To Jack or not to Jack?
Awhile ago, I mentioned my homebrewing hobby to my mom, and she suggested I make applejack.1 Apparently, some of our ancestors made applejack within living memory.
If you don't know, applejack is freeze - distilled cider. Ethanol has a lower freezing point than water. So, if you get a bunch of hard cider really cold, the water will freeze first, and you're left with something more alcoholic than you started with.
Unfortunately, you also concentrate nasty things, like fusels. Fusels give you awful hangovers and taste terrible. So, the resulting beverage will give you awful hangovers and taste terrible. I believe this gets a bit better with age. But, like, what exactly is the benefit of this dreaded business? You get something that's a little more boozy? If you want to get drunk that badly, can't you just as have another glass? Or buy vodka? That seems far less complicated. Per my understanding, home distillation is also illegal (though only in the bare technical sense that jaywalking and smoking pot are illegal).
On top of this, I just don't like spirits that much. Spirits often burn my mouth, and that's just no fun. I can have brandy sometimes, maybe a gin and tonic on special occasions, I will drink decent bourbon if offered it. But, I generally like to consume ethanol au naterale.
On the other hand, making liquor might be an interesting experiment. I've thought a bit about how I'd do it; if I remember correctly, fusels are often downstream from tannins in fermentation. More tannins = more fusels = worse - tasting distillate. So, if I was going to freeze - distill something, it'd probably be less tannic. The thing that immediately occurred to me was a clean - fermented mead -- an oaked bochet brandy sounds delectable, honestly.
But, again, two factors militate against this. If you want to get a decent volume of distillate, you need a large volume of starting product, and I like to make mead in 1 - 2 gallon batches. If I wanted to get a lot of delectable oaked bochet brandy, I feel like I'd need to start with 5+ gallons of mead? and that'd probably be, like, 12 - 15 pounds of honey, at a minimum. That's a veritable shit - ton of honey. On top of this, I'm sure it'd have to have age for a Very Long Time before it was drinkable, which does not sound very nice.
I dunno, maybe I'll make honeyjack if I grow Old and Rich. But, until then, I will to brewing and winemaking.
I refer, of course, to the alcoholic beverage, not the fictional horse.↩