Apple Jack

[rick]

Looking at the option of making apple jack in the old traditional way of using cold January nights to remove water from hard cider. Does anyone have suggestions for reference materials or experience with this?

Thanks, Rick Pete Charlotte, VT

[Charles@AEppelTreow]

You might also want to research 'cider palsy'.

[rick]

Have been looking but did not find much. This is one blog on another site;

Don't perpetuate a myth. Saccharomyces cerevisiae produces no to virtually no methanol and there is absolutely no reason that cider would have any more than beer or wine. It is possible that the higher quantity of esters, aldehydes, and ketones (other organic molecules) produced from a particular strain of yeast or higher fermentation temperatures may cause some individuals to have worse hangovers, but it's not methanol production.

A more likely reason is the speed of consumption. Since cider typically has a higher ethanol content and tends to be rather easy-drinking, people tend to drink more ethanol in a given amount of time. Ultimately, this is what causes a worse hangover (and makes you drunk so quickly).

I'm pretty sure that saying someone has "cider palsy" or "apple palsy" is a colorful term for "drunk" - similar to "pissed", "snookered", "sloshed", "tanked", etc.

Cheers,

Aaron

[rick]

And this one that sounds right?

The deception side of the war on hard cider was equally cruel. In the years before the ban on alcohol was enacted, newspapers started running stories about the health problems associated with drinking hard cider. The source of those stories? Not doctors, but temperance believers and their supporters in government. After hundreds of years of making and drinking cider, the feds had apparently discovered that cider would make a man blind, lazy, and impotent. I thought the impotence was a nice touch (oh noes, not the testicles!). There was also an apparent outbreak of a disease known as “cider palsy”, in which cider drinkers would develop brain damage and tremors. Blame it on their alcoholism? Naw, it must be the apples.

Hence prohibition, and the clear-cutting of the orchards.

http://prince-of-earth.blogspot.com/2008/11/working-stiff-hard-cider.html

[eggfarmdistillery]

From what I've read it's not so much a methanol problem as toxic levels of other cogeners, particularly fusel oils, that remain in the beverage when you simply remove the water component. Sounds like a bad idea. Sorry. Charles is correct.

[Charles@AEppelTreow]

I was thinking of things with even higher molecular weights than 'fusel oils'.

In cidermaking circles, apple jack from fractional crystallization is usually considered 'interesting' - but not recommended for regular consumption. And it's not methanol, which comes from pectin breakdown - but not in large amounts. Or heavy alcohols/fusel oils (the only one that comes to mind in cider is butanediol). There's some concern of 'phytotoxins' - at what point do tannins, pigments, vitamins and general biological molecules cross the line from micronutrient to microtoxin?

I suppose one could say the same for ice cider, which seems to be well accepted. I haven't run the numbers to compare the degree of concentration.

So I wasn't just spouting the cider version of propaganda that 'justified' the absinthe ban. FC apple jack doesn't seem to have been a commercial product. But why not? Economics? Something wrong with the end product? I don't think we know. Not to 2 standard deviations.

You can find more discussion in the archives of the Cider Digest. Or track down Ben Watson - he likely knows more anecdotes.

(It reminds me of a story Charles Martell told me about Bulmers planting intensive orchards of the perry pear Hendre Huffcap. He pointed out that while the pear had one of _the_ best flavors, they should double check why there were only three known trees in the UK. They planted anyway, and the orchards died from an unusual disease the first time they were pruned.)

PPS: I think 'apple jack' is a term that is adapted regionally. In New England, it seems to be the Fractional Crystallization product. Mid-Atlantic, a synonym for apple brandy (Laird's influence??) and here in the Great Lakes, a lot of 'plain folks' use it to refer to simple fermented cider. I suspect 'jacking' as a verb is a neologism, too. In any case, 'apple jack' doesn't mean the same thing to every audience.

[Tom's Foolery]

Hey guys.

The regional understandings of what applejack is are very interesting to me, and can tell us a lot about the history of the drink, so please share any other thoughts or experience on this topic. But if we are going to put the word "applejack" on a label, we better use the definition spelled out in the CFR in the standards of identity. There is one there for "Bourbon" too.

I have not tried to make applejack from fractional crystallization but I would like to try it as an experiment. From what I have read, applejack produced by this method back-in-the-day was pretty low in proof (like 30 to 60), so it may be difficult to consistently get above 80 proof. I have not researched the legality of making applejack with fractional crystallization, so if anybody has spoken with the TTB on this topic, I would like to know what they had to say.

