Calvados at home: three step-by-step recipes

It’s worth preparing Calvados at home only if you have a huge amount of ripe and sweet apples; otherwise it’s not worth the candle. But there is another plus - if the picking is fun, the fruit is overripe or there are a lot of wormy specimens, then all this can be processed without regret and with benefit. But how to do this correctly? Catch three recipes for French Calvados (aka brandy or moonshine made from apple mash).

Calvados at home

Stages of making Calvados

At first glance, the traditional apple Calvados recipe may seem complicated, confusing, and time-consuming. It essentially consists of a huge number of steps, but they are all very simple to perform. The most difficult thing is preparing the main ingredient and distilling the distillate.

Selection of apples for Calvados

The main stages of making Calvados at home:

Processing, chopping apples. As mentioned above, slightly rotten, wormy fruits will also be accepted, but all this must be trimmed, cores and seeds are also removed. You can chop apples with a knife, grater, or chop with a food processor, but not to the point of puree. Or use untainted apple juice.
Making mash or apple wine. One of the important steps. Traditional Calvados is prepared from pure juice without yeast or additional sugar, but more often all this is added to speed up the process.
Removing the pulp, in other words, straining the mash from pieces of apples. If untainted juice was consumed, this step is skipped.
Distillation. You can't do without a moonshine still. This step has its own aspects.
Maturation in a wood barrel. Without this step, the result will not be Calvados, but apple moonshine. According to French standards, the drink is aged for at least 2 years. At home, the period rarely exceeds a year; more often, the first sample is taken after 3-4 months.
The finishing touch is filtration. At home, Calvados is passed through gauze and cotton wool placed in a funnel.

Stages of making Calvados at home

From apples or juice, you can prepare ordinary mash in a flask, or you can make real cider from the juice using a water seal. There is no error in either the first or the 2nd option.

Calvados from apple juice at home

This option can be called a classic. To this day, there is a lot of debate about what is best to prepare Calvados at home. It’s easier and quicker to make it from chopped apples, but history often mentions juice, or rather cider, made from it. For fermentation in this option, you will need a bottle with a water seal. If you have an electronic or mechanical juicer at home, the process will be significantly simplified.

Calvados from apple juice at home

Ingredients

apples.

Manufacturing method

Prepare raw natural juice from ripe apples of all types. Leave it for 20 hours, then remove the foam and pour the sediment into a bottle.
If the juice is sour at first, you can add a little sweet sand (to taste). Then we put on a water seal and leave it to ferment at a temperature of 22 to 27 degrees. The process will take about 2 weeks. Let's watch the action.
As soon as active fermentation has passed, the cider must be distilled immediately through the still. This is done in two steps. During the first distillation, the entire product is collected from the beginning until the strength in the stream drops to 27-29 degrees.
During the second distillation of Calvados from juice at home, the product must be divided into three fractions. The primary distillate makes up about 10-12% of the total size, popularly called the “head”. It is used for technical purposes and is not eaten. It contains many harmful and toxic substances.
Next comes the collection of the 2nd fraction, which is Calvados or apple moonshine; people call this drinking part “the body”. We often check the degree in the stream. As soon as it drops to 40, the collection stops. What remains are the tails, which only spoil the properties of the drink and are not eaten.
Calvados prepared at home must be poured into a barrel, sealed and left to mature for a period of 6 months.
After six months (maybe a little earlier), apple Calvados must be filtered through cotton wool and bottled.

Calvados from juice: stages of production

What can you create if you don’t have the ability to age the apple wine distillate in an oak barrel? You can pour it into glass bottles or drop it into any oak pegs. Beforehand, they must be freed from the bark, soaked in cool water for at least 3 days, or poured with boiling water for half an hour.

Regular Calvados at home

The French are convinced that only they prepare real Calvados within their geographical boundaries. All other drinks are not worthy of this name; they are called brandy or apple moonshine. This is their right, but we think differently. Regardless of geographical location, excellent Calvados can also be prepared at home. If you do everything right, it will not be inferior in taste to the French original.

