Strong dry cider

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nigel6

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I started a 4.5l brew of apple concentrate in early December which I bottled shortly after our Christmas break. nearly six weeks on and i opened a bottle last night to test. It has carbonated well and is certainly clear,strong and dry but has very little apple taste. Is this because it still needs more time to mature or should i have added some concentrate at bottling to flavour. I did not add concentrate as I thought it would just ferment further and would therefore be of no benefit.
 
Do you mean apple concentrate (if so how much in your 4.5l?) or apple-juice-from-concentrate ?
What was the exact recipe? Any source of tannin?
 
Sorry i meant apple juice from concentrate, a full 4.5l with no added sugar. OG was 1.065 so went with that. I have notadded anything other than a small amount of sugar at bottling.
 
What you've got is about the best you can do with just supermarket juice and no extras. The flavour tends to be a bit thin as it's designed for drinking rather than brewing. Hunt around for the best tasting juice you can find next time. Also you don't mention tannin - turbocider definitely needs it, and this may be the real shortcoming of what you've made.
Mostly people use (per gallon) a mug of very strong tea for its tannin and a bit of flavour, and use half a litre of something other than AJ to round the flavour out.
And time in the bottle helps too.

To rescue this lot, maybe mix with a little fresh AJ when serving, to get some of that apple back. Maybe even try serving it over some teapot leftovers! But at least leave it a month to let it mature a bit.

If you want to really get more apple in it, you might consider using actual concentrate at some point in the future.
500ml of the Suma stuff is equivalent to 3.5l of AJ, which given the tea and the some-other-juice, is how much you use in the basic recipe for a gallon. But obviously you now have 3l of spare space in your demijohn, so you can put more AJ in it. Unfortunately this also ups the ABV so you have to stop before it gets silly.
I've had good results with 500ml Suma, 1/2l other-juice, 1/2l tea, and 1/2 or 1 l AJ.
Later this year I may try just going with 600ml Suma, the other stuff, but no extra AJ

When you get something you're beginning to be happy with (you will), start thinking about going for a malolactic secondary fermentation

Oh, and: what yeast did you use?
 
Thanks Oldbloke,

I used Champagne yeast in my brew and I agree it should still improve further with a bit more time in the bottle. I have no experience of adding tannin and will have a go at adding tea with my next brew. I read that you should brew 4 or 5 teabags into a strong brew and add when it has cooled. However I am not sure if this is to a gallon or to 5 gallons. Clearly I need to do a bit more research to improve my cider brew.
 
nigel6 said:
Thanks Oldbloke,

I used Champagne yeast in my brew and I agree it should still improve further with a bit more time in the bottle. I have no experience of adding tannin and will have a go at adding tea with my next brew. I read that you should brew 4 or 5 teabags into a strong brew and add when it has cooled. However I am not sure if this is to a gallon or to 5 gallons. Clearly I need to do a bit more research to improve my cider brew.

That's to a gallon. It wants to be very strong rather than stewed til it goes unpleasantly bitter
 
nigel6 said:
Sorry i meant apple juice from concentrate, a full 4.5l with no added sugar. OG was 1.065 so went with that. I have notadded anything other than a small amount of sugar at bottling.

1.065 with just apple juice? What apple juice are you using? That's around 8.5% just from juice :shock:

If you didn't use any sugar in it then that's definitely the sweetest apple juice I have heard of. Not really surprising it doesn't have a lot of flavour given the amount of sugar it had in there.
 
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