I found this interesting

Well, some us froze hard cider when we were in the Boy Scouts in the late 50's.

My Brother-in-Law passed away last year at age 70. As a good old Irish farm boy, alcohol use/abuse was in his heritage & genetic makeup.
With a ample selection of apple trees on his personally owned property, he decided that he would start making his own hard cider, and avoid paying the "man" for alcohol.
He also grew some tobacco, which BTW, really doesn't grow very good here in upstate NY, but that's another story.

He built an apple press at considerable expense. Machine shop work was involved for making the large jack screw with acme threads, for pressing the ground up apples.
Somewhere he located/bought a used apple grinder. It was powered with a flat belt, driven off the flat belt drive drum on an antique John Deere "A" model farm tractor.

Several old wooden barrels, and a selection of plastic barrels were purchased. Hard apple cider production began in earnest.
At first, there weren't any problems. Several years passed, and only the hard apple cider was being consumed.

Then one year, he and the drinking buddies decided to take a partially consumed wooden barrel of hard apple cider, and leave it outside for a sustained cold spell in the middle of upstate NY winter. We get temperatures in January, sometimes below zero Fahrenheit for weeks at a time.
If I recall, he read someplace that if you added a small amount of sugar, and several pounds of raisins, into the hard apple cider, it further increased the alcohol content.
I also recall a single bottle of Vodka was an additional ingredient, something about it "kick started" the additional sugar/raisins fermentation.

After fermenting further for several weeks, using the sugar/raisins/vodka, the wooden barrel went outside for freezing.
After being frozen completely, the wooden barrel bung was removed, and a piece of stainless steel tubing was inserted in the wooden barrel bung hole, and with some probing, the central pocket of Applejack could be located and drained into glass mason jars.

When my BIL and his buddies got into the Applejack, mayhem began & continued for weeks. My sister worked in a coal fired electric power generation facility all of her adult life.
Rotating swing shifts.
She would arrive home after working the graveyard shift, and a selection of passed out Applejack drinkers would be decorating her kitchen & dining room.
After several weeks of consuming the Applejack in vast quantities, my BIL would begin shitting and vomiting blood.

I didn't mind drinking the hard apple cider, it was actually quite good. The Applejack? To me, it tasted like Turpentine. YUK!

After several years of Applejack excess escapades, my sister told my BIL, either get rid of the hard cider processing equipment, or get a divorce.
He sold the hard apple cider processing equipment to a small local craft brewer/distiller.
End of the true story.

^^^ The shitting & vomiting blood didn't put him off it, but the threat of divorce did? Damn, that's hard-core, pun intended.

quote:

Originally posted by cee_Kamp:
I also recall a single bottle of Vodka was an additional ingredient, something about it "kick started" the additional sugar/raisins fermentation.

After fermenting further for several weeks, using the sugar/raisins/vodka, the wooden barrel went outside for freezing.

I would leave the vodka out. It's not going to kick-start any fermentation. It will actually do the opposite as yeast don't like high alcohol %. It puts them to sleep.

I've fermented cider w/ it's own natural yeast and I've done it w/ cider and beer yeast. The pressed runnings I would usually get ferment to about 5.5% abv. Adding a lb. of brown sugar to a 5 gal. batch would boost it a little w/o changing the profile too much.
When the primary ferment finishes you can add raspberries or cherries in amounts of 5 lb. or more for a 5 gallon batch. Or leave it be. The fruit will boost the alcohol a bit more but not over the top.

But yeah, to get fucked up, add way more beet/corn/cane sugar, use a yeast that is high alcohol tolerant, and then freeze distill to get some prison juice.

I think the original Apple Jack was just regular cider, fermented in the barrel w/ not much more added. I've used raisins and dates but avoid too much sugar.
That's how I would do it if I were to try it.