I seem to recall that the fermented mash is distilled pretty young in every liquor I’ve read about. What happens if you distill aged beer? For instance, some over-spiced porter that has been sitting in a carboy for 4-6 months.
I presume you mean other than “you break the law.”
I would guess that the end result isn’t that tasty–humans have been brewing beer and distilling spiritous liquors for a long time now, and probably most simple things have been tried. (If it could’ve been done several hundred years ago with early distilling equipment, it probably has been.) I seem to recall that hops in pariticular are volatile, and might not survive the process.
I admit to some curiosity, though–having heard of Sam Adams’s outrageously high-alcohol beer, it’d be interesting to see a distilled pale ale or the like, even if it were awful.
Assuming you live someplace where this is legal (New Zealand?), you would probably get some of the essential oil of the spices into the resulting alcohol. I know making spiced alcohols in this fashion was common in Europe’s late renaissance and early modern period, but I haven’t been able to experiment on it myself (distilling without a license is illegal in the USA). If the porter is tasty, you might get a drinkable distillate out of it.
You recall correctly. When you boil off a beer to make a low-alcohol beer you have to re-hop it. The hops oils evaporate off pretty easily (one of the many reasons to keep your beer cool).