Toxxyc
New and loving it
I understand, yes. It's impossible to get all the alcohol out with freeze distilling though. At around 30% the water stops freezing in the solution, so that's more or less the maximum extraction you can get. It does depend on how cold you can make the solution, yes, but from what I've found it doesn't make a massive difference.I would use a proof and tralle hydrometer rather than your taste to determine the proof or ABV of your freeze distillation. That it may or may not taste "hot" may have very little to do with the proof of your final product and whether anything was lost or you simply had all 11% ABV in your bottle just diluted with some H2O is the real question. (11% of 4500 is about 495 ml and you got you say 750 ml.) My bet is just about 100 percent of the alcohol was captured PLUS another 250 ml of water. So you loss hardly a drop, you just diluted the ethanol with water.
My point is - freeze distilling works. It works pretty well, actually. Will I do it for large amounts on an expensive drink like mead again? Hell no. It's simply not worth it, for me, personally.