Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

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sttifyd35
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Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by sttifyd35 »

I am trying both methods for the hard cider i made. I know that some people say they are similar, but i know freeze distilling brings over the color. Are they both going to taste the same?
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cuginosgrizzo
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by cuginosgrizzo »

No they are not the same and they are not going to taste the same. With freeze distilling you do not perform any separation of foreshots, heads and tails, you just concentrate them more. So, assuming that you can freeze distill to 40% ABV or so, taste and composition of your distillate will be definitely different (and worse).
sttifyd35
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by sttifyd35 »

Yeah i was just asking if they were going to be similar or not. I only have a 1 gallon jug of 8% cider. So im guessing if im lucky, id get 32 oz. of 24%
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by sttifyd35 »

I have hard cider and pinot grigio both freezing right now. Going to try both later today. My friend who just tried it with cider told me he reduced his cider from a gallon to about 32 oz. He said that when he took a hydrometer reading with his tralle hydrometer, it read the same alcohol content that he started with. Is that even possible when alot of ice is left in the jug?
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by yakattack »

Time to read the spoonfeeding thread
HDNB wrote: The trick here is to learn what leads to a stalled mash....and quit doing that.
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by MDH »

Fractionally freezing cider will make it very sweet, heavy and wine like. With the right method of fermentation, the product can be absolutely delicious. If you try this method, I recommend abstaining from any sort bitter or highly acidic apple, as any bitterness or strong acidity will concentrate along with the alcohol, and this will make it very unpalatable.

Distillation, on the other hand, leaves the components that make cider acidic or bitter behind in the still.
The still is not a liar. Mash and ferment quality is 99.9% of your performance.
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Kareltje
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by Kareltje »

I plan to try it the other way round: first freeze the juice and then ferment the concentrate. Last year I added sugar, but that of course dilutes the apple taste.

Although the bitter and acidic compounds may stay in the boiler, they nevertheless seem to be very important for the taste of the distillate.
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by sttifyd35 »

So you freeze and concentrate the cider first and then add your yeast? How does it come out? And what do you get for an abv? Id assume a bit higher, no?
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by cranky »

Last year I freeze concentrated some fresh apple juice (sweet cider) from special sweet low acid apples. I think I concentrated it to something like 1.110-1.115 then used a low alcohol tolerant yeast to keep the ABV somewhere around 10-11%. This made a really nice iced apple cider that tastes like fresh apple juice. It's extremely dangerous stuff because you don't realize it is alcoholic until you stand up and it hits you like a truck.
sttifyd35
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by sttifyd35 »

That sounds delicious! So essentially that is similar to ice wine just a different process?
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by MDH »

Kareltje wrote:I plan to try it the other way round: first freeze the juice and then ferment the concentrate. Last year I added sugar, but that of course dilutes the apple taste.

Although the bitter and acidic compounds may stay in the boiler, they nevertheless seem to be very important for the taste of the distillate.
The actual heavy carboxylic acids - namely malic and ascorbic in apples - are used more as indicators for the time of optimum ripeness during which time something should be distilled. They are too heavy to make it into the distillate, so their effect is more indirect.

You will hear French distillers refer to Columbard, Ugni Blanc, Folle Blanche etc. as important because of their "Acidity". They never actually elaborate why, but there are reasons I have learned from them directly:

1. Wild yeast fermentation is safer at a lower pH, and the use of spontaneous fermentation is widespread in Gascony and Cognac.
2. A lower pH allows faster formation of small amounts of some esters which are actually more volatile than the acids they form from, allowing them to make it through distillation when they wouldn't otherwise.
3. Acidity, as described above, is an indicator of ripeness. There is a point before the grapes reach peak ripeness where aromatic compounds such as terpenes and esters are abundant but sugar is not too high. If the sugar gets too high, then there is too much alcohol diluting the amount of aromatic quality the grapes can provide. Thus, either acidity or sugar is measured to determine the harvest. Despite the fact that grapes are mostly measured by sugar in in modern vineyards, they refer to the acidity anyway.
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cranky
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by cranky »

sttifyd35 wrote:So essentially that is similar to ice wine just a different process?
Yes, sort of, you can do a regular internet search for iced apple wine or iced cider and you will find more details but basically it's like I said, you freeze concentrate the juice then ferment it so you get high sugar and lots of flavor. The apples I used were from a special tree but I think it would work well with any dessert apple. My love of dessert wines is what sent me down the road to distilling, when even the cheapest icewine reached $50 a half bottle I could no longer bring myself to buy it so I started making my own dessert wines from free fruit and one thing led to another and I started distilling but I still make lots of dessert wine.

