Turbo Cider with Cooking Apples?

[gallagtara]

Full discolure - utter noob, only thing I've made before is ginger beer (http://www.rivercottage.net/recipes/ginger-beer/).

Basically I'd like to make some nice easy cider with the two large buckets of apples I've scrumped. I'm not entirely sure if they're cookers or not - they're quite tart (bit more than a tart granny smith, not too bad), so am guessing they're not for eating!

I've been donated a brewing bucket, tubes and muslin and have got myself a juicer, so my plan was to juice enough apples to give me 3-4 litres of juice, and then follow one of the Turbo Cider recipes but I've got a few questions.

My juice will have pulp in it - how should I modify a turbo cider recipe to take this into account?
Which yeast do you think will do a good job in my case? I'd like the end product to have a medium sweetness, not super dry.
Should I supplement the cooking apple juice with a litre of shop bought stuff to make sure it's not too tart? Or I definitely have enough pears for a litre of juice...
Should I still add the tannin in the form of tea, or have I already got enough in the cookers?
I'm buying campden tablets and yeast - anything else I need? Is it worth getting a sugar calculator?

Any help would be gratefully received!

[gallagtara]

Here are the apples I'm using - mmm, soon-to-be booze!

http://i43.tinypic.com/nxke3t.jpg

[oldbloke]

It's my personal opinion that too much emphasis is placed on the acidity of AJ for cider, tannin is more important. Unless you're going for malolactic, you don't want it too acid. Not even as acid as some shop AJs.
But you do need tannin.
Then again, almost any AJ will make something drinkable.
Re pulp, either accept reduced yield, or rack it at some point and top up, for slighty lower ABV. If you can get a gravity reading, maybe add sugar to compensate, but I'm not a fan of adding sugar to any cider recipe. Less opposed to honey.
Gervin D wine yeast will work on the malic acid so might be good. I've been using Young's Cider for yonks but sometimes the result is a bit sharp.
I think I would add some shop AJ.
Hard to judge what to do about tannin, with shop AJ it's obvious you add 1tsp/gallon powdered, with randon apples, dunno. Taste the juice and guess.
Do you have siphoning gear?

[gallagtara]

Cheers for the help, Oldbloke.

All I have siphoning-wise is the tube - the kit I was given contains:
1 x 25 Litre fermentation container
1 x 25 Litre fermentation container lid
1 x big plastic bottle (looks about a gallon)
1 x airlock that fits on top of bottle
Syphon tube and clip
Steriliser stuff
I'm waiting on a delivery of Campden tablets, and have some milton tablets left from the ginger beer.
And I've got 16kg of apples so should end up with about 6.4 litres of juice (based on 2.5 kg = 1 litre juice).

Looks like I'll need to buy a hydrometer and some yeast too - you've lost me on the malic acid. Are my apples likely to have a lot, which is why I should use a yeast that will gobble it up?

I basically want to make a cider that won't take very long, so a turbo cider that's sweetish (say like thatcher's gold cider), and is pretty simple. Could you suggest a step by step recipe I could adapt to scale?

[oldbloke]

TurboCider is so called because there's no real apples involved, you're making actual real cider!

Malic is the predominant acid in apples, cookers/crabs will have a bit more than eaters. Scrumpy has the yeast fermentation that changes sugar to alcohol, AND a bacterial malolactic fermentation that changes some of the malic acid to lactic acid, with interestingly flavoured by-products. You need a yeast carrying the bacterium (eg from the bottom of a bottle of Old Rosie), or you can buy it separately. But GervinD reckons it acts on malic - maybe it also carries the bacterium, don't see how else it could. And I know it gives a somewhat funkier cider without the months of hanging about that traditional MLF takes.
But I don't want the MLF in the TCs I make, so I've mostly used Young's cider yeast and a juice that's not too acid to start with.

A bigger problem is wanting it sweet(ish). You either need to stop the yeast, and then you have trouble making it fizzy, or you add artificial sweetener, or you just serve it over fresh apple juice.

You don't really need a recipe - smash the apples up to the point you can press the juice out (or get the juice out however you can), probably Campden it to stop spoiling, add any extras you fancy, and bung the yeast in a day later. Wait 10 days to 3 weeks, until it's clear and/or stops fermenting, bottle (or keg).

[gallagtara]

excellent, I'm being authentic by accident!

Have the yeast ordered, cheers for that - got a gervin d wine strain that works on malic acid and over-acid juices so hopefully it won't come out too sour.

I'll back-sweeten it with sweetener if it does end up too sour, and maybe dilute with some water too if it's very alcoholic and acid/too intense to be easy-drinking - should be all right.

As for a recipe, it's more quantities I want to get right - so for example, say I have 6 litres of apple juice and add 2 litres shop bought - how much overbrewed tea should I add to the 8 litres juice I have? A pot's worth? A mug? Any need to add honey if I've already added shop bought AJ? If so how much? Just approx ideas are fine - have never done this before so wary of screwing something up and ruining the lot!

[gallagtara]

ight, I've made a brew! Here's what I did:

Sterilised everything with steriliser first.

1.75 litres of apple juice from the cookers
2 litres of Waitrose essential apple juice
half pint of tapwater
50g light brown sugar
2-3 tablespoons honey
2/3rds of a crushed campden tablet

I stuck this all in a 5 litre PET Thursday night, and next day added about 8g of the Wilko Gervin Ale Yeast (kept a little back from some more ginger beer)

Yesterday morning not much activity, but got back this afternoon and it's bubbling away out of the airlock - and it STINKS. Rotten egg, very sulphuric.

I'm trying not to panic - do you think it'll be okay? I thought the Campden tablet would avoid any nasties, so am assuming this is just yeast byproducts. Will the sulphur smell go away?

[Benson_JV]

The sulpher smell is normal, don't worry about it. It'll go.

[jmc]

... I've got 16kg of apples so should end up with about 6.4 litres of juice (based on 2.5 kg = 1 litre juice).

...

.. I've made a brew! Here's what I did:

Sterilised everything with steriliser first.

1.75 litres of apple juice from the cookers
2 litres of Waitrose essential apple juice
half pint of tapwater
50g light brown sugar
2-3 tablespoons honey
2/3rds of a crushed campden tablet
...

How did you get on juicing the 16Kg of cookers you were given?
Did you just use some of the apples in that recipe as a test?

[gallagtara]

Yep, basically - the juicer I have is wee and not very modern, so each apple had to be cut up to be juiced. It would take about 2 days just to juice them all, and being as I'm impatient and hadn't attempted anything like this before I decided just to stick with a test batch first!

Hope it goes well- mixture seems happy enough but has a lot of floating stuff - apple pulp and yeast am guessing, so once it settles down I'll have a job getting that out.