New guy trying to make 'Jacques' imitation.

[Fergmeister]

Hi there, new guy here!

After a good few months of pondering, I finally decided to purchase one of the Young's Brew Buddy kits from Wilko's last week (which seems to be just about ready to bottle) and since then I stumbled across this forum, which I have been reading intently ever since.

It would seem to be that when I purchased my Brew Buddy kit they never included an ingredient that appears to be quite essential to homebrewing - patience!

Anyway, now that I have the equipment and ingredients necessary, I thought that I would have a stab at making some fruity turbo cider after bottling my lager in order to keep me occupied whilst waiting for a taste of my first brew. I would like to try and recreate the red coloured flavour of Jacques (apple, blackcurrant, cherry and raspberry) although I haven't really got much of an idea as to how I would go about this?

I was thinking of using 2 litres of apple and raspberry juice, 1 litre of blackcurrant juice and 1 litre of cherry juice (all from cartons made from concentrate to make 4 litres of the stuff. I was just wondering what amount of yeast and sugar I would need to make a sparkling brew of around 4-8% if possible?

Thanks in advance for the advice I know I will likely receive off this fantastic forum :)

 

[Duncs]

to make somewhere between 4 - 6% you shouldn't need to add any sugar.

To make it taste anything like Jacques, once it's fermented and cleared, prime your bottles with a teaspoon of sugar per pint (to get the fizz) and add Splenda for sweetness, then leave it to mature for 3-4 months to remove the harshness.

 

[Fergmeister]

Ok, thanks for the response. How about tannin and pectolase? Are either of these needed? Also I have the Youngs wine super yeast compound or champagne yeast to choose from so which would be the better choice would you say?

 

[Wraeccan]

I'd use a teaspoon of the pectolase and a cup of very strong black tea (I find the wine tannin 'clumps'). Also a teaspoon of malic (or citric) acid. I found the champagne yeast works better. 1 sachet is plenty for up to 5 gallons.
Good luck with the brew :

 

[Fergmeister]

Ah right, can't you taste the tea in the brew then? I'm tempted to up the quantity actually because I'm pretty confident in it (although I have never done this before lol). Asda seem to have quite a range of chilled fruit juices these days which is nice to know.

 

[Duncs]

I only use pectolase if I'm using a cloudy juice, a teaspoon of glycerine to the gallon also helps with the mouth feel of the finished cider.

As far as I've read, Youngs Champagne yeast is the same as the cider yeast, so I'd go with that one.

You can't taste the tea once it's made, it just adds to the taste.

 

[graysalchemy]

If you use a proper cider yeast you will get a better cidery taste. I use one cultured from a bottle of Westons Cloudy cider. I took the dregs from a bottle with a litre of apple juice and let it ferment, then added a further 4l to make 5l of cider. I will now use this cider on a 25l batch. :thumb:

 

[Fergmeister]

Whoa, I had no idea that you could do that; yeast must be pretty hardy stuff!

I just siphoned and bottled my batch of lager last night (and learnt a few valuable lessons along the way) so I'm just cleaning out the fermenting bucket and then going to start on the cider. Asda have 6 x 1 litre cartons of chilled juice for 4 quid atm so I'm making up a 16 litre batch of half Apple and half forest fruits.

 

[graysalchemy]

I think asda have some westons Rosie cloudy cider which would be dead easy to culture. Also you can add some tannin about 1tsp er gallon and either citric or malic acid again 1 tsp per gallon, malic is what is found in cider. If you do that use a decent yeast and leave it for 6 months you will have a cider more like proper west country cider than fizzy park bench cider. :thumb: :thumb:

 

[Fergmeister]

Right then, in the first two days of fermenting there was relatively little 'action', although in the past 24 hours it has gone mental, even just going near the FV you can hear it bubbling away!

Now I would just like to make sure I am clear on the process for bottling this brew and making it fizzy. As far as I have read, I need to wait for fermentation to stop, and then prime bottles with a teaspoon of sugar per pint in order to reawaken the yeast and have it create some fizz.

On a seperate note, for culturing some cider yeast from a bottle, are you literally just mixing the dregs from the bottle and mixing it with some fresh apple juice?

 

[Fergmeister]

I just bottled this up yesterday afternoon and to be fair it tastes pretty good, although it will be much better when it is cold and fizzy :)

The OG was 1.046 and the FG was around the 0.996 mark, giving about 6.7% abv, although it has gone quite dry. I have tried adding different amounts of sweetener to a few different bottles in order to see what sort of an effect the sweetener has and I am quite looking forward to having to test vast amounts of this cider in the name of research :

 

[graysalchemy]

It will also taste a lot better with time, 3-4 months in the bottle and it will be a totally different drink :thumb: :thumb:

 

[BarnsleyBrewer]

I'd use a teaspoon of the pectolase and a cup of very strong black tea (I find the wine tannin 'clumps'). :

A good tip from Moley is to mix Tannin with a little sugar to avoid clumping when wet, works great. :thumb:

BB

 

[Fergmeister]

For those of you who were maybe considering giving this a go, I would definitely recommend it. it tastes a little 'drier' than Jacques and has a bit of an aftertaste, although we did try this only 1 week after bottling (we couldn't resist the temptation).

I reckon in another few weeks it will taste even better and be much fizzier so I think I would probably do this again. During bottling I added sweetner in varying amounts to test how much would work best, and I think It would need even more than I used (5 tsp/ litre).

The taste is a fairly good likeness to the red Jacques and other similar ciders, although this one finished up at 6.7% abv, so I definately wouldn't add any sugar at all to the fv!

 

[nobber]

Hi I have only tried cider from a kit could you let me have the recipe thought I would give it a go for the misses...

 

[Fergmeister]

Hi there, this was my first non-kit brew too and it was quite easy tbh.

I made a total of 16l of cider using the following ingredients:
8 litres of apple juice
8 litres of forest fruits juice (These were both Asda's own brand, chilled ones as they were on offer at the time)
1 teaspoon of pectolase
1 teaspoon of tannin
priming sugar
artificial sweetener
1 sachet of Young's Champagne yeast

The main reason I used this amount of juice (almost 3 gallons) was because I didn't want to use 5 gallons in case it was ****, and I needed to use such an amount that I could use my hydrometer in my FV as I am currently without demijohns.

Firstly I poured all of the chilled juices into my FV, although in retrospect I should have left them overnight in their 1 litre cartons to come to room temperature because nothing happened for the first 36 hours after I pitched the yeast.

Before adding the yeast I added both the pectolase and tannin and gave it a good stir, and then after the yeast, the work is done!

The juice I used had a total of 1.6Kg of sugar in for the 16 litre I used, so I never bothered adding any more, and I'm glad I never because it ended up being 6.7% abv (I think Jacques is about 4-5%).

When bottling I bottled in 1 and 2 litre PET bottles and used 2 and 4 teaspoons respectively in order to give the brew it's fizz. I also added artificial sweetener at a rate of about 5 tsp per litre as the drink was a bit dry, although that is to your own taste.

I drank some last week (after being bottled for 2 weeks) and me and my lovely lady were both surprised with the results, you get a sort of aftertaste of the alcohol, but considering the strength of the drink it doesn't make you want to shudder/ be sick/ cry.

Good luck with the brew and I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!
:

 

[nobber]

Many thanks for that I'll give it ago this weekend while the weather is still nice....