Unfortunately, similar to bathtub gin, the leftover liquid also contained amounts of methanol, ethanol and other impurities, but drinking it in small amounts seemed to be the trick. If a hard cider averages around 5% and apple wine around 10-12%, applejack spiked as high as 30% or 60 proof. Leaving the apple hard cider outside overnight, the moonshiner would then syphon out the ice that accumulated, leaving behind the liquid, which increased the percentage of alcohol. Using nature as an ally after the fall harvest, the moonshiner would “jack” or freeze distill the hard cider (which, technically was actually a concentration, rather than a distillation.) As alcohol freezes at a lower temperature than water, applejack would only be made in the winter. Maine moonshiners irritated by Prohibition (enacted some 70 years before it took hold in the rest of the United States) also decried any form of government interference on a product that they could easily forage from their own orchards and produce with very little equipment at home. With the proliferation of apple trees on the east coast, thanks to what European colonists brought with them, applejack became a Maine pasttime and staple. Sprinkle with cinnamon, nutmeg and/or clove.And when one didn’t have the fancy still equipment to get “boozy, buzzey and halfway to Concord,” applejack was one of the first and most practical ways of producing a higher concentration of alcohol from freezing fermented cider. Farm-to-flask has been around since the colonial era, when Americans believed that fermented and distilled drinks were a cure-all for pain, illnesses and general fatigue.
0 kommentar(er)