Ingredients

apples (3.5-4 buckets);
3 kg sugar;
13.3 liters of water;
10 g citric acid;
10 g wine yeast.

Manufacturing method

Chop or grate the apples finely, you can pass them through a meat grinder. You need to be careful not to get any bones, which give off bitterness during the infusion process. You should get 2 buckets of crushed apple mass.
Transfer the cooked apples to a large mash jar; they should fill the jar about halfway.
This homemade Calvados recipe uses invert syrup. To make it, combine sweet sand with 1.3 liters of water, put it on the stove, bring to a boil and boil for 15-20 minutes. The readiness of the invert syrup is checked by measuring the temperature (it should reach 108 degrees) or using a thick thread (stretch a drop between two fingers). Add citric acid, cool.
Add invert syrup to the apples, then add water at the rate of 4 liters per 1 kg of sugar, in other words, pour in 12 liters.
Add yeast. We make approximately 35 liters of mash, 10 g is enough for this amount. It is better to take yeast for snow-white wine. We dilute it in warm water, let it dissolve, add it to the flask. Stir thoroughly, dissolve all ingredients, close and leave to ferment for 10-14 days. Stir occasionally. The room temperature must be kept between 22-27 degrees.
Strain the mash, squeeze out all the apple pieces. No cake needed. You can throw it away.
Distill the strained mash through a moonshine still using double distillation, separating the head and tail. This step was carefully described above in the previous recipe; we will not repeat it.
Pour the finished distillate into a pre-prepared oak barrel, seal it, and leave it to mature for a period of 6 to 12 months.

Regular Apple Calvados

If everything is done correctly, the result will be homemade Calvados of golden color with a strength of 50-52°. It can be diluted with clean water to 40-42°.

A barrel of Calvados is never completely filled to the very top; it is necessary to leave 30-40% of the empty space.

Video: Homemade apple calvados recipe

Imitation or lazy Calvados at home

It can be seen above that making real Calvados at home from apples requires certain abilities, the presence of a moonshine still and time. There are lighter options for lazy people. Here is a recipe for apple liqueur, which is very similar in taste and smell to the distillate of apple mash, but is prepared even easier and more time-saving.

Imitation or lazy Calvados

Ingredients

1 liter of vodka;
0.18 kg sugar;
1 g vanillin;
160 ml water;
2 kg apples.

Manufacturing method

Cut ripe apples into small cubes, remove cores with seeds. Dump into a jar, add vodka and vanillin. It's great if you have a vanilla pod. Close it, shake it, put it in the sun.
After 2 weeks, cook the syrup: combine water with sugar, bring to a boil, boil for two minutes. Cool to room temperature.
Strain all the liquid from the apples, combine with syrup, stir, and leave in a warm place for another three days.
Pass the drink through a cotton swab filter or strain through 6-8 layers of gauze. Pour into bottles. If desired, age the drink in an oak barrel.

Here, vanilla is used to make Calvados at home, but from time to time there are options with cinnamon. It mixes perfectly with apples and gives off a captivating scent. You can additionally add the peel of any citrus: lemon, tangerine, grapefruit or a little cut zest.

True Calvados without sugar and yeast

For a long time, Calvados was considered the alcohol of common people, since the drink is made from ordinary apples. But after this alcohol began to appear in the works of the writer Remarque, the situation changed. The elite became interested in apple moonshine infused in barrels and it quickly became fashionable. We will look at how to make Calvados at home using a traditional recipe and in the form of an imitation tincture.

On a note. Only a drink produced in Normandy (a region in northwestern France) can be called Calvados; in all other versions, apple distillate should be called brandy.

Imitation Calvados (apple liqueur)

Manufacturing takes minimal time and foreign exchange costs. The smell of the tincture is slightly similar to the original. For those who want to prepare real homemade Calvados, I advise you to immediately move on to the second recipe.

