’vodka’
is that they will take it and distill it again till it comes out at
approximately 60%. The final alcoholic content they desire is
something like 54%. This they do by some form of smeckeria.
I asked what smeckeria it could be but they said that this was
a ’secret smeckeria’. I’ll try and find out and if I do I’ll pass it along.

     The fourth and fifth pictures speak for themselves I would say
it is depicting him just literally drinking in the fruits of the labor.

      

   It is what this was all about and you can see the look of
accomplishment and satisfaction after all the hard work it
took. At the taking of these pictures there was only another
2300 more liters to distill.

     

   I am sure that he is going to have more than one more chance to get
that look of satisfaction.