Crushed apple and cinnamon wine (experiment fermenting juice with preservatives)

[Berry454]

I've heard many of times "don't ferment juices which contain preservatives as they prevent the yeast from building up a colony necessary for fermentation.

But me being me, and seeing as apple and cinnamon wine sounded amazing, I just had to try for myself!

I got a good deal on the Robinson's apple and cinnamon cordials from home bargains. I think I paid less than £1.50 per bottle.

The recipe is as follows.

2 X 500ml Robinson's crushed apple and cinnamon cordials
1kg sugar
Half sachet EC 1118
1 TSP citric, 1 TSP nutroent
.
Topped up to 4.5 litres with water.

The cordials don't easily list he sugar content on the bottle. They say something like 250ml of diluted contains 4.5g sugar. So I just estimated it by adding 1kg of sugar. This unfortunately gave me a little high SG at 1.105

The first 48 hours the fermentation didn't look like it was starting. No bubbles. Nothing. Though the yeast was constantly moving around. I wasn't very hopeful and was going to ditch it tonight.

Came home tonight tovery bubbly fermenter. Its foaming away with what looks to be a lot of activity.

Admittedly it was a slow start. But so far it seems to be working. I'll update this thread along the fermentation process.

Anyone had any experience of fermenting juices which contain preservatives ?

It's showing more activity than my tea wines right now.

 

[Berry454]

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Anyone had any experience of fermenting juices which contain preservatives

Yes, Ribena wine when I first started, it took many weeks to ferment and it stopped fermenting before all the sugar was gone I cannot remember the final reading but it was sickly sweet and undrinkable.
I remember one member saying when it comes to wine making the best place for any juice with preservative is on supermarket shelf.

 

[Berry454]

Update 6 days in. Started on the 1/3/22.

The gravity is now 1.040 and it's still fermenting fairly vigorously.

I'm really not sure how this one will turn out because of the preservatives in the cordial but so far it smells brilliant and it's fermenting without issue.

I think the 2 X 500ml cordials may be a little to much for the single DJ so this could turn out to be very apple and cinnamony!