Erisian Brewer's Cadre. Or: How I saw the Goddess in the first place

[Triple Zero]

Jacked = frozen until stuff stops freezing out.  It concentrates the alcohol considerably.  Traditional applejack was, essentially, just cider tossed into a barrel and left in the barn, tap off the alcohol once it mostly freezes.  As it's warmer, and I have no barn, I'll be tossing this into smaller containers and shoving it into the freezer, and skimming off the ice every few days.

Ah right, I know the principle.

Good idea, I might try that if the 8L batch of stuff doesn't work out very well.

Although I think I'll do a test run with some ultra cheap wine first, just to get the hang of jacking in my freezer. Tried it before but it didn't really work.

Indeed too bad it's no longer really freezing outside

[Luna]

I'm very happy it's no longer freezing out...  (Don't kill him, Suu!)  I don't have anywhere outside to leave it, anyway.

I'll cope with the freezer.

[Triple Zero]

Good luck with that! Let us know how it goes with the skimming of the ice... ?

[Luna]

Good luck with that! Let us know how it goes with the skimming of the ice... ?

Will do.  How did you do it, and what problems did you run into (just so I can try to dodge those).

[Luna]

Racked the cider last night to secondary it.  My first time doing that.

We pause here for a girly-squeamish moment:

Good god, is that sludge NORMAL? 

End squeam.

It smells awesome.  Gonna let it sit for a bit longer, see if the yeast is done playing.  If so, it goes into the freezer next week sometime.

[Triple Zero]

Good luck with that! Let us know how it goes with the skimming of the ice... ?

Will do.  How did you do it, and what problems did you run into (just so I can try to dodge those).

Well I took a bottle of cheap white wine, put it in a plastic bottle and froze it. Then I had what looked like wine slushpuppy, which I put in a strainer/sieve, and sort of moshed it about. It didn't seem to do very much and the bit of liquid that dripped out didn't taste particularly stronger than before.

[Luna]

Good luck with that! Let us know how it goes with the skimming of the ice... ?

Will do.  How did you do it, and what problems did you run into (just so I can try to dodge those).

Well I took a bottle of cheap white wine, put it in a plastic bottle and froze it. Then I had what looked like wine slushpuppy, which I put in a strainer/sieve, and sort of moshed it about. It didn't seem to do very much and the bit of liquid that dripped out didn't taste particularly stronger than before.

We'll see what happens...  If it doesn't work, at least I'll have a decent cider.

[Luna]

Good luck with that! Let us know how it goes with the skimming of the ice... ?

Will do.  How did you do it, and what problems did you run into (just so I can try to dodge those).

Well I took a bottle of cheap white wine, put it in a plastic bottle and froze it. Then I had what looked like wine slushpuppy, which I put in a strainer/sieve, and sort of moshed it about. It didn't seem to do very much and the bit of liquid that dripped out didn't taste particularly stronger than before.

We'll see what happens...  If it doesn't work, at least I'll have a decent cider.

Slushpuppy is about accurate.  From 4 gallons, I got out about 1 gallon of liquid.  I'm debating putting that back in to see if it'll freeze again. 

Protip, do not freeze in plastic gallon jugs, it's a pain in the ass to get anything OUT of the jug.  It required a knife.

[Triple Zero]

Okay. I figured out the best way to jack my brew.

SALAD SPINNER

You want to cover the sides of the inner bowl of the lettuce spinner with something cause the holes are too big. I used paper kitchen towels, but cloth is probably better. Then scoop the slushpuppy into the spinner. I found the heavy ice puts quite a bit more strain on the device than lettuce would, and some parts came close to almost breaking. I suppose the solution is to just not fill it entirely.

IT WORKS FUCKING PERFECTLY

At first I tried with the sieve and shit, but I had to not let the stuff freeze entirely, because it would turn to slush, and because of capillary effect all the concentrated booze would sit nicely between the ice grains and stay there. But even letting it freeze only partially, I still had the idea I was throwing away booze with the ice. The centrifuge solves this very well.

If you used paper towels, you probably want to sieve it, cause I got a few paper towel fibres in it. Hence the suggestion to use cloth.

I got the idea from a discussion about applejack on some brewing forum, but I don't think anyone there actually tried it out because they were all too busy arguing about not discussing it because apparently, freeze distilling is equally illegal as doing it with heat. Even though you're just freezing the stuff. Apparently in the USA if you remove water from an alcoholic liquid so the end result is less than 95% of the original volume, it's illegal regardless of the method

Additionally, I'm not sure about methanol, cause with the boiling/heat kind of distilling you can throw away the first bit, to remove a good part of the methanol and be reasonably safe. With freeze distillation, no such luck. Then on some other site I read someone actually considered freeze distilling more safe than heat/boiling distilling, but I can't really remember what their reasoning was.

The max alcohol percentage you can get with freeze distilling is determined only by the temperature of the freezer. You can apply the process multiple times but at some point it won't freeze anymore, and you get a maximum strength booze. At -12 degrees Celsius (10.4F) you can attain max 20% ABV. At least, that's what some website says. They're probably right, though. You can find tables for it online, anyway.

I think I'm gonna convert my entire batch to jacked stuff (small freezer, I can do just 1L at a time ), cause I'd rather have about 2-3 L of strong booze that actually tastes pretty good (freeze distilling also concentrates the flavours), than 7L of stuff that didn't turn out very good at all ... [it's odd, apple/pineapple/strawberry/honey ... sounds like it should be awesome. dunno what went wrong]





TL;DR: USE A SALAD SPINNER

[Luna]

That's brilliant.

If I had a salad spinner.

Yeah, I've got several gallons of slush that I can still smell the alcohol in, trying to figure how to get it out. 

And I've got one gallon of stuff that's not as strong as I'd like, going to throw it back in the freezer this weekend.

And, yeah, freezing it to concentrate it is not legal.  Which is bloody stupid.

[Richter]

So my fridge goin wonky and freezing the cider on the top shelf is illegal?  Great, my appliances are commiting crimes now.  They'll be addicted to drugs next.

[Luna]

So my fridge goin wonky and freezing the cider on the top shelf is illegal?  Great, my appliances are commiting crimes now.  They'll be addicted to drugs next.

I DID see your stove sniffing at the Weapon X bottle, last time I was over.  You might wanna watch that... 

[Triple Zero]

Reporting on salad spinner usage:

I have indeed found that if I fill the spinner only halfway it doesn't nearly break the poor plastic device because of the weight of the ice slush.

And it makes the ice very white! And the booze very smooth and syrupy.

[Luna]

Reporting on salad spinner usage:

I have indeed found that if I fill the spinner only halfway it doesn't nearly break the poor plastic device because of the weight of the ice slush.

And it makes the ice very white! And the booze very smooth and syrupy.

Thanks.    I'll be going to find one this weekend.

[Suu]

So my fridge goin wonky and freezing the cider on the top shelf is illegal?  Great, my appliances are commiting crimes now.  They'll be addicted to drugs next.

I DID see your stove sniffing at the Weapon X bottle, last time I was over.  You might wanna watch that... 

That's Amelia for ya. This is why the pilot is always out.