Freeze distill before heating?

[Jh123]

Would it be beneficial to freeze distill my mash for whiskey before putting it into a pot still? That way I've reduced it down to mostly ethanol ahead of time. I don't see the downside to it but maybe you all can tell me whether it's a good idea.

[still_stirrin]

Naw. “Jacking” a whiskey ferment is a waste of energy dollars. Freezing it is expensive and depending on how much alcohol the beer has in it may depress the freezing point enough to frustrate you during the jack process.

Just rack it to the boiler and strip it, collecting the low wines for your subsequent spirit run. Money and time ahead.
ss

[Jh123]

Naw. “Jacking” a whiskey ferment is a waste of energy dollars. Freezing it is expensive and depending on how much alcohol the beer has in it may depress the freezing point enough to frustrate you during the jack process.

Just rack it to the boiler and strip it, collecting the low wines for your subsequent spirit run. Money and time ahead.
ss

Expensive? I was under the impression all I had to do was get below the freezing point of water which lately where I live it's dropped below that most nights lately.

[still_stirrin]

You’ll need to get it down to 0*F (-17*C) and hold it there for a long time until the beer freezes. Depending on how much you’ve got, that could take several days, even weeks. In the meantime, you could have stripped and even run the low wines. And if you try to freeze the beer in a freezer, that will cost you cooling BTUs (real money).

And jacking isn’t that good anyway. It concentrates everything, good and bad!
ss

[Corsaire]

I say go for it. Depending on your climate it may take some time. Over here it doesn't get cold enough anymore.

Jacking is imo very energy efficient. At least if you don't use a freezer.
Quality wise, I don't see the difference with strip runs. They also concentrate everything, good and bad.

And do a control of the same ferment that you strip and spirit run. See which method you prefer.

[NZChris]

To find out how efficient it is, measure and record the abv of the strip and the backset. When I tried it, the results weren't nearly as good as I'd hoped.

[JesseMarques]

Quality wise, I don't see the difference with strip runs. They also concentrate everything, good and bad.

Strip do not concentrate a lot of higher chain/heavier molecules, jacking mostly removes water, nothing else
You would lost a lot of alcohol in tails (sooner tails and probably longer heads also)

[Irishgnome]

I have done this a few times, I'll probably do it again soon based on the weather in my area.
https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtop ... 11&t=70613
Cheers,
Irish

[NZChris]

I haven't tried this with a very slow, climate dependent, freeze. I suspect that it is more efficient than dropping a container into a freezer, but I don't have any trials to confirm that.

I have had slowly frozen shards of ice form in a bottle of liquor and I'm kicking myself that I didn't thaw them and measure their abv at the time. If the shards were low abv frozen water, that would have been great news for freeze jacking hopefuls. If it happens again, I'll know to check.

[Jh123]

Ok, so I ended up jacking it. Seemed to go well. Definitely came out a lot higher proof and cleaner on just the first stripping run. I was dumb and forgot to take a reading. This was 1 of 2 buckets from the same mash so I threw them all together for the spirit run. In hindsight I should've run it separate to see if there was any flavor difference but I'm terrible at making cuts that I don't know if I'd even be able to tell the difference. I'll have to do one batch jacked and one just heat distilled next time to see if it makes a difference. Thanks for the advice everyone.