Overview : Core Vodka, Harvest Spirits LLC, Valatie, NY - Small Batch Distilled from Hudson Valley Apples

OVERVIEW

STEP 1
We start by pressing our own fresh apples in our antique rack-and-cloth cider press. Blends of apples are selected based on sugars for fermentation and pH. 800 lbs. of apples are fed into our press at a time, macerated, and pumped onto each of sixteen layers per stack. Each rack-and-cloth stack is pressed slowly and evenly to extract the maximum amount of juice. Pressing 800 lbs. of apples takes 20 minutes and we repeate the process 30 times for each batch producing 2000 gallons of cider.

STEP 2
Fresh cider is pumped into the distillery from the cider mill and into our fermentation vessels. We use a special champagne yeast to start fermenting our fresh, sweet cider into dry, hard cider. Our resulting hard cider has a 5-6% alcohol content.

STEP 3
First Distillation
After filling the kettle with hard cider, we heat the liquid just higher than the boiling temperature of alcohol (79†C) and below the boiling temperature of water (100†C). The steam that boils off the first distillation is 50% alcohol. Since our kettle is only 100 gallons, we must make 20 "first distillations" to get through 2000 gallons of hard cider. This is the most time consuming part of the process.

Second Distillation
The result of running the hard cider once through the still is 100 gallons of 50% water and 50% alcohol. We put this mixture back into the kettle, add some fresh water and heat it again just below the boiling point of water. The vapor boiling off this time is 90% pure. The resulting distillate is separated into 3 separate tanks, the beginning of the batch (called "heads"), the middle ("hearts") and the end of the batch ("tails"). We discard the heads and tails. 20 "first distillations" produces enough alcohol for only 2 "second distillations".

Third Distillation
Our third distillation is performed in the same manner as our second, using the entire reflux action of our still. During the third distillation we repeat our heads and tails cuts further refining the spirit. At this time the alcohol vapor is 190 proof (95% pure alcohol) allowing our end product to be designated as a vodka.

STEP 4
We dilute the remaining 40 gallons of "hearts" alcohol with 60 gallons of pure water, thus achieving 40% alcohol by volume. We purify our water with a pH corrected reverse osmosis filtration system. We run our vodka over activated charcoal and finish filtering through a super-fine 1 micron filter.

STEP 5
Filling four bottles at a time takes more than an afternoon to complete. Bottles are filled, capped, sealed, marked by batch and bottle number, wrapped with an informational tag, boxed, shipped, and tagged carefully by hand. 2000 gallons of cider make 100 gallons of vodka, roughly 4 gallons per 750ml bottle of Core Vodka.