Ingredients
- 1 gallon apple juice (or 16 pounds apples)
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon yeast energizer
- 1 1/2 teaspoon acid blend
- 1/2 teaspoon pectic enzyme
- 1 campden tablet
- 1 package champagne yeast (for 1 to 5 gallons)
preparation
Early settlers made this by setting their apple cider outside in the winter and allowing it to become slushy. They would then skim the frozen water off of the surface, leaving a “hardened” cider behind. Commercially, it is now distilled. This is illegal for the home brewer, but the freezing method is effective.
First, make Apple Cider (recipe above). Skip the final step, and allow it to age the three months in the secondary fermentor.
Second, siphon it back into the primary fermentor. If you have a deep freeze, put the primary fermentor in it overnight. If not, use ice cream buckets and the fridge freezer. Remember to leave room for the water to expand when it freezes.
The alcohol will not freeze, so it is forced into the center of the container when the cider is frozen. The brewer then has the option of either skimming the ice off of the surface, or siphoning the alcohol out of the center. The siphoning method will result in a higher alcohol content than the skimming method.
Alternatively, you could follow this method using your favourite Apple Wine recipe.
November 5, 2005
I received this email from a fellow winemaker detailing how he gets the ice out of his jack:
I found my hard cider to have such a high alcohol content it would only freeze to a slush in my home freezer. After wasting a bit of the good stuff trying to drain it off the ice and throwing out quite a bit of brown ice, I decided something had to be done to minimize waste.
After much thought, I decide to separate the ice and jack by placing t-shirt material as a liner in a “salad spinner” centrifuge, folding the material over the slush to cover it,and spinning the jack out with the spinner. It worked beautifully, and I’ve only thrown clear ice out since. This also increases efficiency since you don’t have as much ice melt while waiting for the jack to drain.
