Latest batch of hard cider tastes and smells like Applesauce?

This is about my 8th 5 gallon batch of hard cider I've completed. I always let them ferment all the way, then back sweeten with 1 can of concentrate to get some apple flavor back. With this one, I pitched in February and racked to a keg in Late May. I tapped it about 2 weeks ago and tasted it after cold crashing for a week or so. It tastes and smells like applesauce! It's the strangest thing. This is the first batch I've done using apple cider from a local grocery store (usually use juice or cider from a local orchard). It's made from local apples, pasteurized, but not preserved with anything. Also, it won't clear. This is the fist batch I've ever had that won't clear after cold crashing. Could that be one reason?

It doesn't taste bad, but it just tastes like your drinking a jar of applesauce without the sweetness. Not quite what I expected from the local cider I found.

Any ideas what could have gone wrong?

The paseurization could have "cooked" the juice and set the pectin a tad. I always uses pectic enzyme at the beginning to help clear the final cider. Maybe it was the apples used, too. