applejack recipe for a homebrewer

Hi all,

I'm a homebrewer, having never dabbled in cider. I've recently become fascinated with freeze concentration, and am thinking about trying my hand at making some applejack. I'm a bit confused on some details though, and thought I'd ask the experts.

First, the recipes I've read say that either cider or apfelwein can be used as a base. The apfelwein recipes seem stronger and more interesting to me, but they also sound like they ordinarily need to age months before they can be drunk on their own. If I were to use an apfelwein recipe, would I need to let it age before freeze concentrating it, or could I concentrate and then age, tasting periodically to occupy the learning process, of course

Second, I've read some recipes for caramel apfelwein that sound really interesting. I've used both caramel and caramelized wort in my brewing before and have loved both. The thought of using that instead of the brown sugar / molasses charactersting of some of the recipes I've read seems really interesting. But, is it *actually* interesting, or is it a bad idea for something to be turned into applejack?

Finally, I'm thinking of aging on oak cubes. Any experience with this for cider / jack?

Thanks!

I have one freeze concentration under my belt.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/freeze-concentration-experiment-324124/

I havn't gotten around to my 2nd effort yet that i mentioned in that thread.

I still have the qt from my first experiment aging on the shelf. My findings were that the process really concentrates the flavors. It started with a nice cinnamon flavor and after concentration it was nearly overpowering.

I am planning to do some more experiments with it in the future. I'm thinking it may be a good way to salvage a cider that turns out tasting a little blah....may help to concentrate the apple flavor.

roady, thanks! So, I suspect from your description that the thing to do would be to ferment, then freeze concentrate, then age the jack on oak til the oak reaches a desirable level. I think I'm going to try the following experimental batch:

2 gal apple juice
1/2 lb caramelized sugar
1/2 lb dextrose
fermented on S-04

Freeze concentrate using a freezer that can reach about -20degC (reportedly gets the concentrated portion to about 27% ABV), then age the results on oak in a jug, possibly in the freezer, until ready for use.

Which leads me to one more question: where is it best to age? The freezer would be out of the way, which would be great, but would it so slow the aging process as to make it not worth while?

freeze concentrating is a no no to mention on this forum . . . think it falls under the whole distillation thing legally

Pumbaa said:

freeze concentrating is a no no to mention on this forum . . . think it falls under the whole distillation thing legally

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And you would be wrong

MattTimBell said:

Freeze concentrate using a freezer that can reach about -20degC (reportedly gets the concentrated portion to about 27% ABV), then age the results on oak in a jug, possibly in the freezer, until ready for use.

Which leads me to one more question: where is it best to age? The freezer would be out of the way, which would be great, but would it so slow the aging process as to make it not worth while?

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I froze 1 time overnite in a standard household freezer at 0 F. It was pretty well frozen solid. (Made sure the cap was loose and that I had a little head space)
I had it in a plastic 1/2 gallon juice jug.

To thaw I simply inverted over a quart jar and let drip until jar was full. I then thawed the remainder over 2nd jar. As you can see in pics the 2nd qt was pretty much clear.

I probably should have bottled in 375 ml wine bottles but I just left it to age in the mason jar. I have some oak chips........maybe I'll give that a shot. Never used oak before. An ounce in a qt for 2 weeks enough?

A colleague of mine, who is more experienced at homebrewing than I, gave me a lot of advice about cidering and freeze-distilling. He said that his group did it once, and it was very easy, just scrape the slush off the top every couple of days. This pulls out the water, leaving behind the alcohol, but also leaves behind every flavonoid and impurity. Thus, it tastes like sweet delicious apple-juice, but goes down so smooth that you're like to make yourself blind. He also confirmed that it gave him the worst hangover he's had his entire life.

CAUK said:

This pulls out the water, leaving behind the alcohol, but also leaves behind every flavonoid and impurity. Thus, it tastes like sweet delicious apple-juice, but goes down so smooth that you're like to make yourself blind. He also confirmed that it gave him the worst hangover he's had his entire life.

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I wonder how long they aged it afterwards?

roadymi said:

I wonder how long they aged it afterwards?

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Don't think the impatient suckers did. If they did it would have been a month or two, tops. Probably would have taken the edge off that hangover, but from what he said it was already deceptively smooth. He said the flavor didn't even hint that the stuff was more than 50% abv.

