Adding fruit tincture to cider kit

[patryk97]

Hi All,

I am making my first cider, it's MJ mixed berry cider kit. Been in primary for 5 days and it seems fermentation is almost over.

I want to make this cider taste as much as mixed berry Kopparberg, sweet and fruity. I added the whole packet of sweetener and the cider does taste quite sweet. I haven't added the flavour sachet yet so not sure how fruity it will taste.

I was thinking that no matter if it's really good it wouldn't hurt to add extra raspberry flavour to it.

I was considering batch priming with raspberry Lowicz syrup. Not sure how much flavour would it get as I think 200-300ml of the syrup will have enough sugar to carbonate a 23l batch.

So I kept on doing my research and came across fruit tinctures, can't find much details about since majority people just make herb tinctures.

I was thinking of making a raspberry tincture, fill the jar with crushed frozen raspberries and add vodka, as little as possible but enough to cover the raspberries. And add it to secondary or just before bottling.

Now the question is, has anyone tried using fruit tinctures? I know it will affect the ABV slightly but will it restart fermentation due to the sugar in the tincture? The kit makes about 5.9% ABV, I don't want the ABV to go too high because of the vodka and extra fermentable sugar. I'm also worried about bottle bombs if adding the tincture right before bottling, maybe I could adjust priming sugar and count it the sugar from the tincture?

Or would using Lowicz to batch prime be a better option to add a bit more of a raspberry flavour, too much is not needed since the kit flavouring is hopefully very fruity.

Thanks.

 

[AXW123]

I used Lowics to secondary carbonate I also added some sugar free squash to some of the bottles. Tasted both and the ones with squash tasted more like the real thing.

 

[patryk97]

I used Lowics to secondary carbonate I also added some sugar free squash to some of the bottles. Tasted both and the ones with squash tasted more like the real thing.

Did you use lowicz and squash and separate bottles or did you add the squash on top of lowicz in some of them? Also I assume you added it to plain apple cider?

I'm thinking of leaving this cider be and not add anything to it. I might just make a gallon of TC and add apple blackcurrant squash and 20 raspberry tea bags. I've made this tea recently and added squash to it and it was very close to kopparberg although it's hard to tell since I had no cider as base and it was warm and flat.