"Jacking" vs "Distilling"

[xiphias]

It is illegal in the United States to operate a private still for the manufacture of distilled spirits. In order to operate a still, you need to have a permit, a bond, a separate building that is not a house in order to do it in, to pay excise tax (separate from any taxes on SELLING the stuff) and all sorts of other things.

The Department of the Treasury is responsible for the enforcement of this, which is why "revinooers" are the natural enemy of "moonshiners". The collection of taxes on the stuff is AMONG their duties. But the reasons it is illegal are not limited to simple taxation reasons. They also have to do with general safety.

See, when you are distilling, you produce ethyl alcohol, which is the stuff you drink. But you ALSO produce methyl alcohol, aka "wood alcohol," which is a poison which can cause eye damage. And you produce propanol, which can cause brain damage. It takes some know-how to know how to extract the ethyl alcohol without the other two.

(Actually, that's where the word "spirit" comes from. Methyl distills at a lower temperature. It's the "head" of the distillation, and comes off first. Propanol distills at a higher temperature, is the "tail" of the distillation, and comes off last. The "spirit," the ethyl, comes in the middle.)

So, given that improper manufacture of this stuff can cause health problems or even death, the government has a reason to want to restrict its manufacture to people who actually know how to do it.

And there's another reason, as well, a reason which police nowadays have to deal with in crystal meth manufacture, as well. The production of alcohol, like the production of crystal meth, involves the creation of large amounts of highly volatile gasses. By cracking down on the manufacture of these things, through things like tracking who buys Sudafed, the police have largely stopped the small-scale manufacture of crystal meth, in apartments in cities. The same amount of crystal meth is being made, but it's being made offshore, or, at least, in more deserted areas.

This is a good thing. The crystal meth can still kill people, but at least the meth lab exploding won't kill as many innocent bystanders, and won't leave as many people homeless.

The Treasury department does the same thing. If you're going to operate an illegal still, it's going to have to be somewhere farther away from people. And that means, if -- and when -- it blows up, it's not going to kill folks, or burn down houses.

Now, I do have a freedom-loving rebellious streak in me that wants to know why I CAN'T do these things if I want to. But, I have to admit, the answer, "Because you'll start fires that will harm not only you, but also other people," is a pretty good answer.

That's why distilling is illegal.

But there's another way to concentrate alcohol, one which ISN'T illegal, DOESN'T form compounds that cause brain damage and blindness, and WON'T blow up. It's called "jacking", and it almost certainly predates the invention of distilling.

Alcohol, of course, vaporizes at a lower temperature than water, which is the fact upon which distilling depends -- you can raise a mixture to a temperature that alcohol boils off, and collects somewhere else, but not so high that the water also boils.

But it also FREEZES at a lower temperature than water.

Which means that you can bring the temperature of a mixture containing water and alcohol to a LOWER temperature, such that the water freezes, but the alcohol doesn't. And then you can pull out chunks of water ice, concentrating the alcohol in the remaining mixture.

This is most likely how the earliest brandies were made -- wait for winter, and let the weather concentrate your booze for you. And this process is generally called "jacking".

"Applejack" was originally a cider which went through this process, but modern liquors which go by that name are distilled apple brandies.

I want to make some original-style applejack, and see how it differs.

Comments

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping to make Applejack this fall. Ferment 5 gallons of cider, freeze, jack, MMM.

N.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

We did this with apple wine once. The slush you skim off, if it's wet at all, is like an alcoholic snow cone. You can get tipsy pretty fast.

[bercilakslady.livejournal.com]

I want to do this with mead. Soon I will have two bathrooms, and might be able to justify making a small batch of mead. Maybe.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

Are you sure jacking is legal? It's my understanding that, though the law itself does specify "distillation," case law has held that any method of concentrating ethanol from a solution is illegal, including jacking. The sensible reason for this is that jacking concentrates the methanol and the propanol (as well as other fusel alcohols) as well as the ethanol, thus making the resultant mixture significantly less healthy than a similar mixture produced via distillation would be.

Now, of course, in actual practice, the chances of the BATF breaking down your door because you're making applejack are pretty slim. My advice would be to be careful not to concentrate it too much, not to sell or give away the beverages you make, and not to post a lot about them on LJ. If there were any other administration in charge I would say they have better things to do than go after you for jacking, but with the one we've got, who knows?

