TC, alcoholic or not?

[terrier]

We have just bottled 20 litres of TC that has been in the fv for a week. It was brewed to a recipe off this forum with juice,honey and chopped up apples. During the week only slight bubbling was visible in the air lock. It tastes nice now but i have a feeling it has not "brewed"?. There was no sediment on the bottom. It looked like the yeast was on top of the chopped and diced apples even though we stirred it when we pitched the yeast?.

[RobWalker]

if it's sweet, it has not.

if it's dry, it has.

[Jim]

Try drinking 10 bottles. If you can still walk in a straight line, it didn't ferment.

[terrier]

I have put a teaspoon of brewing sugar in each wine bottle. Could that rescue it or will it need yeast?.

[fatbloke]

Bloody hell! I'd say that you've done a top job of making some excellent bottle bombs........

If you were just trying to use natural yeasts, then it might take a while, but if there was yeast added, I'd get them into a fridge, chill the hell out of them, get the batch back into a bucket and finish the fermentation.

Only then, work out how much priming sugar you'd need per bottle, then add that before getting it back in to the bottles to prime.....

There's a thread over at Gotmead, which while it's about making a mead, what done in a keg for experimentation of whether, as the sciency stuff suggests, yeast would stop fermenting when it gets to a certain pressure. The person who was experimenting got readings in excess of 100 psi at the gauge. So presuming that honey etc might produce a higher pressure than a lower alcohol turbo cider type batch, if the bottles could get to 50 to 60 psi, that's too much for beer bottles and firmly toward the realms of champagne pressures (about 5 to 6 bars apparently).

so I'd suggest caution. Plastic bottles don't hurt much if they blow, glass is an entirely different matter.......

[Jim]

Definitely get that stuff out of those bottles quick! And unless they're champagne / fizzy wine bottles don't use them for carbonated cider.

[oldbloke]

I've never known a TC not leave a fair layer of sediment in the FV, and they all take longer than a week.
Without knowing your exact recipe I'm reluctant to make any guesses , but I wouldn't risk bottling it

[Mitchamitri1]

You cant make decent cider - even TC - in a week. Or, put it another way, if you do you got lucky. Leave it at least 3 weeks to a month, and don't disturb it or play with it or leave it in the light. I would suspect if you have tipped the cider to get some to taste it you have now oxidised it and its better to start again. Might be ok though. Its not an exact science.

[Mitchamitri1]

.....and to be honest a plastic trial jar and a hydrometer only costs pennies, I'd suggest getting one.