apple, elderflower, raspberry and cranberry cider

[abt]

I have been reading this forum for 8 months now and it was when I first started reading it that I made the change from kit beers / ales to turbo ciders. I started off by making a 5-gallon batch of dreadskins cider, which I bottled up and took the majority with me to uni and at uni I made a further 5 gallons of (cant remember name) the peach cider.

I have been keeping an eye out for random things to make cider from and on a trip to aldi when looking for apple juice I came across various different juices.

My new project:
10l apple and elder flower juice.
10l raspberry and cranberry juice
3 pots of honey (1.4kg)
4 tea bags
1 packet of Young’s cider yeast
1kg sugar
(I started with 400g but the original reading on my hydrometer was 1.028 so I added 600g more leaving it at 1.04)

This was a slow one, it took 24 days to go down to 1.00 and 3-5 days to start fermenting (it was quite cold, normally my brews finish after 10-14 days)



I mixed the honey and sugar with juice in a big pan:



I added this to the FV, which had some juice in it already and then added the 2 cups of tea (2 bags in each). After letting it cool i added the yeast.



I then put this with my other brews until the original fermentation was done



Finally I transferred it to a barrel / keg thing and bulk primed with 80g or 100g of sugar, which was mixed in another 2l of juices, 1 of each to top it up. I will be drinking this when I’m back at uni in September (I think it will be sweeter than the other brews I have made).





Let me know if any of you are going to make this, I will write the results here, I think it will end up just under 5% (a change from the usual 6%-8%). Please suggest improvements, I think putting some blended apples in might be a start.

Thanks for reading,
Alex

[phatboytall]

Hi, sorry dumb question, but why do you add tea bags? What do they give the brew?

Looks great, much better than my Uni attempt at lager!

Ed

[Geezah]

Adding strong black tea adds tannin to the turbo brew (i wouldn't call it cider), you could just buy a pot of wine tannin and add a teaspoonfull of that instead.