Regarding the concentration of the existing negative components (fusel oils, phytotoxins, etc.), it seems logical that this would occur, just as the ethanol is concentrated when water is removed. What seems odd to me is that a "healthy" hard cider would somehow become unhealthy when water is removed. Did the freezing (or exposure to air) create additional fusel oils? Distillation would premit removal of some fusel oils (tails cuts), which would mean that distilled applejack would have fewer higher alcohols in it than FC applejack, but I would think the ratio of bad-congeners-to-ethanol in FC applejack to be the same as it is in hard cider. Any thoughts on this?

[Charles@AEppelTreow]

The cogener:EtOH ratio would be the same, but the concentration, and therefor dose, would be different. (cogener:water and EtOH:water are different)

In simple cider, you're drinking about 2.25 lbs of apples per 750mL.

In ice cider, you're looking at a 30 brix starting point, minimum. If I did the calcs right, that's 7.7 lbs of apples per 750mL.

For an 80pf apple brandy, I figure 18.3 lbs apples/750mL. For a distilled product, you have almost none of the cogeners, let alone heavy stuff that you've never see in _any_ tails cut. For an FC product, you're getting all 18 pounds worth of everything but the sugar and insoluble fiber. Almost 9 times the impact of cider. I'm sure there's good stuff in there, too. But concentration and dose do matter.

And I once came across a TTB industry guidance letter that described the proper way to document dealcoholizing wine with membrane separation and running the result back to the winery for fortification. There was a DSP in the loop. So I don't think the TTB cares whether you use a still, or other technology. But production methods are part of the DSP registration. So they might ask more detailed questions when you made those amendments.

[cowdery]

From my reading, I've always had the impression that freezing hard cider to raise the proof was a personal, household thing and never commercial. It produces a slightly higher alcohol level but nothing like distillation, even crude distillation. As Tom points out, it seems unlikely that any compounds are altered or created by this process, although undoubtedly the fraction that freezes contains more than water. Although some people may have referred to the result as 'applejack,' the much broader use of that term has always been for distilled hard cider. I have seen references to 'applejack' where the product being described was actually hard cider, so there will always be people who misuse terms and we shouldn't be distracted by that.

Richland County, Ohio, where I grew up, counts John 'Johnny Appleseed' Chapman as a native son and contrary to the Disney image, Chapman's mission was to plant apples suitable for making hard cider, because he believed hard cider production could be a profitable frontier industry. Where there is fermentation, distillation is almost sure to follow.

As a kid, I certainly tasted hard cider that had fermented spontaneously on many occasions, because we always got our cider directly from Sandy Hill Fruit Farm and it wasn't pasteurized. This was in the 1950s and 60s, but they're still in business.

I have a vague memory of tasting some that had been left outside to freeze. It didn't impress me but I was, after all, a child. This was always under adult supervision, so I never had more than a taste. It wasn't compelling enough for us to do it as teenagers, even though it would have been simple, as unpasteurized cider was readily available. It was easy enough then for underage kids to buy beer, so why bother?

[rick]

So if I go ahead and try this, we are really talking about dosages, we do not expect to consume the same amount of FC hard cider as simple hard cider!

The more sugar I add the higher the alcohol will be. The colder it gets here, the more water I take off.

The resultant product; if aged in a wood barrel should soften a bit.

I'll let you know.

[Tom's Foolery]

The more sugar I add the higher the alcohol will be ...

The resultant product; if aged in a wood barrel should soften a bit.

If you are going for a traditional FC applejack, why add cane sugar? Seems to defeat the purpose entirely.

Your project is interesting to me (I have yet to taste FC applejack). I say go for the real thing ... and make it from apples.

Also, it is my experience that sugar will degrade quality.

Assuming you are planning to operate as a legal distillery, you will want to check the CFR for the maximum amount of sugar that can be added if you decide to go that route anyway. There is a legal limit.

[rick]

I see your point, as I am planning to flavor and age my jack from this winter, I was going for bang per buck and the sugar is cheaper than the cider. My neighbor who is legal and doing apple brandy thinks 8% alcohol is the right amount to maintain good flavor.

[BrnBtlFlzy]

Have been under the same impression about fusel alcohols and methanol in fc extractions. The only real advantage seems like it would be a higher alcohol content while still maintaining the namesake of being a cider or beer, but as a marketing gimmick it might be advantageous: fractional crystallization instead of a stripping run. I don't think anyone does this on a commercial level.

And in my part of the country Apple jack is synonymous with Apple pie, spiced moonshine.