As far as distilling there are lots of ways to do that but never use bread yeast. I also tried freeze jacking after fermenting once just to see what I thought and I can say I didn't like it, but everybody's tastes are different. The big problem with Jacking after fermenting is it concentrates everything, good and bad.
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by Kareltje »

I am now halfway freezing and thawing applejuice. Out of 10 l juice I got about 7,5 l with a s.g. 1,060 and 2,5 l of a s.g. of 1,008. So I get a wine of about 10 %ABV in stead of 7 %ABV.
It takes a lot of work and attention and if I compare it to just fermenting the juice and distilling a wine of 7 %ABV I doubt if I ever will repeat it.

But maybe I use the wrong method: I put the frozen mass in a sieve and harvest the white pieces of ice out the mass. Maybe I should dump the whole mass in a barrel and scoop the ice out the half-molten fluid.
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by still_stirrin »

Kareltje wrote:...But maybe I use the wrong method: I put the frozen mass in a sieve and harvest the white pieces of ice out the mass. Maybe I should dump the whole mass in a barrel and scoop the ice out the half-molten fluid.
How I jacked the cider:
I put the cider in quart (water) PET bottles and put those into the freezer for a few days until they were fully frozen. Then I removed the bottles and turned them upside down over a larger (collection) mason jar. I then let the frozen cider melt as the alcohol and juices melted before the majority of the ice. You can tell this by the color of the ice, as it gets whiter and whiter as the juices thaw and drip out of the bottom.

But the collection concentrates everything, including the sour acids from the ferment. I wasn't too pleased with the finished product. So I took the collected jacked concentrate and ran it through my little potstill. That made the brandy palatable, for me at least.

YMMV.
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by cranky »

For the apple jack I did the same thing as SS and I didn't like it, but for the iced apple I took the fresh unfermented juice and froze it in gallon jugs, then turned the jug over on a half gallon jar. When the jar was full I switched to a quart jar and collected that until it was full, then disposed of the remaining quart. I then froze that juice a second time and collected the same way. I may have done a 3rd concentrating on the first collection (1/2 gallon) but I don't remember, I did further concentrate the juice collected in quarts until I was happy with the SG. The juice from these apples starts off close to 1.07 to begin with and I concentrated 10 gallons down to 5 to make the iced apple. I suppose in the big scheme of things it isn't all that different from scooping out the ice crystals as they freeze.
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by NZChris »

Because freeze jacking concentrates acids, you might make better product by lowering the pH before jacking. I haven't tried this myself, but it is done in primative cultures when products are being reduced by boiling.

Be the first, but take into account that jacking concentrates acids, sugars and flavors better than it does ethanol. if you doubt that statement, it doesn't take much to set up experiments to test your theories. Alcohol and brix refractometers are cheap now. Spend a few dollars and get better answers than you will get on forums.
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by Kareltje »

In the end I had about 11 litres of concentrated juice out of 15 litres of fresh juice. The ice I removed I used in starting a chickenfeed batch. Still smelled after apple!
Both are fermenting now. Did not measure starting s.g..
Long ago I tried freezing some beer, but the result was horrible. And freezing after fermenting loses ethanol too.
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by Kareltje »

Stumbled upon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCTWL6Tx7mQ" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by city shiner »

cranky wrote:For the apple jack I did the same thing as SS and I didn't like it, but for the iced apple I took the fresh unfermented juice and froze it in gallon jugs, then turned the jug over on a half gallon jar. When the jar was full I switched to a quart jar and collected that until it was full, then disposed of the remaining quart. I then froze that juice a second time and collected the same way. I may have done a 3rd concentrating on the first collection (1/2 gallon) but I don't remember, I did further concentrate the juice collected in quarts until I was happy with the SG. The juice from these apples starts off close to 1.07 to begin with and I concentrated 10 gallons down to 5 to make the iced apple. I suppose in the big scheme of things it isn't all that different from scooping out the ice crystals as they freeze.
Cranky, I tried the traditional freeze jacking and also didn't like it. My idea was to use Cote de Blancs yeast, ferment regular apple juice and do feeding of apple concentrate as the fermentation slows. Yeast is on the way. I'm trying it in 2 weeks. What do you think?
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Re: Applejack from a pot still and from freeze distillation!

Post by city shiner »

I should mention that I got the idea from reading MCHs thread on incremental feedings of molasses in his rum. Then he was applying it to other things, like a Mead and a ricewine. It clicked it would be a way to make a tasty strong sweet cider
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