Trying to make apple pie moonshine I’m a little confused might be overthinking it.

I’m trying to use everclear to make high potency apple pie “moonshine” the problem is most recipes I have found call for about a gallon of sweetened spiced cider apple juice mixture and 750 ml of 190 proof everclear but when doing the math at the end this ends up being like 14 15% ABV (depending upon the recipe there are slight variations) now if I wanted to raise the alcohol content the obvious answer is just add more everclear but I don’t know if any of these recipes will actually make that much everclear palatable by the time I get it up to about 40 ABV for the total batch. If I follow most of the recipes that I can find as is I just don’t understand why I would go through that effort when the off-the-shelf old smokey stuff is higher percentage. I would hate to go through the effort of making this product and making it as strong as I want it to be then finding out it’s terrible and I’ve wasted time effort and ingredients