Wouldn't it be less work and less trauma to the original flavor profile of the beer to reverse freeze distill? Meaning freeze and save rather than discard the frozen portions. Can save the unfrozen alc too to boost a lower gravity beer.
This is what I have in mind as well after reading every post in this thread.
My logic behind the effectiveness of this is simple - I have freeze concentrated commercial beer and my goal is to lower carbs but keep the rest of the beer's characterstics the same, and retain most of the alcohol - aka - concentrated beer.
The first part that melts out is very pungently alcoholic and its usually a very light color.
The rest of it when you concentrate it 4-5 fold for a mid 30's abv gets darker and it just starts to get cloudy when I hit that 30% mark I am guessing. That means, the cloudiness, the particles and a lot of the color is left in the frozen liquid. Much of the alcohol has melted out.
The frozen part now has beer color, beer flavor, beer mouth feel and low low alcohol. Basically the same as the original beer- the ABV.
The math behind this to this simple mind is this. Ethanol boils at 175F while water at 212. That's a 37 degree difference with the risk of burning stuff.
Ethanol freezes at -173 while water freezes at 32. Its a whopping 205 degree difference. Agreed home freezer only hits -15 to -20, but ethanol runs out so fast because its 150+ degrees above its freeze point.
It would be worth it for someone to try this - Because I'll pay handsomely for the part you remove fixing to throw away. Besides if you start with a low abv beer, you can melt out more to even 20% ABV theoretical, and leave even less ABV in the ice that's your preferred product.
I shoot for 30-35% because I feel I like that flavor and strength as well as the indications of cloudiness seem to appear right around there if I start with a cloudy beer, telling me the carbs are getting out. I cold crash the concentrate and it leaves very little sediment and a clear and deep brown drink.
Thanks.
Srinath.