CAUK said:

Don't think the impatient suckers did. If they did it would have been a month or two, tops. Probably would have taken the edge off that hangover, but from what he said it was already deceptively smooth. He said the flavor didn't even hint that the stuff was more than 50% abv.

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Also........it's one thing to sip on a nice tasting adult beverage........and quite another to get hammered on it.

roady, about length of time on oak, I'm not sure. I suspect concentration of alcohol in the surrounding environment might speed things up. I've only used cubes once -- a couple ozs of American oak (dark toasted), soaked in rum for about a week and then dumped into a 8% ABV Belgian Dark Strong for about a month. At first the oak was unpleasently strong (but not gross), then it rapidly tapered off til the beer was excellent and very balanced after about another month. The amount was about 3 gal. For a single mason jar of much stronger stuff? All I could advise is try it and taste maybe once every two weeks, stopping when it becomes oaked enough for you.

Pumbaa said:

freeze concentrating is a no no to mention on this forum . . . think it falls under the whole distillation thing legally

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Pumbaa, I've specifically told you before that we allow the topic. Again, if you want to further discuss, debate, or explore the legal ramifications of freeze concentration, please start a new thread in the appropriate subforum.

I've noticed a few people mentioning fusels, either explicitly as in pumbaa's post or tacitly (with the bad hangover....) I'm curious about ways to minimize their production to begin with. My local HBS advised me to use a blow off tube even with batches that weren't going to overflow, citing that the fusels tended to be blown out during production. I've tried it with a couple high gravity batches (again, not with cider -- but I suspect things would work the same way), and it seems to have worked. The resulting batches were less hot than the ones I'd made before.

I've also read that yeasts produce more of these at higher temps and higher gravities, so start lower along both dimensions, and you'll get less of the unwantables. Can anyone confirm?

never heard the blow off theory before, but high temps will absolutely create fusels that you don’t want. It does depend on the yeast strain as to what is considered high temps

MattTimBell said:

I've noticed a few people mentioning fusels, either explicitly as in pumbaa's post or tacitly (with the bad hangover....) I'm curious about ways to minimize their production to begin with. My local HBS advised me to use a blow off tube even with batches that weren't going to overflow, citing that the fusels tended to be blown out during production. I've tried it with a couple high gravity batches (again, not with cider -- but I suspect things would work the same way), and it seems to have worked. The resulting batches were less hot than the ones I'd made before.

I've also read that yeasts produce more of these at higher temps and higher gravities, so start lower along both dimensions, and you'll get less of the unwantables. Can anyone confirm?

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Best way to reduce their production during fermentation is to ferment as cool as you can while still getting the yeast to work as long as it can. The other way to get rid of them (and the best IMHO) is via a process that will get another one of my posts deleted or result in further admonishment.

i don't think it's too controversial to say that professional distillers discard the first bit of runoff from the still because it is contains a higher percentage of fusels and methanol, (which i don't fully understand since some of the so called fusels like the smaller propanols have a similar or higher boiling point to ethanol...) but the idea of fusels being reduced by a blow off tube is definitely pseudoscience! i think people like to seem knowledgeable regardless of whether or not they possess knowledge, and i suspect your lhbs guy is making dung sculptures. even if that were true, why would a blowoff tube make a difference compared to an airlock? go with prevention rather than weird cure!
btw, andrew lea in 'craft cider making' recommends temps below 20c, but for the reason that higher temp reduces the fruity flavors in the finished drink rather than to reduce fusels, he says go with as low as possible but high enough for good yeast activity which is generally around 15c

If I wanted to try this off some of the famous apfelwine, if I dripped into sanitized mason jar(s) would that be ok to store/age in? How long should this age?

Larzean said:

If I wanted to try this off some of the famous apfelwine, if I dripped into sanitized mason jar(s) would that be ok to store/age in? How long should this age?

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That's how I'm aging mine.

My first try so not sure how long, Figured I'd give it 6 months. Gonna throw a few oak chips in as soon as i remember to.

I am currently freezing 2 gallons of 10% cider brewed particularly cold, then aged for two weeks. Might try freezing the 1 gal or so I get, or splitting the batch. Funday Sunday!