Ingredients:

apples – 2 kg;
vodka – 1 liter;
sugar – 200 gr;
water – 150 ml;
vanilla sugar – 10 gr.

Development

1. Wash the apples, remove cores and seeds, cut into cubes.

2. Place the cubes in a jar, sprinkle with vanilla sugar.

3. Add vodka, close the lid and place the jar in a black space at room temperature for 2 weeks to infuse.

4. Remove the apples by straining the drink through cheesecloth. Squeeze out the pulp.

5. Mix water and sugar in a saucepan, bring to a boil, simmer for approximately 5 minutes (until foam forms), skimming foam from the surface. Cool the finished sweet syrup to 25-30°C, then pour it into the apple liqueur and stir.

6. Pour the finished tincture into glass bottles and seal tightly.

Store in a cool, dark place. Shelf life – up to 3 years. It tastes like sweetish apple vodka with a strength of 32-35 degrees.

Apple Calvados recipe (real)

The proposed development is very close to the original. The only ingredients needed for homemade Calvados are apples. Although you will end up with a distillate (moonshine from fermented juice), I still advise you to take the quality of the apples seriously. They must be mature, without signs of rottenness or spoilage. The variety is not of fundamental importance, but it is better to use sweet and juicy fruits.

1. Making cider

Extract juice from apples using any easily accessible method. The less pulp, the better. Leave the juice for 24 hours in a dark place at room temperature. Then remove the foam from the surface and drain the sediment through a straw into a fermentation container. Install a water seal or a rubber glove with a small hole in one of the fingers (pierce it with a needle).

Water seal designs for wine, mash and beer

Transfer the container to a black space with a temperature of 18-27 °C. After the end of fermentation (signs: the water seal does not release bubbles for a number of days or the glove has deflated, the drink has become lighter and has no signs of sweetness in taste, sediment has formed on the bottom), pour the finished cider into the distillation cube, being careful not to touch the sediment on the bottom, you can additionally filter through gauze. If this is not done, the hard part will burn during heating, ruining the taste of Calvados.

2. Distillation

It's time to get the distillate from the cider. To do this, you need a moonshine still of any design. During the first distillation, do not divide the yield into fractions, selecting the entire product until the strength in the stream drops below 30 degrees. Measure the strength of the purchased apple moonshine and find the amount of pure alcohol.

Dilute the moonshine with water to 18-20 degrees, then distill it again, removing the “heads,” “body,” and “tails.” Collect the first 12% of the amount of pure alcohol in a separate container and pour it out (use for technical needs), these are “heads” that contain harmful impurities, spoil the taste and have a bad effect on health.

Next, collect the “body” - the main fraction for the production of Calvados. The selection ends when the strength of the output in the stream drops below 40%. As a result, an untainted distillate of 70-80 degrees comes out.

3. Exposure

For apple moonshine to transform into Calvados, it requires infusion of oak wood. Traditional technology uses oak barrels. But not everyone has this opportunity at home, so the simplest option is suitable - aging in glass jars (bottles) with oak pegs.

You need oak wood with a trunk diameter of 25-35 cm. Bark, sawdust and shavings are not suitable because they contain a lot of tannins, which make Calvados bitter.

The wood must be divided into pieces 5-8 mm wide and 10-15 cm long. Pour boiling water over the purchased pegs, leave for 10 minutes, drain the broth, soak in cool water for 20 minutes, then drain the liquid and dry the wood. Place the treated pegs in jars and fill them with apple alcohol diluted with clean, cool water to 45 degrees. Roll up the jars with steel lids (close tightly with corks), and place them in a black, cold space for ripening for 6-12 months.

4. Filtration

Filter the finished homemade Calvados through several layers of gauze and cotton wool, then pour into bottles for storage, tightly capped.

