Turbo Cider help

[BrewBee]

Hi all,

I recently acquired a few demijohns so thought it time i made myself some Turbo Cider.
I went to Tesco and was dazzled by the offering of £1.50 off a litre of some tasty looking apple juice (making it £1 a litre). So i bought 5 litres.

Got it home and noticed that it's not from concentrate and includes sweetener. From what I have read this isn't ideal.

So my question is, can i still use this to make my TC, and what should i add in terms of sugar?

Hopefully it's still possible to save, as i would much rather drink 5 litres of cider than apple juice!

Appreciate any guidance.

Matt

[Lunar]

Most supermarket aj is from concentrate. But given you paid so much I am guessing it is proper apple juice. If so your good to go, though if is has been pasteurised I believe it is hard to get it going. Some one else might know better but I think I have read you can still ferment pastured aj except it will be very slow to kick off. Best thing to do would be to create a yeast starter get it up to speed then dump it in to you aj.

If it's been sweetened I wouldn't recommend adding sugar unless you want some rocket fuel. Bit of yeast nutrient should be added you shouldn't need to add and tea if it's natural juice.

[Pinto]

I recently made a 25L batch, 8l of which were a cheap "juice drink" I got from tesco. I found the following :

1) The brew finshed higher (1.002) than any TC batch i've ever made. Im certain this is a direct result of the sweetener because also for the first time ever, the brew finished sweet - commercial cider type sweet.

2) It had a much heavier body to the cider than I've previously experienced - which in itself was both a bad and good thing.

Im waiting for the brew to condition up now, as I also experimented on the effect using double concentrate cordials have on the brew ( tried NAS Apple to see if I could improve the "appleness" and Apple & Strawberry o see if it works successfully as a flavoured cider) so i'm hoping that this brew will be a lot more like a commercial product.

Should it be successful, I'll be using it as a permanent change to my TC's - I wouldn't make a complete batch of cider using it but I think maybe using sweetened "juice drink" in a 1:3 or 1:4 ratio to pure apple juice could work well.

[BrewBee]

Thanks for your replies!

Ok, so i was worried that the sweeteners would make the TC sweet, but not produce any alcohol because i read that the yeast won't "eat" the sweeteners.

However, i think i forgot about the natural sugars in the apple juice. This should (i assume) be enough for my TC to have some alcohol content.

Looking forward to experimenting some more with the TC.

Thanks again!

[Pinto]

Turbos if anything tend to be a tad strong - shop juice usually ferments in the 6-7% range as the juice is derived much sweeter desert apples - too strong for some tastes. If the juice drinks can keep up the flavour and take down the abv then its actually a useful adjunct