During those rough stretches of winter when the temperature gets to 0 and below and everyone doubles down inside their homes, we have a rare opportunity where I live in Pennsylvania to not only do a little pond ice skating but to let nature concentrate my brews through freeze distillation. Freeze distilling is in line with all of my favorite methods of “natural technology” where you really don’t have do anything. All the work is in making your alcoholic beverage of choice as you usually do.

Here I’ll describe how I doubled the alcohol of my cider by simply leaving it outside.