"Summer Fruits" cider

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Ken L

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I'm experimenting with small batches of cider at the moment and have just bottled a wine strength highly carbonated "cider" made with only two litres of apple juice per gallon.
The next project is a summer fruits cider made with three litres of juice, a little acid, some sugar and a no added sugar summer fruits squash.
I have the apple juice going strong and will be adding the sugar, acid and tannin today. The plan is to use the squash to provide the backsweetening and summer fruits flavour and to retain as much of that flavour as possible by adding late in the fermentation.

These squashes contain preservatives and that is my only real concern.
Has anybody had problems with the preservatives killing their yeasties once the squash is diluted and will boiling help or is it just so much hokum?
 
Having done a little more reading, it looks as if the potassium sorbate in what I've got is a yeastie killer and I'll be better off with either a visit to the local Polskie Sklep or using something like Tesco finest strawberry and raspberry cordial
 
Having done a little more reading, it looks as if the potassium sorbate in what I've got is a yeastie killer and I'll be better off with either a visit to the local Polskie Sklep or using something like Tesco finest strawberry and raspberry cordial


Did you ever make this ,
I'm planning to use a 500ml bottle of Tesco strawberry and raspberry cordial and 4 cartoons of Apple juice
 
Did you ever make this ,
I'm planning to use a 500ml bottle of Tesco strawberry and raspberry cordial and 4 cartoons of Apple juice

I did. As is so often the case, most of the flavour was lost in the fermentation process. There was still a bit of flavour and a pink flush but to be honest, I think you'd be better off adding syrup to cider as you serve.
 
i wouldnt worry about the preservatives too much - i did a vimto cider using sugar free vimto cordial.
3l apple juice and a litre of vimto that i boiled down to 750ml. it took off like a train and fully fermented to give a 5.5% cider. tasted too sweet though with that level of sweetener, but was very much still vimto in flavour!
so my next one i used 'full fat' cordial and then backsweetened at bottling and that was much better in terms of sweetness levels, but tasted much less vimto that the previous one. I dont know if there is a difference in terms of flavour ingredients between the two versions of vimto - but the sugar free version did taste stronger.
 

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