Suma spread instead of juice concentrate?

[HarrowBrew]

Suma have a spread that is 75% concentrated Pear juice and 25% concentrated Apple juice, nothing else added. It's a spread so not liquid.

See e.g. http://www.goodnessdirect.co.uk/cgi-loc ... _300g.html

Does anyone think this could be used for an Apple flavoured Perry TC and if so how would it affect the TC recipe? It's cheaper than the liquid Suma Apple juice concentrate (at £1.65/300g tub).

I guess the spread can be turned into liquid if heated up with water/AJ.

"Over 3kg of pure fruit juice has been concentrated into each 300g tub of Suma Pear & Apple Spread."

 

[oldbloke]

Interesting...
For a 5l batch you'd presumably want 2 tubs (6kg of juice equivalent) for flavour level, but that'd only be a bit over 300g sugar, so you'd need to add some
If you used 4 tubs to get a bit over 600g sugar, for 6%ABV, you'd maybe have too much flavour.
3 tubs for 4.5%ABV might be worth a punt - more flavour than just juice but not too over the top.
I was thinking of popping into out local hippyfood shop to order some AJ concentrate, I might see if they have that stuff.

 

[HarrowBrew]

Thanks Oldbloke. I have 4 tubs of the 300g spread and 1 Suma AJ concentrate bottle (they only had the organic version, so 400ml).

I think the website is wrong re. 3kg juice -- Some more research into the original producers of the stuff gives me the following info: The spread is obtained through cooking the fruit, then pressing the compote to extract the juice (about 88% is juice), then concentrated in an evaporator that will turn 15000 litres of juice into 2000 kg of juice concentrate (approx). So this means in a 300g tub there is a little over 2 litres of pear-apple juice.

Following your suggestion this is what I'm planning:
For DJ#1 -- 3 tub will give me a bit more than 6 litres juice equivalent. Sugar content: 487.8g
For DJ#2 -- the 400ml "makes 3-4 litres", so with the 4th tub I can make this up to 5-6 litres juice equivalent.

 

[oldbloke]

Should be interesting.

Re the AJ concentrate - Get them to order a slab of 6 of the 500ml non-organic.
Suma deliver once or twice weekly, and put it to them that it'll be in and out in hours with no wasted shelf space and no hassle to them, cash, so 10% off. Works for me.

 

[HarrowBrew]

I have three DJs on the go now:

DJ#1 -- 3x pear and apple spread
DJ#2 -- 1 Suma AJ concentrate + 1 pear and apple spread
DJ#3 -- Tesco 100% AJ from concentrate (which I will top up with pomegranate juice)

I used for each : 1 tsp nutrients, 1 tsp tannins, 1 tsp pectolase, 1 heaped tsp of Young's Super Wine Yeast Compound

The DJ#1 and DJ#2 worts are very dark brown with about an inch of dark brown sliced bread resembling krausen on top. Dj#3 is more orange coloured and has a krausen that's quite pale. It's less than 24hrs, nothing furious is happening, just the constant gentle pop from the airlock.

I'm a bit of a butter fingers so the business of turning the thick pear&apple spread into a liquid by heating it in water and then pouring it down the funnel was a bit of a kerfuffle and I lost some of the liquid of DJ#1, so I topped that up with Tesco AJ.

I also pitched the yeast rather high for DJ#1 and DJ#2 but hey ho, it should hopefully still be OK.

Will keep yous posted!

 

[Boatbrewer]

Oldbloke, Talking of ordering stuff in, did you know you can get Suma apple conc in 5 litre containers. Might be cheaper than getting it in 500ml bottles.

 

[oldbloke]

Yes, it works out cheaper, but once opened it's not going to keep more than about 8 weeks even in the fridge (and it takes up a lot of fridge space).
I got one once, when I was doing 8 gallons for a comparative test, but generally I don't make the stuff quite fast enough.
I should really - do fewer but larger batches. Now I pretty much have my preferred base recipe sorted maybe I will.

 

[HarrowBrew]

Oldbloke, do you dilute the Suma to 4L with water or AJ? And then top up with another fruit juice?

During primary fermentation does your TC wort crawl out of the fermenter? Mine is bubbling away nicely but apart from a three quarter inch of krausen bobbing placidly on top there isn't anything spectacular happening.

In fact, none of my brews so far (two 5gallon Ale kits) have been as rambunctious as some of the primary ferments described on this forum. It's been all rather....English?

 

[oldbloke]

More-or-less standard here now is:
500ml Suma, 500ml some other AJ, 500ml somethinglikecranberry, tsp tannin, 2to4tsp sweetener, tsp nutrient, yeast.
Add water to around 3.5l JIC, then top up fully about day 5 or 6.
That way it'll stay in the demi.... I have a coffee wine on now that seemed well behaved so I topped it up - 3 hours later it climbed out. I've washed the lock out 6 times so far.

 

[Boatbrewer]

Yes, it works out cheaper, but once opened it's not going to keep more than about 8 weeks even in the fridge (and it takes up a lot of fridge space).
I got one once, when I was doing 8 gallons for a comparative test, but generally I don't make the stuff quite fast enough.
I should really - do fewer but larger batches. Now I pretty much have my preferred base recipe sorted maybe I will.

Haha, I guess you have to be pretty dedicated to be using that sort of quantity in one go.

 

[HarrowBrew]

Update:

It's been 22 days. The DJs are still somewhat hazy so am thinking I should leave them a few days longer? Given that I topped up each with pomegranate juice should I expect it to become more transparent? I am not going to rack to other DJs, will straight away bottle, so they are now all still sitting on the yeast trub.

DJ#3 (100% Tesco juice) has a solid looking, fairly thin layer of yeast sediment.

Both DJ#1 and DJ#2 (Suma) have a MASSIVE layer of yeast sediment, almost two inches. It's not very solid looking and at the top layer of the more solid-ish yeast sediment they each have about 3/4 inch of "yeast goobers" suspended that move about as soon as the DJ has the slightest movement. I guess it will be a pain to syphon these? Any tips?

I used the same yeast in all three. The only difference I can think of (apart from SUMA versus Tesco juice) is that the DJ#1 and #2 were pretty hot when the yeast was pitched (I had to dissolve the Suma spread in hot water), whereas the DJ#3 started with fridge juice.