The video shows another development of making Calvados with sugar and yeast. Although in its essence the method is correct and not much simpler than the one proposed, but due to the addition of other ingredients (yeast and sugar), it is not permissible to call the recipe traditional; the smell will be worse and the taste will not be as soft.

Homemade Calvados: preparing apple brandy according to the best recipes

You can prepare such a wonderful drink at home. Obviously, it will not 100% replicate the taste of the original from the shores of France, but it will be very close to it.

Below we attach 2 recipes for producing apple Calvados at home.

A simple recipe for Calvados at home

"Lazy" recipe. The drink prepared using the technology given to us does not require a huge amount of time and labor, and it only vaguely resembles Calvados. It would be more accurate to call it apple tincture.

So, we will need:

apples – 2 kg;
vodka/moonshine – 1 liter;
sugar – 300 g;
water – 500 ml.

Manufacturing procedure:

Select the freshest and not rotten apples, wash them, cut out the cores, cut them into small pieces and put them in a jar. Pour in 40-degree moonshine or vodka.
Close the jar with a tight lid and put it in a black space for 10-14 days to infuse.
Strain the tincture using any convenient method. We will no longer need apples; we can throw them away.
Prepare sweet syrup: mix sugar and water, boil over heat for about 5 minutes. During cooking, foam accumulates on the surface, do not forget to remove it from time to time. Cool the purchased syrup to 25-30°C, then pour it into the tincture.
Pour the tincture into bottles and seal tightly. We recommend storing in a dark, cool place for 3 years.

We will get an apple liqueur with a strength of a little more than 30% with a sweetish aftertaste. It is difficult to call it Calvados, although it imitates its taste and smell well.

If you want to prepare truly real Calvados, we recommend using the recipe below.

Traditional recipe for homemade apple calvados

This recipe will require more time and effort from you, but the end result is worth it. At the end, you will receive a drink that is in no way inferior in quality to the best examples from Normandy.

In this recipe, it is very important to choose the right varieties of apples and their ratio. We will need:

4 parts sweet apples;
4 parts bitter apples;
2 parts sour apples.

Above we have given the perfect ratio of apples. If you don’t have any types on hand, use those that are available. The most important thing is that the apples are fresh, ripe and without rottenness.

1. Making apple cider

The first step requires juice from the fruit. For this, it is best to use a special press - it will perfectly squeeze out all the liquid from the fruit and help separate the pulp.

Infuse the juice for 1 day in a dark place at room temperature in a tightly closed container. Every other day, remove the foam formed on the surface of the water and pour it into a fermentation container. We close it with a water seal and leave it to ferment at a temperature of 18-30°C for 10-14 days.

After fermentation is over (the drink has become clear, the water seal does not allow bubbles), pour the drink into the distillation cube. It must be filtered beforehand, otherwise the solid particles that get into the cube will burn during distillation and spoil the entire product.

2. Distillation

We distill the purchased cider using a moonshine still. To make the product purer and better, we do double distillation. We will not dwell on all the intricacies of the process - we have already written in one of the previous articles about how to properly distill moonshine. Let's just say that distilling cider is no different from distilling sweet mash.

3. Ripening and aging

After double distillation, we should get a distillate with a strength of 70-80%. All we have to do is send it to age in an oak barrel.

But if it is not there, you can use the simplest option - infusion in a glass container on oak pegs.

The pegs must be properly prepared in advance. After all the soaking and soaking procedures, we place the wood chips in a container and fill it with our distillate. The proportions for using wood chips are 10 g per 1 liter of drink.

Let it sit for 6-12 months in a tightly closed container.

At the last step, we dilute the ready-made Calvados with water to a drinking strength of 40%, if required, and serve.

In custody

On the Internet you will find a dozen recipes for every taste using an apple-pear consistency. But if you want to get apple brandy that is very close to the original, we recommend using apples specifically.

