Turbo Cider.

[timfletch68]

Can anyone recommend a turbo cider recipe? I am wanting to brew a couple of 10 litre batches for the wife come the summertime.....
She is a Strongbow drinker so it will just be a apple cider recipe if possible.
Thanks.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I am sure i recently read that juice cider will not taste a anything like shop bought cider, see if she fancies trying this one - http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=48395

 

[engineer]

I have made many different turbo ciders generally playing around to find something i like. My best recipe to date by far is;

1/2 a large bramley apple chopped up
2 litres tesco pressed AJ
2 litres Princes AJ
80g sugar
Tannin - The juice from 2 tea bags in a mug of black tea
Malic Acid - 1 tsp
Pectolase - 1/2 tsp
Youngs wine yeast - 1 tsp
Yeast nutrient - 1 tsp

This was brewed using a 5 litre water bottle as the fermenting vessel.
It comes out at around 6% according to my notes.

I tried some recently that had been primed and bottled for 3 months.
To me and others it was as good as if not better than some commercial brews.

I am about to scale it up to a 25 litre brew this coming week end to have some ready for the summer BBQ's

 

[Twostage]

Will she want cloudy or clear ?
Do you want a really simple/cheap recipe or something crafted ?

If crafted then Engineer's recipe looks good. (might give it a go myself)

If simple just use the 'from concentrate' 1 litre cartons from your local supermarket, look for the offers BOGOF or 4 for £3.50, that kind of thing.

Wack in the juice, tea, yeast (really simple)
Add malic acid, yeast nutrient (bit more complex)
Add sugar for a stronger brew.

The yeast needs oxygen in the liquid at the beginning so for each carton pour a bit in, put the lid back on, give it a good shake and pour in the rest.

For 10 litre batches you will be able to get away with half a packet of yeast.

 

[timfletch68]

Thanks for all your replies folks.

I think I will give Engineers recipe a go. As I am wanting to produce somewhere in the region of 10 litres, could I get away with multiplying the juice and bramley apple by three and leave the tannin, pectolase etc as per the original recipe?

Sorry if this seems a stupid question, but I am something of a newbie to the world of Turbo Cider.

Thanks.

 

[engineer]

You could. I am not sure you would get the exact same result but i suspect it would still be very good.

The pectolase helps to bring out the flavour and clear it if you add enough. I like a slightly scrumpy look so only add half a tsp.

The malic adds sharpness. You don't need to add this at the start of fermentation, some add it at the bottling stage to suit their own taste.

I suspect the balance of bramley vs pressed juice vs concentrate is the main thing as juice is mainly (or entirely?) made from desert apples and the bramley as a cooker helps to add complexity and balance.

Have fun experimenting....:thumb:

 

[timfletch68]

Just a brief resume of my proposed recipe:

3 x 1.25l Coppelia Cloudy pressed apple juice
4 x 1l Morrisons apple juice from concentrate
1 Bramley apple
160g Sugar
Tannin - juice from 3 teabags in a mug of tea
2 tsp Pectolase
1/2 Malic acid @ bottling.
Cider yeast
Yeast nutrient

Ferment for 14 days in sealed bucket with airlock.
Rack off, add Malic acid and back sweeten with Splenda to taste.
Bottle and leave for the magic three months.

Can you forsee any obvious errors or problems with the above......

Thanks again.

 

[Frogbrew]

No problems with that at all. You will need to add some sugar or apple juice at bottling stage though if you want a fizzy cider.

 

[Pirate_Pete]

engineer, thanks for the recipe.

I'm going to use this as a sort of start for my first cider. We can't get Bramley Apples here easily in Australia apparently. An internet search shows quite a few
expats looking for a source. Anyhow I bought some AJ the other day. A good brand half price the other day.
My cider yeast is at the post office waiting to be picked up. Hopefully I can get the pectolase & malic acid at the local health food store. That's a long story
but basically he stocks homebrew gear and talks more sense than the LHBS, which is an extra 20 minute drive.

