Afternoon all - sorry if this is covered elsewhere and I missed it. Just a quick question though. I'm putting on a batch of cider, using fresh apple juice from cartons (Aldi) as I have done most Summers - and I can never get it to be "appley" enough on the finish. It almost always ferments out really dry, with very little apple flavour, so this batch I plan to backsweeten with some decent quality apple juice concentrate, or syrup. Question is - any tips on doing that, please, and where do you all get your syrup from ? Alternatively - any thoughts on letting it sit on some apple skins for a while, during or after fermentation ? I've had reasonable results in the past backsweetening with just an apple cordial, but that feels a bit rubbish to be honest and I'd like to use decent apple syrup instead. Thanks to all in advance :-)
Apple concentrate / syrup for backsweetening Cider
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simon12
Landlord.
I have back sweetened with apple juice (same type as its made from) and it leaves it very apply but I had to stabilise it and force carbonate so it doesn't ferment out again.
Cheers for that Simon. TBH weirdly I hadn't considered back sweetening with the original juice !. I would like to source some nice syrups / concentrates, though, for the occasional batch of flavoured cider (rhubarb cider, etc... I'm not fortunate enough to have a rhubarb plant of my own). Yes, agree - part of my dilemma is - "to fizz first and then sweeten/flavour (which could only really happen in a keg, and you'd lose the fizz...)", or "to sweeten/flavour and then fizz (wherein you can't actually control the flavour profile of the end result)" ? This is why I've used Apple Cordial in the past (because of the preservatives, = no possibility of secondary fermentation) + artificial carbonation using CO2, in the keg. But that doesn't seem organic / natural enough, or at least, I'd love to successfully backsweetebn and then naturally carbonate a batch :-) What do you mean by "force carbonate", please ? Thanks again.
simon12
Landlord.
I actually split the batch and force carbonated 19L in a corny keg by adding CO2 pressure and had the other 10L still bag in box. If you wanted to go totally without sulphites or atificial sweeteners I think you would need to either filter all the yeast out using a very fine filter that would need CO2 pressure or to sweeten with a natural non fermentable sweetener. Altenatively I don't know if just keeping it chilled would make the yeast dormant enough.
I watched a youtube video a few days ago about backsweetening with apple concentrate. He fermented the cider dry, added the concentrate and bottled, left it to carb up for 3 days (I think), then pasteurised the bottles to kill the yeast. Looked a lot of work TBH.
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