Apple moonshine according to the “snow-white” scheme with claims to Calvados

Perhaps the best solution to process the highest harvest of apples is to make delicious moonshine from them. And since taking on this unusual and very labor-intensive task, everything must be done correctly and with knowledge of the matter. In other words, if you dare to prepare apple brandy at home, then do it like the Normans, who captivated the whole world with their brandy.

Unlike cider and Calvados from apple concentrate, which we learned to prepare in one of the previous materials, here we will deal specifically with apples. On the one hand, this should have a positive effect on the taste and aroma qualities of the drink, on the other hand, a lot of technical aspects and questions arise related to the specificity of the raw materials. In this material, we tried to carefully outline the technology for making apple brandy, taking these aspects into account, and also minimize possible questions.

Recipe for moonshine from apples according to the “snow-white” scheme

The so-called “snow-white” scheme for making apple mash involves fermenting only apple juice, without pulp. According to countless reviews, including reliable laboratory tests, apple mash fermented with pulp produces a distillate of even worse properties than without it. Norman distillers have the same idea.

Ingredients:

20-25 l apple juice 1
sugar (dextrose or fructose) – up to 15 °Bx 2
1 packet of yeast 3
oak chips for aging

Equipment:

1 – to obtain a fragrant and balanced wine material for its next distillation into decent brandy, it is important to choose the right variety of apples or their blend. Preference is always given to late varieties that contain a sufficient amount of acids, tannins and simply give off juice. The best wine material comes from a blend of sweet, sour and tart apples in various proportions, for example: 3 parts sweet/3 parts tart/2 parts sour or 2/2/2, 1/1/2, etc. The best organoleptic properties are provided by a blend of apples that ripen at approximately the same time.

2 – the general worldview of the most experienced moonshiners is this: if you want to get cider, and from it high-quality brandy with a claim to Calvados, there is no need to use sugar. But you should be aware that the sugar content of most apples of Russian types occasionally exceeds 10 °Bx, which is not enough to obtain strong wine material (the average alcohol content of cider from Russian types of apples is no more than 7% vol.). This is also fraught with very low product yields with significant labor costs. The golden mean: bring the wort density to 15 °Bx, but not higher. If you add more, the organoleptic properties of the distillate become noticeably worse. Dextrose or pure fructose give an even better result than sucrose.

3 – To make a very fragrant apple brandy, it is recommended to use cider yeasts such as Mangrove Jack's Cider Yeast M02, Fermentis Safcider and Gervin GV13 Cider. Yeast is also suitable for white wines and champagne. Due to the very high fermentation rates, we do not recommend using alcoholic yeast. We strongly advise against using ordinary baker's yeast!

Preparation of raw materials and extraction of juice

After picking, leave autumn and winter apples to mature in a cold place for 2 to 4 weeks. During this period of time, they will fully ripen, become most fragrant, and gain maximum sugar and enzymes. Make sure that the fruits do not overstay: softening the pulp worsens the release of juice. Before storing apples, washing them is prohibited.
Sterilize all equipment that will come into contact with the juice using one of the antiseptics! This is a very important point, because we will not add sulfites to the wort due to its next distillation.
Wash the ripened fruits in cool water and start extracting the juice. To do this, you can use Neptune-type juicers or threshers in conjunction with a wine press. You can read about the intricacies of juice harvesting and choosing equipment for this in this material. A thresher with a press is preferable, because before pressing, applesauce can be left for several hours in a cold place to enrich the pulp, where there are not many aromatic and flavoring substances, with these substances from the skin (maceration). The juice comes out the most fragrant.
Before putting the juice for fermentation, you can clarify it: let it stand in the cold for a couple of days, then drain the clear juice and filter the cloudy precipitate. This is of concern to owners of juicers, since the juice is usually cloudy, which can lead to problems with fermentation.

