Freeze Fermenting

[eclipse]

I would like to make a strong beer by freezing the finished product and removing some ice, which in theory should only be water since alcohol freezes at a lower temp than water. But does anyone have any advice on how exactly to do this and what temp I need to freeze at?

[seymour]

I've made applejack (freeze-distilled hard apple cider): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applejack_(beverage)

It's easy, but you need a big freezer. I simply fermented a batch of cider as usual (or in your case, beer, but same applies for Eisbock, etc.), then placed the entire fermentor bucket in a "deep-freeze" chest freezer. A day or two later, using a large slotted spoon, I removed large ice chunks and slush, leaving highly concentrated alcoholic cider behind. Waited a couple more days and repeated.

I don't have my detailed notes with me, but I think I made a 3 gallon batch, which "distilled-down" to about 1.5 gallons of strong boozy appley goodness. And no...I didn't go blind. Have fun!

[darkonnis]

The trick is to get the temperature right, you can of course just chuck it in the freezer but you'll freeze a lot of the flavour too. I seem to remember reading something about keeping it at -1 for quite a while as sugar solutions also have a lower freeze temp (depending on consistency) allowing you to keep most of it and literally water components. Repeat this process. Not saying this is the only way to do it as you can do it however you damn please and you'll get stronger stuff its just how i read about doing it and like seymour I put some beer in the freezer not so long ago and it was stronger but lacking a bit of flavour (or maybe the %% had just gone up to detectable levels)