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So, that batch from the last thread is done. It's actually been done about a month.

After the primary fermentation for about a a month, I broke it out into 5 one-gallon secondary carboys, and flavored each gallon with different fruit extracts: Cranberry, blackberry, peach, cherry and blueberry.

Everything stabilized about a month ago, and I let clarify in the 1-gallon jugs. It's looking pretty clear now, but I have been too lazy to bottle it, as I still have five 750ml wine bottles left of the last batch. I'll probably get around to doing that this weekend though, because I have to make room for my latest brew project: Applejack!



That's the surface of a 5-gallon batch of hard apple cider I started Sunday. Forgive my labored breathing..the thing weighs like 50 lbs, and I'm getting over a cold. The yeast activity is just crazy! Beer brewers might be used to that kind of thing, but mead is much more relaxed endeavor. It looks like hundreds of tiny minnows are thrashing around just under the surface.

Unlike mead, the apple juice should ferment much more quickly. In 3-4 weeks, I should be ready to turn the resultant hard cider into applejack. Applejack is basically a freeze-concentrated version of hard cider. By freezing out most of the water, you end up with a much more potent (and more flavorful) brew in a process that is evidently completely legal for the homebrewer (though years and years ago, the 'common wisdom' was that it was the same as distillation, and thus, moonshining). I'm really excited to give it a try.

Nice. I've done hard apple cider before, but not what you did. I might have to give that a shot. If you want to see a crazy fermentation, brew a big hoppy beer and add irish moss to it. I was scared I did something wrong the first time I used it. There were giant clumps flying everywhere during the fermentation.

I just got done with a 10 gallon batch that we bottled up for my fiances mom and dad. First time I did a full 10 gallons. That was a whole lot of bottles to cap... We put labels on them with pictures of all the kids and grand kids. They were a huge hit.

Tinwhistler said:

In 3-4 weeks, I should be ready to turn the resultant hard cider into applejack.

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If it's still this cold in 3-4 weeks, you could end up with an exceptionally flavorful and potent brew.

--Patrick

Yeah, I was finding myself wishing I'd started a month ago

If you're ever in Belgium, try to visit a Geuze brewery (a good one, not one of the 2 "big ones"). 100% spontaneous fermentation means sometimes it's pretty slow....And sometimes you can hold a foam rave in there

Cheers @Tinwhistler!

Congrats, Tinwhistler! I've been wanting to try to make some hard cider and mead for a while, but I keep gravitating towards new styles of beer.

Not sure how well it will work with cider, but--if you want to see crazy activity--pitch in some Safale S-04. I was lucky the tops of my fermenting buckets don't seal all that well because it kicked out a krausen nearly 6 inches high off of 2.5 gallons of beer.

I'm using Lalvin 71b-1122 for this effort...I've never used it before, but by the description, it seemed perfectly suited to the task..

The 71B strain is a rapid starter with a constant and complete fermentation between 15° and 30°C (59° and 86°F) that has the ability to metabolize high amounts (20% to 40%) of malic acid. In addition to producing rounder, smoother, more aromatic wines that tend to mature quickly, it does not extract a great deal of phenols from the must so the maturation time is further decreased.

The 71B is used primarily by professional winemakers for young wines such as vin nouveau and has been found to be very suitable for blush and residual sugar whites. For grapes in regions naturally high in acid, the partial metabolism of malic acid helps soften the wine. The 71B also has the ability to produce significant esters and higher alcohols, making it an excellent choice for fermenting concentrates.

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I've found myself doing a bit of research, since the "common wisdom" is that homemade moonshine can kill you or make you go blind.

Everyone seems to "know" that freeze concentration will give you unhealthy levels of methanol (which is the stuff that kills/blinds you). But the common wisdom is changing, and I finally found some information that I think is fairly definitive.

http://www.inchem.org/documents/ehc/ehc/ehc196.htm

Separations were carried out using a 3 m × 2 mm internal diameter glass column packed with 30% Carbowax 20 M at 150°C. A more satisfactory separation of methanol from the other congeners was achieved using a 180-cm Porapak P column. Methanol was found at levels of 6-27 mg/litre beer; 96-321 mg/litre in wines and 10-220 mg/litre in distilled spirits.

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According to Wikipedia, methanol has a density of 0.7918 g/ml, and the amount that could start to cause adverse affects starts at around 10ml, putting the toxic dose starting at around 7.918g. I assume that my apple cider will be on the high end of wine methanols (321mg/l). If I'm able to freeze-concentrate it 3-1, we can assume I'll get around 1g of methanol per liter of applejack. I'd have to drink 8 liters (2 gallons) of the stuff in one sitting order to reach even the minimum cited danger zone and nearly 5 gallons of it to reach the cited 30ml lethal dose. And since I'm also concentrating ethanol, one of the main antidotes of methanol poisoning, I imagine that I'd have to drink considerably more than that in order to be in any kind of danger.

The resulting applejack will be around 80's proof alcohol, so I imagine I'll only have 2-3 ounces at any one sitting.

I thought the idea behind "moonshine can make you go blind" was that unscrupulous distillers would supplement their product with methanol (or glycol) to increase their yield, not that the methanol itself would pile up on its own.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

I thought the idea behind "moonshine can make you go blind" was that unscrupulous distillers would supplement their product with methanol (or glycol) to increase their yield, not that the methanol itself would pile up on its own.

--Patrick

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That's what I thought too, along with using lead solder in their stills and the first and last runnings of the still. Good to know though.

PatrThom said:

I thought the idea behind "moonshine can make you go blind" was that unscrupulous distillers would supplement their product with methanol (or glycol) to increase their yield, not that the methanol itself would pile up on its own.

--Patrick

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I believe that you have the right of it. But say "moonshine" and "blind" together often enough, and I suppose people just start assuming one leads to the other. When I researching applejack, I saw post after post on homebrew forums, websites, and even news articles about how homemade booze could kill you due to methanol. It was nice to find some actual facts on the subject.