One of my friends, who shall remain nameless, crafts his own applejack for personal consumption. He is among the many people I know who live in Ithaca, NY.... a college town that's the perfect blend of hippie town+scenery. Not by coincidence, many of my friends went to school in Ithaca. And so began a tradition of a winter pilgrimage to Ithaca... a friend convention, of sorts. An adult sleepover.
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| Two glasses about this size=drunk |
To kick off the merriment, my friend arrived with a 2-liter coke bottle full of cloudy, piss-colored liquid, and announced we'd be drinking it. Mmmm. Sign me up. He poured small amounts into 10 glasses, we toasted our annual gathering, and down the hatch it went. Applejack? More like Applesmack. That's exactly what it did to my tongue. Ka-pow.
But, since consuming Applejack was my *new* task of the day, one sip wouldn't do. So I poured myself a full glass and feared the aftermath of an Applejack hangover. A few sips in, and the bite was gone. I was now swilling tasty apple juice as the temperature of the room suddenly spiked.
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| This is the orchard from which the apples were picked |
This A-J is particularly special. My friend picks the apples from his own orchard. Seriously, who's ever had alcohol made from their own land?! I think this is pretty rad. First he mashes the apples, then presses them. Voila, homemade apple cider. From there, he puts in brewer's yeast, which munches up the sugar, excreting alcohol. And then he lets it sit. In a few days, he takes this alcoholic liquid and freezes it. The H2O freezes, leaving liquid with a higher alcohol content. He pours off this reduced liquid and tosses the frozen slush. This process can be repeated for a higher proof final product. He estimates that his Applejack is 50-70 proof, but there's no way to really know. Part of the excitement of the consumption is this mystery. How drunk am I gonna get here??
Results: Two glasses later, I was happily inebriated with a very light headache coming on. It wasn't a wine drunk, and it wasn't a liquor drunk, it was something in between. The Applejack was now delicious, and I craved one more, but I switched to a beer for my final bevvy of the night. And then I slept like an apple-cheeked baby. I woke up feeling a bit sluggish, but without a headache or any other measurable hangover symptoms. The second bottle of Applejack was just cracked moments ago, and my friends are currently hollering at me to stop typing and come have a drink. Gotta go...
Status: Success! (not that consuming alcohol is exactly fail-able..)
