freeze concentrate

[Norman Albers]

Once I left a beer in the freezer more than an hour for the quick chill. What I saw in the bottle was a delicate ice matrix. I popped the cap, and seeing also some liquid in the bottom, did the appropriate inversion. I drank maybe an ounce of strong malt liquor, and in less than a minute, felt the punch of the entire 12-oz. beer. WHOA, BETTY! I lucked out at the perfect moment where almost all the water was caught in the ice matrix leaving solubles like malt sugar and the other stuff, with the alcohol. I guess none of these things is incorporated into the crystals, not surprising, but you have to have the right freeze rate and, whatever, you tell me: this was a hugely effective concentrating process. Is this used in industry?

[Ndi]

It is. They freeze-dry instant coffee as an example.

Freeze drying is used for things that don't boil well.

 

As for your beer minus a few degrees is what you need, as water most likely freezes first. A normal fridge keeps around +4 degrees, a quick-freezer (icecream, etc) -4 to -8 and a deep freezer (the one that keeps meat 6 months) about -20 (all figures in Celsius).

 

I believe your beer made it to under approx -10. (starts to freeze at about -6)

[Norman Albers]

Very cool answers (yeah, yeah)! I guess they use vacuum pumping to lower boiling points and such.

[Bluenoise]

Yep, I use it occasionally to dry unstable compounds.

Freeze in liquid nitrogen then put in a thermus and vacume chamber. Wait a while and you end up with a powder. All water can be removed by sublimation. No liquid phase at all.

[Norman Albers]

My well-funded high school in New York (1966) gave us pre-engineering with an altitude chamber. Great fun pumping down God knows what.

[John Cuthber]

Freeze drying is not the same thing as freezing out the water and pouring off the alcohol etc.

 

For freeze drying you cool the material until it has all frozen then drop the pressure to remove (by sublimation) anything that's volatile.

If you did this to beer you would lose all the alcohol and qiute a lot of the flavour.

[Norman Albers]

So it sounds like Bluenoise freeze-dries his compounds. I'm interested in malt liquor, and sherry!

[Bluenoise]

Freeze drying is not the same thing as freezing out the water and pouring off the alcohol etc.

 

For freeze drying you cool the material until it has all frozen then drop the pressure to remove (by sublimation) anything that's volatile.

If you did this to beer you would lose all the alcohol and qiute a lot of the flavour.

 

Yeah I thiank we realise that....

I was responding to the comment about vacume chambers and boiling points.

 

I believe that this freezing to remove water from liquors only works on those with a high sugar content. Correct me if I'm wrong but from all my experiences with freezing various solutions of alcohols and water (and there's a fair bit of it ) they freeze uniformly when not in the presence of sugars. No matter if alcohol content is very high or very low.

 

Anyone know why this effect occurs? I mean why the water in a water alchohol solution can freeze at lower temperatures in the presence of sugar? Or why why the mixture exists as a homogenous solution at room temperature but becomes heterogenous once temperature falls.

I can ponder a guess but I'd rather see if anyone knows the answer first.

[Norman Albers]

Thanks Bluenoise, I thought wrongly that the alcohol would not be part of the structure ever.