jackin' it with dry ice

can i use dry ice in a cooler to make apple jack? i have heard the lower you can get the temp the more water you will be able to fractionally freeze out. I am trying to go for something i can take shots of, i am going to start with a cider that has about 13% alcohol. hope you liked the title btw

The title is the only reason I'm here! haha.

The faster you bring the water to freezing temperature, the smaller the crystals will be and the less "good stuff" that will be lost in the mix. Also, I would assume that would raise your effective "separation" (lets not use the D word, fractional or otherwise) percentage. Obviously dry ice is about as fast as it gets.

Have you made apple jack before? I've done it once and it turned out well, however it was a young batch of cider and I want to try it again with something with a bit more age/tastiness on it someday. I suppose for doing shots it won't matter as much.

I froze mine in a freezer, just in a big bowl with a mesh strainer set in it. The ice really seemed to seed/form on the strainer so every 30 min or so I'd pull the strainer out and knock the ice off and put it back in. Since the freezing water was on the top of the bowl the strainer picked that up too. Something like that might work well with the dry ice too, although with how quickly that will go maybe just letting the water go solid would be better.

I wonder what would happen if you just chucked the dry ice into the cider... hmm...

i had some good results with taking the cider, bottling in an empty booze handle size bottle-my preference is jim beam. seems to be alot of those around the house for some reason. clean and sanitize and then fill 2/3 up-put in the freeezer tilted and then bring back into room temp, and let the jack run off-out off the ice into another container- you can do this 2 or three times until you get the good stuff and then repeat until you have the concentration that is shootable. this is also a great way to salvage a skunking smelling batch that you might otherwise waste on inlaws.

Does it matter if you age the cider first then jack it or jack it then age the applejack?

no expert here but i would think that the taste of your jack would improve if you let your cider age a tad. maybe a few weeks would be suffcient. ?? others here might know better.

my jack was aged about a month after final fermenation and then drank some as a nice cider- skunky smell improved if left opened to the air for 10 minutes but rest jacked immeadiatly after opeing some and smell went away and- jack was delicious with 3 times the alcohol. making more just to jack but will let it sit- age- for at least 2 weeks.

Mine was in the secondary since nov. jacked it two weeks ago and plan on letting it age in the bottle for months.

Noob question here, what is the dangers in seperating by freezing other than the legal dangers?

stormyday said:

Noob question here, what is the dangers in seperating by freezing other than the legal dangers?

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Frostbite.

MarkKF said:

Mine was in the secondary since nov. jacked it two weeks ago and plan on letting it age in the bottle for months.

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seems to me I would sneak a taste of that Jack and I think you might find it ready sooner rather than later. i think most of the taste will be a result of the aging after fibnal as a hard cider and just concentrated by the jacking. sneak a sip and let us know what you find. i cant keep the stuff on the shelf and had to hide some from the family!!! got another 5 gallons ready for the freeze as we speak.