Sanity check for my first Turbo Cider

[wizurd1977]

Hi all,

Sorry if this is repeating questions, i just wanted to check that i've got the right idea with regards to my first TC.

So i'm doing it in a demijohn which is around 5 litres.

I'm using 4 litres of apple juice from concentrate from Tesco (do i need to add any water as well?).

With that i'm adding a cup of properly stewed tea (so 3 tea bags for 15 mins) plus a tsp of malic acid.

I'm using mangrove jacks cider yeast, but thinking that i only need half the pack (its 11g) since im only doing 5 litres ish.

I think that's everything. I'll then ferment for around 10 days.

Then rack to a secondary vessel and batch prime to put into PET bottles.

So my questions are:

How can I figure out what the percentage of the cider will be? i'd like something stronger say around 7 per cent. The apple juice i'm using works out around 113 gram sugar per litre. Should i also be adding more sugar at the beginning and if so can i just dissolve this in the cup of tea before it all goes into the FV?

I don't want a dry cider so i was going to add some fake sugar i.e. canderel when i batch prime. How much do i need to add though to get a medium sweetness and will it taste like fake sugar in the cider?

Also how much sugar should i add to get a good carbonation?

Again sorry if i'm asking repeating questions. I have looked around but think i've read so many different things that i'm just confused lol

 

[Clint]

Get a hydrometer...you can check when it's done then too.

 

[Drunkula]

how much sugar should i add to get a good carbonation?

Here it comes!

https://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/
Between 8 and 10g per litre for me. I like my non-beer boozes nice n bubbly.

 

[johncrobinson]

Yes you will need to add a bit more sugar to hit your target abv.

Personally i NEVER add water

As others have said you NEED a hydrometer.
This is even more important when making sparkling drinks.

4ltrs cider wont last long.
Your not going to be sipping cider like a fine wine
A 25ltr brewbin would also be a good investment going forward.

But first get that hydrometer.

 

[wizurd1977]

Thanks for that advice all. My question about strength was to get an idea of how much sugar to add at the start so that i had a rough idea for putting it all in and taking a reading :-)

So in the end i've done the following:

4 litres of pure apple juice from tesco from concentrate (around 11.3g sugar per 100ml)
Added in a further 75g of granulated sugar
1 large cup of tea with 2 tea bags stewed for 10 mins
1 tsp of malic acid.

Dissolved the sugar and malic acid in with the tea when it had finished stewing.

Sterilised everything with Chem San, put it all in the demijohn.

Luckily ended up with the liquid at 21 C which should be good for the yeast.

Pitched around 5-6g of Mangrove Jacks Cider yeast.

Also i did take a hydrometer reading once all the stuff was in the demijohn before adding the yeast and the OG was 1.050 so i should be looking at a good 6.5% abv :-)

 

[terrym]

Since any

I don't want a dry cider so i was going to add some fake sugar i.e. canderel when i batch prime. How much do i need to add though to get a medium sweetness and will it taste like fake sugar in the cider?

For me four crushed Lidl Cologran tabs per litre just took the dryness off my one and only TC and yet was not too sweet. If its your first batch and intend to carry on with TCs you could add a different number of sweeteners to batches of bottles to find out which batch you like best, and then you are set up for subsequent ciders.

 

[wizurd1977]

Thanks Terry. Like you said its my first batch and only a small one to see how it goes so i may well sugar each bottle differently and see which i prefer. I don't like it really sweet but just want it to take the dry edge off. Happy to see that only an hour from putting it all in the DJ that its bubbling already.

 

[wizurd1977]

Just an update, took around 7 days for the fermentation to finish, left it an extra 3, so 10 days in total. Then bottled with 6 grams sugar per bottle and half a teaspoon of sweetener per bottle. The bottling was 4 days ago and as i'm inpatient i decided to fridge a bottle earlier on today for 4 hours and try it out. I'm actually quite pleased tastes nice but will obviously get better. Fizz wise there's not much there but is a little and can see some bubbles when it's in the glass. I'm guessing with another week of priming in the warm at around 20C it should be nice and carb'd. Am i right in thinking that i will only get a good effect with the carb'ing if i give the bottles some time in the fridge in order to get the CO2 into the cider? Sweetness, i'd say there is only a little but that's perfect for me to take the edge off any real tartness. Be interesting to see how the remaining 8 bottles mature over time.