Apple Icewine, Ice Apple Cider

[HeruRaHa]

I caught the tail end of one of those "How It's Made" or "Factory Made" shows on Science or Discovery or whatever where they were talking about how ice apple ciders are made, and it got me intrigued.

Now I've been thinking about making some of Edwort's Apfelwein for awhile now, and I've seen the instructions for making "apple jack" where you make an apple wine, then use cryo-concentration to increase the alcohol content, sort of a poor-man's legal "distillation".

But seeing this program made me think if you freeze the juice before fermentation instead of after, you can raise your OG to ~12-14% potential alcohol easily, without adding any cane sugar or dextrose.

I realize to get real Ice Wine, you need to let the fruit freeze on the vine (or tree in this case), but I think for a beginning hobbyist, even just cryo-concentrating some storebought apple juice to desired gravity would yield a nice product with stronger apple flavors, so I set out to do some research and see who was doing this.

I wasn't able to find anything really on a cursory search of homebrewing and home winemaking forums and sites, but I did find this video, which is worth the 45 minutes when you've got them, especially if you live in an area with colder temperatures and easy access to cheap apples:



I'd love to follow the simple recipe he lays out in the video, using about 220 lbs of apples to create an "ice-style wine" with a freezer and bladder press to yield 7 gallons, but I don't have that kind of space or financial commitment to this hobby just yet.

If I do choose to take a crack of simply cryo-concentrating storebought juice, I think it may be a little tricky to find the right balance of sweet, acid, and bitter apples for a balanced wine, so I'm looking for good specialty apple juices too...

I'm curious if anyone has any experience they can share?

 

[evolcoms]

I saw the same thing, but I beat you to it. I made a thread in the cider tab of the forums. There is a great video in the thread.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/ice-cider-377582/

 

[saramc]

Freeze the juice of choice in five gallon bucket, until rock solid. Invert fruit juice block over another bucket in which a large funnel has been placed. Monitor concentrated juice as it collects and discard block of juice-ice when your sample in collection container is at desired brix, 35-42 is a common range. (Canada even has brix requirements for icewine). Anticipate up to a 70% volume loss, super lucky to get a 2 gallon yield from a five gallon freeze/thaw by the time you discard the block.
It is important to stir the concentrated juice in collection container because the brix changes as the thaw time increases. Double the yeast and staggered nutrients are vital.

 

[evolcoms]

Freeze the juice of choice in five gallon bucket, until rock solid. Invert fruit juice lock over another bucket in which a large funnel has been placed. Monitor concentrated juice as it collects and discard block of juice-ice when your sample in collection container is at desired brix, 35-42 is a common range. (Canada even has brix requirements for icewine). Anticipate up to a 70% volume loss, super lucky to get a 2 gallon yield from a five gallon freeze/thaw by the time you discard the block.
It is important to stir the concentrated juice in collection container because the brix changes as the thaw time increases. Double the yeast and staggered nutrients are vital.

Awesome, Thanks for that info! I was curious how much juice would be needed to get a one gallon batch going.