could a person make an eisbock at home with commercially available beer?

It would be pretty cool to take a few Celebrators and see if you can push them into Eisbock-ish range.
Not sure how good it would be but:

1. get some clean sanitized gallon jugs.
2. Pour your Doppelbock of choice in without knocking out all the carbonation.
   
3. Fill jug to somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4th full you will want some headspace for the ice to form.
   
4. seal the jugs with clean and sanitized cap.
5. chill from 32° to 28° slowly over a few days until ice forms over the beer.
6. Depending on how long and how thick the ice cap is will theoretically will increase the ABV.
7. Now the tricky part, getting the beer free from the ice. Cut excess plastic away and chip ice out. or jab a sanitized chipping implement to make a hole to pour unfrozen beer from.
8. enjoy maybe
9. let us know.

 

Or putting the cans or bottles (jugs) upside down in the freezer... and using your imagination for the rest of the process.

 

Technically, yes. It wouldn't be practical though as @Relik said. Plus, after all of the freezing and skimming/scraping, you would have to carbonate the beer again. So another fermentation or keg it and pressurize it with CO2. Even after all of that, it may not even taste good. Just buy an eisbock if you have a taste for one.

 

well you know what happens when you freeze liquid in glass.
And the extra headspace needed to prevent loss of beer and vessel rupture.
Either way its gonna take up more beer than you will get in return.
Might just be easier on the wallet to keep buying Eisbocks already done.

 

Stick the frozen bottle upside-down in a glass. As it melts, the remaining ice will float and remain inside the bottle, and the 'runoff' will be your icebock. Check it out:
http://www.beeradvocate.com/communi...u-drinking-now-420.137856/page-8#post-1988344

 

That's really interesting. In your post from back then you seem to be a big fan of the taste but how was the carbonation, how many ounces do you think you ended up with (I'm guessing not whole 12oz) and how long was the entire process from popping the top to your last sip? I'm guessing it has to be pretty similar to a cold cask beer?

My biggest question, though (sorry about my little game of 20 questions, hehe) I am familiar with the idea behind an Eisbock but how exactly does this melting process work? You have to drink the beer in the process of the thaw to get the full effect? Conceivably, you leave a beer in the freezer overnight, it freezes, it then thaws and you can drink it and there's relatively no change to the beer, maybe, at worst, the carbonation is off, but the taste and abv are both the same.

OP, interesting thread!

 

I do it fairly routinely with homebrew, and the results are generally still reasonably carbonated, and since you're bumping up the abv. by a good percentage. The less carbonation there is generally works out fine.
It's not really any effort until you go and extract what you froze. So, here's what I do to get my eis on.
Sanitize a plastic (tupperware) container that is several ounces larger than what you are pouring into it. It'll expand as it freezes, so make sure you have some headspace. COVER IT..
Stick it in freezer for two days and account for the fact that alcohol has a lower freezing temp than water does. So, drop the temp to a negative one.
Now for the fun part.
Thawing it.
If you want to go slow and low and are around most of the day to babysit it. Let it drip off. If you're impatient and want to kick out the jams.
The quickest way I've found is to chisel the frozen beer into a mixing bowl and stick the shavings into a salad spinner. The centrifuging of the salad spinner leeches the alcohol away from the water. Do this until you reach a satisfactory level of whiteness from the ice. Pour into a bottle. Cap it, and stick it in your fridge for a day.
Pull out, and enjoy.
I've done it with some fairly lowly carbonated homebrews as well, and the carb levels in the eised versions of them still had some bite.
Eising beer loses something like 40% of its volume. So if recall right. A bomber turns into like a 12oz bottle.

 

I wound up with about 6 oz. but you could let it go longer if you want. I figured as long as I was doing it I would do it up right. Carbonation was diminished, but the beer certainly wasn't flat by any means.

The process works because water freezes before alcohol does, so you are in essence freeze-distilling, concentrating the alcohol and flavor when the water-ice is removed. In this particular method the whole thing is frozen, but the alcohol melts first and water melts last, so you are getting the same result.

 

How about starting out with a more carbonated style (I know, it's not a bock anymore). Has anyone tried this with, say, an IPA, or a lager? Just curious. If you start out with more carbonation, shouldn't you end up with more?

 

I have done it with cider but not with beer. The carbonation is an issue as other people have remarked and it is a very good way to get a headache because it concentrates the fusil alcohols.

 

I think it would be interesting to try the above methods and then re-bottle with some bottling solution and see if that pumps it back to normal C02 levels, or even just a C02 tablet if you don't want to wait for the yeast to wake up. Now I'm intruiged.

 

Maybe your headache is from the concentrated ethyl alcohol...

 

How about freezing a can upside down? Same thing? Or freezing a can right side up and then piercing the bottom of the can, like with an ice pick? What's to keep the can from bursting?

 

BRILLIANT!!!

 

I gotta try this.

Hmmm Black Tuesday Eisbock.

 

I don't think that uncapping it would be a good idea because I bet you'd lose a lot more carbonation that way, unfortunately.