So I'm thinking of using a Granny Smith apple, if I can get them. My apple knowledge is 0. If I have to buy them it's usually Red or Green, not a type.
What does the apple actually do for the recipe. Is it taste? Bits floating around? Having lived my early years in the West Country I've had a few ciders
with stuff floating around. Some probably a bit dubious. I would imagine the farms aren't allowed to sell the stuff like they used to.
Also Sugar. Do you use sugar as in the stuff you put in your coffee & tea? I've only made beer so far and used Dextrose instead of sugar. We only have raw sugar, not the dazzling white stuff, so I'm going with that I think.
Yeast nutrient. Do you really need it? I'll buy some anyway.

I was hoping to find some of that Polish rasberry stuff Roddy has used. Can't find it anywhere here.
I haven't been to Aldi though. Who knows what they might have in stock. I have seen a berry syrup for putting on ice cream though.
I might check the sugar content on that and perhaps someone could tell me how it compares with the Polish stuff you can buy in the UK.

cheers

Pete

 

[LarryF]

Here's my tuppence worth:

Brewing 8L.
7L Apple juice plus 1L to top up
400g sugar (49p kg in lidl)
2tsp pectolase
2tsp glycerin
1tsp Yeast Nutrient
1 cup strong tea (2 x Yorkshire left to stew)
1tbsp lemon juice
yeast - Coopers or Youngs left over from my beer kits

I brewed it for three weeks and then bottled into 1L soda water bottles with 1tsp of sugar and three canderel tablets per bottle. Two weeks later it was good to go. I like it over ice with a dash of lemonade.

 

[Pirate_Pete]

Thanks LarryF.

I'll bear this one in mind for future reference.
From what I can gather the canderel is a sweetener. Is that correct? I'm not sure that's available here, but there will be an equivalent I'm sure.
I like dry, so I think I'd give that a miss and see how it goes.
I presume the glycerin is for clearing the cider. On the Coopers brewing site some bloke says he puts ordinary Gelatine in his beer.
I'm not sure if I'm too fussy at this stage about the clarity. As I said growing up in the West Country goodness knows what bits
and pieces there were floating around in the Cider we bought from farms.

I was only telling someone the other day. I bought a house when I was 21 in 1983.
I didn't have much money so a good Saturday night was going up the local off licence.
You could take your own demi john up and get it filled with local farmhouse scrumpy for 2 quid.
I used to get up on a Sunday morning and play football for the local pub team too.
Happy Days.....

 

[LarryF]

Thanks LarryF.

I'll bear this one in mind for future reference.
From what I can gather the canderel is a sweetener. Is that correct? I'm not sure that's available here, but there will be an equivalent I'm sure.
I like dry, so I think I'd give that a miss and see how it goes.
I presume the glycerin is for clearing the cider. On the Coopers brewing site some bloke says he puts ordinary Gelatine in his beer.
I'm not sure if I'm too fussy at this stage about the clarity. As I said growing up in the West Country goodness knows what bits
and pieces there were floating around in the Cider we bought from farms.

I was only telling someone the other day. I bought a house when I was 21 in 1983.
I didn't have much money so a good Saturday night was going up the local off licence.
You could take your own demi john up and get it filled with local farmhouse scrumpy for 2 quid.
I used to get up on a Sunday morning and play football for the local pub team too.
Happy Days.....

The canderel is indeed for sweetness Pete as the yeast won't ferment the chemical sweetner. The glycerin I took from one of the TC recipes on here and I use it in my RG WOW as well, I believe it's for mouth feel when drinking the cider. I didn't do any hydrometer readings with my TC but when I asked it's about 8%. It drinks like that as well, being made from 100% apple juice it's a very nice cider and as we prefer sweet rather than dry ciders the sweetner works well. 1tsp of sugar per litre carbonates the cider very nicely I do like it sweet, very fizzy and very cold so the recipe does the job for me. Saying that though on my next one I may leave three or four bottles un-primed to have a still cider and maybe prime another three or four bottles with some of the syrups that people have been getting from the Polish/East European shops to add a different flavour. Talking of demi-johns, a friend has just come back from Somerset and brought me back four 1L cider jugs (empty, I hasten to add) that are really pretty so I'll be using them for my still cider.