Home Distiller

Hello there,

I am making my own alcohol out of sugar and yeast water mixture and than freeze distilling. Someone had been warned the home brewers about the first 15 minutes of HOT distilling and its necesserity of removal of liquid or brain damage could happen.

I thought about my cold process and possible dangers.

Can you please shed some light ?

Thanks,

Umut
Istanbul

Hello, Umut,

I am new here, also, and there are many people who know more about this than I do. But I will try to help.... The process of fermentation creates many different chemicals. In addition to the ethanol (which you want), also created are methanol, acetone and several other poisonous or undesirable chemicals. These undesirables are removed at the beginning of the distillation process, because they boil at lower temperatures than ethanol does. That's why the first percent or two is thrown out on a distilling run. With ice distilling, however, I'm not sure how these compounds would be removed - they would be combined with the ethanol and everything else that separates from the ice crystals. Be careful - read as much as you can on this forum about "foreshots" (the poisonous part) and "heads" (the sometimes desirable part). Salaam.

Yep.

Freeze "jacking" doesn't separate the constituents like distilling does. Rather, it simply concentrates everything as you freeze everything and remove the frozen water. There is a limit to how high you can raise the concentrations, however, as the ice will soon melt too.

It's been written about many times. Use the HD Google search for "freeze jacking".
ss

Freeze jacking is just going to make a horrid harsh drink and give you wicked hangovers IMO, and i'd be more worried about that than brain damage.

The compounds aren't changing, for distilling we mainly make a "beer" (without hops) in the AG's, or a must similar to wine. So like beer or wine, they are still there when freeze jacking, just concentrated. If you are using it for a mixer, you are putting it back down to the 5-8% that most beers are anyways. So your risk of "brain damage" would be about the same with beer. Hell, a liter of most fruit juices contains more methanol than 5 gallons of wash in a good ferment.

Beer and wine contain the same undesirable components. It's only when you distill them do they get concentrated enough to be dangerous. I doubt freeze jacking could get them to harmful levels. Enough to give a bad hangover, but not dangerous.

columbia36 wrote:Beer and wine contain the same undesirable components. It's only when you distill them do they get concentrated enough to be dangerous. I doubt freeze jacking could get them to harmful levels. Enough to give a bad hangover, but not dangerous.

distilling will not change the proportions of compounds in the distilled product.

drinking properly diluted product without the fores and heads removed poses no more danger

than drinking commercially produced spirits or even beer or wine.

drinking the separated fores by themselves could pose problems.

disinformation is also dangerous.

cob wrote:

columbia36 wrote:Beer and wine contain the same undesirable components. It's only when you distill them do they get concentrated enough to be dangerous. I doubt freeze jacking could get them to harmful levels. Enough to give a bad hangover, but not dangerous.

distilling will not change the proportions of compounds in the distilled product.

drinking properly diluted product without the fores and heads removed poses no more danger

than drinking commercially produced spirits or even beer or wine.

drinking the separated fores by themselves could pose problems.

disinformation is also dangerous.

What i was trying to say. Thanks for making it much clearer.

Mustafa Umut Sarac wrote:Hello there,

I am making my own alcohol out of sugar and yeast water mixture and than freeze distilling.

That sounds like the best tasting swill ever.

+1 Sounds like drinking sugarhead low wines. And stop listening to the guy who told you about the brain damage.

Know this is an old thread, but... back in the day in colonial America, "jacking" (freeze distillation) was the way they made apple brandy. They called it Apple Jack.

People who drank too much of it suffered (because there were no cuts possible).

Said to be miserable hangovers. There was a term for it: Apple palsy.

"jacking" your alcohol if going to be distilled isn't a bad thing.

For example if it's winter time outside or you have access freezer space then putting your "racked" ferment into a cold environment will allow you to concentrate your alcohol.

You may be able to up your 10% to 20% doing this. If you can use the great outdoors and winter to help you then running a "double" distillation is almost as good as having double the boiler capacity. Most of your yeast and other trub will settle to the bottom of your vessel when exposed to cold which allows you to "rack off" the good parts.

If you take a good fores and heads cut from this distillation then you have only gained from doing this.

Putting you grains (or other spirits out in the cold) or freezer will help things settle and give you a cleaner ferment for the boiler (also a good thing).

Anything not distilled can be made part of the next batch so you loose ZERO alcohol doing this!