Making apple mash

Take measurements of the density and acidity of the wort. Add dextrose/fructose as needed, and also adjust the acidity (pH=4 is considered good). To adjust the pH, it is recommended to use malic acid. Keep a journal where you record all the characteristics during fermentation. Such records will help you avoid unexpected situations in the future and respond promptly to new stages of fermentation.
Pour the juice into the primary fermenter, filling it to a maximum of ¾ full, and pitch the yeast. Cover the fermenter with a clean cloth (A collection of different and interacting tissues form organs) and put it in a dark, cold space for 3-5 days - during yeast replication, they need oxygen. After this, you can install a water seal on the fermenter and provide the wort with good conditions.
It is recommended to ferment apple wine material at low temperatures (+12..+15 o C), very slowly. Typically, vigorous fermentation should last about 1 month. Slow fermentation promotes the formation of more flavoring substances. After 1-2 weeks of fermentation, it is recommended to remove the mash from the sediment, removing the “brown cap” that has accumulated on top, which appears from the pectin enzyme and calcium pushed to the surface by CO2. The taste of the distillate will be even purer.
After the end of vigorous fermentation, using a siphon, drain the mash from the sediment into a sterile secondary fermenter, filling it to the very neck. Install the water seal and leave the wort to ferment until dry until the hydrometer shows less than zero (SG995-1.000). The longest stage of quiet fermentation and clarification will significantly improve the organoleptic properties of the future distillate. In Normandy, the process of cider production before distillation lasts from 6 months or more. During post-fermentation, the apple mash must be removed from the sediment every 3-4 weeks until it is completely clarified.

Distillation of mash from apples

The process of distilling apple wine material is carefully described in our material on cider and Calvados, mentioned at the beginning of this article.

Main points:

only double distillation in traditional distillers without strengthening modules;
devices with copper components in the steam zone significantly improve the organoleptic properties of the distillate;
The first distillation must be done very quickly to 10% vol. in a stream (98-99 o C in the steam zone);
during the first distillation, it is recommended to select a small number of “heads”, almost up to a measured stream at the outlet;
predictable strength of raw alcohol (hereinafter SS) - from 27 to 30% vol.;
distillation of SS should be carried out slowly, carefully dividing the distillate into fractions: “heads” - 5% of absolute alcohol in SS or 1.5% of the size of SS in the distillation cube, “heart” or drinking fraction - up to 55-60% vol. in the stream (90-91 o C in the steam zone), “tails” - up to 10% o. in the stream;
It is recommended to add the “heads” and “tails” of the 2nd distillation to the 1st distillation of the 2nd batch - they will increase the yield of CC, and also, by analogy with rum from molasses, will improve the organoleptic properties of the distillate as a whole;
The fractional separation of the distillate, which is then planned to be refined by aging in an oak barrel, is recommended to be carried out in a gentle mode - to throw in more head and tail fractions.

Upgrading of apple distillate

The only correct solution to process the purchased apple distillate is to age it in an oak barrel or on oak chips, thus obtaining an analogue of Normandy apple brandy.

Main points:

To fill the barrel, there is no need to dilute the distillate - 65-70% vol. are considered good;
For apple brandy, medium and high firing barrels are suitable, in which port, sherry, bourbon or Scotch whiskey were previously aged;
infusion time in a 5 liter barrel: from 4 to 6 months;
to refine apple moonshine with oak chips, it is recommended to use medium or powerfully roasted chips at the rate of 4 g of prepared chips per 1 liter of drink;
before infusing moonshine on wood chips, it is recommended to dilute it to 45-55%;
infusion time on wood chips: from 2 to 3 months;
After aging, the distillate should be filtered through a cotton or coffee filter to remove wood dust, diluted to drinking strength (38-40% vol.) and allowed to rest for 2-3 weeks before tasting;
If after aging you are not satisfied with the color of the drink, you can tint it with a sweet tint - French standards and GOSTs allow this.

To drink moonshine in its original form, without further refinement with oak, it should be diluted to drinking strength, kept for a couple of weeks in a dark, cold place to stabilize the taste and begin tasting.