"Rusty Hinge" wrote in message
...
The message
from "Franz Heymann" contains these
words:

The alcohol content of plonk can be increased markedly as follows:
Pour the wine into a "conical" pyrex dish. The sort of thing one uses
as a
jelly mould.
Freeze it hard.
Put it upside down in a shallow soup bowl
Allow it to unfreeze slowly.
The first liquid which comes off is of considerably higher alcohol
content
than the original wine.
Pour off the liquid frequently, and taste it as you go.
The alcohol content decreases as time passes, until at the end the melt
is
almost pure water.
The trick lies in making the decision when you should start discarding
the
remainder.

Unfortunately, here in the UK it is illegal to concentrate alcohol by
any means without a licence, so don't try this at home folks - if
anyone's watching.

You surprise me. I have always assumed that it was only concentration by
distillation which was prohibited, since at the time the law came into being
nobody knew of any other means of concentrating alcohol.

It would seem to be the most unenforcable law ever dreamt up.

If you're really into it in a big way, thoroughly clean a spin dryer.
Put into it a pillowslip or clean woven sack with the mouth ready to
accept your ice.

You have, of course, put several gallons of cider or wine in the
freezer. If it has a decent strength it will freeze down into slush
which you can ladle or shovel into the pillowslip/sack.

Tie the top of the sack and start the spin dryer. Depending on how cold
you can get your freezer to go, you should have a product at about 30%
abv.

Don't try it with beer, as the hops' bitterness comes off with the
alcohol. :-·

There speaks the man with the experience.
Is that how some of the Islays get their soapy flavour?

[Franz Heymann]