Making Applejack. After 10 days of fermenting at a furious pace, the apple cider stopped bubbling and the yeast settled to the bottom. Purely by coincidence, it formed a graph showing the constant high rate of fermentation, followed by an exponential decline and then a long tail of residual low-level fermentation. . . . The resulting wine--which is very "dry", all the sweetness having been turned to booziness-- is poured off into a container (not glass), leaving the yeasty dregs behind to start the next batch of fermentation. By another happy coincidence, the fermentation finished just as the temperature was about to drop, for what will probably be one of the coldest nights this month. It got down to 14F (-10) that night. So i put the wine outside the back door and removed a layer of ice that had formed on top after a couple hours. It didn't freeze anymore, the alcohol having become concentrated enough to keep it from freezing. . . . After that, i filtered it through loosely woven cotton cloth and washed, steamed, maple charcoal. I have been told by moonshiners that the charcoal filtering removes some impurities that cause hangovers to be worse-- i do not know if this is true, but it cost nothing to try. . . . The finished product is pretty strong tasting. . . . . #homebrew #applejack #poisonapple #fermentation #freezedistilled #frostjacked #fractionalfreezing #primitiveskills #appalachian #folkways #الخمور #grannysmith #hooch #hillbilly
