In a small town in Central Russia.
Here is another exclusive photo report about home-brewed vodka in Russia. Pictures showing an actual samogon production are harder to get than those of a secret weapon factory because of the sensitivity of the subject, and I would like to thank those who helped me for this story, especially Boris and Piotr.
Although
the statistics are non-existant regarding vodka home-production, or Samogon in
Russia, a majority of it probably takes place in ordinary kitchens and private
homes like this one. This story shows an actual production of alcohol in a Russian home, which is typical of what takes place in thousands of other private homes across the country. We are here in an undisclosed little town in central Russia, in a soviet-era apartment block, and the people who make this Samogon here do it exclusively for their personal consumption.
How and when the person here began to make Samogon is very interesting : I was told by this lady that after a health problem she encountered 12 years ago, she asked her doctor if she could keep drinking vodka occasionally as she did before. Her doctor answered : only if it's a vodka that you make yourself, and the reason is because the vodka found in the shops was (then more often than now) of bad quality and health-endangering. Since then, she's being making her own vodka (her husband who helps do it here, doesn't drink), drinking it and remaining in good health all those years.
This is what I was happy to see for the first time in Russia with my own eyes (there is little documented stories on these things anyway) : a home moonshining operation underway in an ordinary kitchen in a nondescript housing block dating from the 1950s' and although I won't tell where this took place I'm pretty sure this is a very common occurence, almost routine in this country. This is so simple, a thick, square block of steel heated by the kitchen stove, connected to a small cooling cylinder standing on the washing machine with the tap water and the drops of the precious spirit falling one by one into a bottle.
The thing is smelling sweet all over the appartment and the windows are kept sealed, but I'm not sure there's really to worry, the neighbors are probably aware and as there's no business going on here (for private consumption only) there no jealousy and risk of being denounced. The building looks very poor, a typical soviet-era block built after WW2 and which at the time was probably a synonym of luxury because of the running water and gas heating. Now it's pretty drab in a remote area without muc employment opportunities but the people in there are nice and there are children playing outside too; we are used in France to have problems in aging housing blocks and we were made believe that the buildings were the source of the problem when in fact it's the people inside and their dysfunctional culture which creates problems.
Vodka is an essential part of the Russian culture and same with Samogon, or moonshine vodka. People have always been producing their home-brewed spirit here, for centuries certainly and even the occasional anti-alcohol campaigns of
the soviet regime (the last major one was under Gorbatchev) never could get rid of it, Russia is a big country and tradition is resilient...My feeling is that vodka is a pretty safe spirit, it has none of the side effects brought by wood tannin for example which you have in whisky and bourbon and which can trigger certain adverse reactions. In spite of having downed quite a lot of vodka during my travels over there I never felt bad, and it may be that it goes well with the food.
Every middle-aged Russian remembers with fondness the short Soviet movie-classic "самогонщики" (Samogonshtshiki), a burlesque movie shot in 1961 and starring three famous Soviet actors, Youri Nikulin, Georgi Vitsin and Evgeni Morgunov, the story being the Buster-Keatonesque adventures of moonshiners in the Soviet Union (1961) doing their illegal thing in a cabin in the middle of the woods in winter.
The story is treated very lightly and humorously although they happen to be caught by the law enforcement at the end. If you meet a Russian and tell him/her you saw this cute little movie, they'll consider you're already part of the family...
Special Gift from Wineterroirs : watch Samogonshtshiki below :
Самогонщики (1961) par traktirshik
Deep in the Soviet Union and I suspect in the housing complexes as well, the Russians kept making counterfeit vodka with improvised tools. The communist regime fought it now and then, especially when people made a business of it, but I'm sure on the whole the usage didn't suffer too much repression if the samogon makers kept its production for themselves.
Today Samogon production is flourishing just the same, in spite of the good economic situation (there's no shortage in the shops and
incomes are
rising fast), because the vodka produced at home is often of better quality than the one bought in the stores, in the low-price-range ones at least like the local countryside grocery pictured on right (loved this place, this was so simple and cute).
