Well since I have a huge amount of fruit this year Im going to try some ice cider and ice wine this year. Took a ride into Quebec last week to do some research. Went past my uncles Orchard which is now all overgrown but visited a few of his nieghbors places. I learned a bit of the process from talking to the orchardists. Its cold enough there to leave the fruit on the tree to freeze. You need minimum of 24F for 3 days and then the fruit needs to be crushed bellow freezing to call it Ice. Those are the rules in canada as well as Europe. But of course we maricans make are own rules. I found a guy who does Cryo Concentration so thats what Ill try. The key is to get the ABV up without using sugar. The cryo technique concentrates the sugar and fruit flavornoids.
The thing is instead of a gallon of regular cider you get maybe a few glasses of ice cidre but oh how good it is if there is interest I’ll post my planned process
There’s interest. If only dreaming of cool enough temps to contemplate such doings….
As the fruit is frozen on the limb/vine, does some of the water only side break away from the sugary syrup and… well drip away?
I’ve had some ice wine from Canada and it wasn’t my flavor.
Sneezles61
well I agree I tasted quite a few and some of them are very sweet and not to my liking. the trick is to get them dry.
The method Im going to try is first freeze the fruit solid. Then just as the fruit starts to thaw but still frozen crush it for the juice leaving the crystalized water in the fruit. Next put all the juice in a bucket with a spigot and freeze the juice again. After its frozen slowly warm it with the spigot draining the liquid off the bottom ice will float on top. Monitor the brix which will be high when I get it to say 20-30 brix i’ll stop draining and thats what Ill ferment. I need to order some ice wine yeast. Thats the hard part because you dont want the yeast to quit to soon and end up with an overly sweet product. Im still reading about the yeast part there are some artic;les about stepping up the yeast but in the 20-30 brix its not that strong going 35brix and above might be troublsome
I did an ice brew centuries ago, -30*F night,I put the already fermented ale out of doors, was about 4 hours I was able to scoop ice out. Before I kegged too. I don’t remember why I couldn’t get it carbonated but that was my last attempt as well.
Doing the math to try figure out ABV was also very hard. Measured the volume of ice… deduct it from the original volume to show how much more sugar was left in solution, then calculate gravity… oh dear…
Sneezles61
Simple math I would think calculate % volume loss then add the same % from ABV maybe. What you made was like an Eisenbock. Frozen after fermentation. Its easier with beer to get a concentrated wort by boiling. You dont want to boil fruit juice. Ive made a faux ice Riesling by freezing the wine and it tasted good but you need to drink it quickly. Again it was a dry Riesling which is what I drink
Just some data I’m collecting Macs the brix of the juice is 10 bx
If I recall correctly, freezing their beer in very large containers with a spigot in the bottom and draining the tank, leaving the ice behind is how Brew Dog got the ridiculously high ABVs like in Sink the Bismarck at 41% and Tactical Nuclear Penguin at 32%
You are correct. These ‘highest ABV’ beers are often what is considered ‘freeze distillation.’ In America ‘freeze distillation’ is totally legal because they considered it ‘freeze concentration.’
I understood that in North America, the breweries were to replace 90% of the displaced water… Perhaps that has changed since… when I read that… early 2000’s…
Sneezles61