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

In New York, "distillation by cold" is explicitly illegal, under the same statute that forbids "distillation by heat." Xiphias presented some lovely reasons why a law against home distillation *could* have been written for reasons of public safety, but not all laws ARE written for reasons of public safety.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, if "distillation by cold" has to be made explicitly illegal by state law, that doesn't mean that it's illegal by Federal law.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily. The case law, if such exists, that I referenced could postdate the New York state law. Or the New York law could predate the federal law, and simply never have been expunged from the books as unnecessary.

[redbird]

Indeed. There are numerous other things that there are both state and federal laws against (including the unauthorized possession of a variety of other psychoactive chemicals, some of which they don't authorize anyone to have).

[cbpotts.livejournal.com]

When I was active in the SCA, one shire in particular was famous for their "Apple Spirits", made by freezing hard cider and drinking the parts that didn't freeze.

I drank more than my share, I reckon.

And woo hoo. It will knock you on your butt, and the next morning, you'll wish for a merciful death. It tastes really good, tho, and goes down easy.

It's probably better in moderation. I've only had it cold, but others have heated it or poured it in coffee or so on, and reportedly it it good that way too.

Ideally, you do this in old milk jugs, and drill holes in the bottom to get what you want. What you don't want floats.

[cbpotts.livejournal.com]

Also: I'm not sure that "If you do it wrong, it will kill you and hurt other people" is really the criteria we want to base prohibition laws upon.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, in general, I agree with you.

However, I DO believe that societies, through the medium of governments, may reasonably regulate processes that can go kablooey and blow up houses and start major fires that destroy neighborhoods.

[madcaptenor.livejournal.com]

I agree. I don't care if you go really fast on some twisty mountain road and drive over the edge and kill yourself. But I do care if you go really fast on city streets and as a result run into my house.

[beardedone.livejournal.com]

ATF is no longer part of Treasury. On January 24, 2003, they were shifted to Justice under the Homeland Security Bill. The irony is that the website is still under Treasury.

[cattitude.livejournal.com]

IIRC the original anti-distillation laws were not made for safety. They were passed because hard liquor made a better currency than the paper money the early federal government was trying to push. Better, in this case, means easily transportable, easily assayable (if you can set it on fire, it's good), high intrinsic value (as opposed to the inflationary, war-debt ridden money just after the revolution), and untraceable and hence harder to tax.

A quick look at wikipedia on the subject of the Whiskey Rebllion half confirms and half denies this, but safety was definitely nowhere near the reason that distillation got inspected, taxed, and put under the treasury department.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I find myself thinking of a Nat'l Geographic article about Cocaine as currency..

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Not, of course, that we have ever done anything illegal; but hypothetically, should we have attempted to make applejack in this way, I would probably tell you that the major difference between it and modern apple brandies is that, unlike Calvados, it tastes like ass.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

And yet, other people, speaking equally hypothetically, had made the hypothetical comment that the thing which they, naturally, DIDN'T make but were TALKING about actually tasted GOOD.

So clearly YOUR hypothetical recipe is different than theirs . . .

Jacking has more impurities than distilling

[william-morbid.livejournal.com]

But there's another way to concentrate alcohol, one which ISN'T illegal, DOESN'T form compounds that cause brain damage and blindness, and WON'T blow up."

This is actually the opposite of what happens in distilling vs. Jacking. The Methanol and Fusel alcohols that cause problems are a result of the fermentation, not the distilling. In distilling you can discard the "heads" and "tails" that contain these compounds in higher quantities, keeping the middle section. In Jacking you only remove water, leaving behind pretty much all the ethanol, methanol, and fusel oils which you then drink. (this is what causes the really bad headaches one reader reports).

At any rate the risk from methanol is highly overstated. The legend of "going blind" came from illegal distillers ADDING methanol to the batch to increase their profit margin, or using lead-soldered car radiators as condensing coils, etc. As long as you're using non-toxic, clean equipment you really can't make anything more dangerous than the original substance per unit of alcohol.

That being said some people try to push the fermentation REALLY hard to get the most alcohol out of their mash, which supposedly increases the amount of methanol generated. But this is a problem with the fermentation, not distilling.

Re: Jacking has more impurities than distilling

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Yep; I've actually learned quite a bit about distillation and so forth in the . . what . . .month? since I posted this. At some point, I'm going to write a new post with what I've learned. It should be soon, since I've got notes from one of the panels at TALES OF THE COCKTAIL about distilling, and I really ougt to write them up, and correct all the inaccuracies in this post.