Russians have already this tradition to produce their own vegetables in their private gardens (like I reported on this story), and it is interesting to note that these would be considered organic in the West, as Russians usually use no chemicals in their garden. The potatoe bugs for example are routinely picked one by one in the russian gardens and burned with gasoline in an open tank. I spoke with a woman living in a drab soviet-era housing in a village, she has like most people a small garden to tend and that's the way she clears her potato plants from the pests. The vodka brewing is from the same vein, and Russians do it very traditionally when for their own consumption, with the tradition of economic self-sufficiency and their deep longing for purity. The only problem I saw is that they rarely filter properly their samogon, and this is what makes the difference with the best vodkas. There are many websites in Russia to celebrate Samogon, like samogon.ru, where'll you read (in Russian) the superiority of home-brewed Samogon over commercial vodka.
There are myriads of russian internet pages about Samogon, with history, avantages and recipes being exposed, like this page (in Russian), where you read something close to what my host told me : Beginning in 1992, Samogon production was not fueled by economic reasons or refusal of the political regime, but by health motives : well made by one's own means, samogon was
pure and devoid of dangerous side-products, contrary to many commercial vodkas. Some
pages are full of details about how to filter home-brewed vodka, an essential stage for a good and safe product.
As I said in an earlier post, there is something mysterious about vodka and its ability in Russia to be consumed with food without apparent after-effects. On this line of thought, there are even voices in Russia who advocate the medicinal use of vodka (and home-brewed vodka) for common ailments. One russian website (both in english and russian) dealing with this theme has even a vodka therapy page (in english) where you can explore the ways to cure many diseases with it, including cancer... The website even has a page with recipes of home-brewed vodka. Furthermore, there's even a recipe to cure alcoholislm, using herbs....and vodka!
between the boiler and the condenser and between the condenser and 
the cold-water tap, the gas cooker is set alight. The size and shape of the boiler is perfect for a kitchen use and even allow the use of two burners simultaneously. Isn't that ingenious ? Both the boiler and the condenser have been artisanally welded and are made of thick stainless steel, maybe 5 millimetre thick. The receiving container is one of these familiar 3-liter glass jars that Russians have being canning their garden vegetables, soups and jams with. The fermented juice (a mix of sugar-water-yeasts) here has been obtained after about 9-10 days to two weeks of fermentation in a former farm-milk-container [see picture on right] stored in the bathroom.
The operation starts at 5:15pm and by 6pm we already had drops falling into the glass jar. The tap water was of course flowing all the time through the tubes in- and out of the condenser. As we chatted in the living room, the spirit accumulated in the jar, a few drops first and then a continuous, steady stream of clear alcohol. As I remember, from the time it began do drop into the jar, it took 2 or 3 hours only to fill the 3-liter container. We went to the kitchen from time to time to check how things were going and marvelling (me) about how simple and swift it was. This is vodka on-demand, you need it, you make it right away...
The moonshine vodka here is at 50° according to the floating alcoholometer, and can be drunk now, even though it's much better and safer to filter it with an activated-carbon filter. A man who made an excellent samogon that I drank at the beginning of this trip said to me that filtration is very important, both for a really good vodka and for health reasons : unfiltered moonshine carries potentially-harmful impurities that need to be separated from the spirit. I remember by the way his samogon as the best spirit that I had on this whole trip
Whatever, we tasted a glass of this one right away after the distillation and it wasn't even hot, but hardly lukewarm. It wasn't as silky and smooth as the other one but it was OK...
A detail of importance is that during the distillation, there's a regognizable smell that sneaks out of the apartment (you need to be russian to smell something here, it is very discreet) and you must trust your neighboors because an exercized Russian nose, my friends say, immediately understands what is going on...
The water is said to be very important for a good vodka or a good home-brewed spirit, and the people who showed me their samogon this day said that the water in their region was very pure because there was no industry or industrial farming around. Once again I had a taste of how much this country has a quasi-spiritual love affair with nature.
Now excuse me but I'll have a glass of vodka and watch this Russian movie again...
Great Article! I'm saving it to read over and over again.
Posted by: Wally | November 01, 2009 at 04:50 AM