Rye mash
The finest old Polish vodka
Polish rye vodka aged in oak barrels, a beverage with centuries of tradition. According to an old custom, after the birth of his son, a nobleman buried a barrel of rye spirit in the basement and only emptied it during the wedding.
STARKA
- 20 kg of finely blasted rye
- 2 kg of finely milled barley malt
- 60l of water
- 15g of mash yeast for distillers
- a handful of linden leaves or apple trees
If you want to prepare the malt yourself, soak the barley in warm water and then strain it. Spread the grain to a thickness of 1 centimetre and leave it in a warm place.
Sprinkle them with a small amount of water every day, move them slightly. When the sprouts are about 1 cm long, dry the germinated grain in the oven until it reaches a golden colour.
Then rub them on a sieve to get rid of the sprouts and keep the grain as small as possible.
Fresh ryes takes at least a few months or even a year for the right aromas and flavors to come out of the mash.
If you want to obtain "Starka", pour the oak barrel of the obtained rye spirit into it.
A deep, dry and cool is best suited for lying. If the barrel is less than 220 litres long, the tannins contained in the oak are transferred to the distillate faster.
In a small barrel, the taste of oak can dominate after just a few months, making the beverage is non-drinking. Once the taste suits you, pour half of it out of the barrel and top up with fresh distillate.
We repeat this process successively. After a few floods and 20 years of use the barrel loses its properties. Alcohol still ages quite well in such a barrel, but a number of flavours and aromas characteristic for oak disappear. In the past,
hungarian wine barrels were flooded and buried for several years in a cellar. During this time, nearly half of the drink was lost from the barrel, the colour changed to amber and an aroma and taste bouquet was created. The standard power of Starka is 50%.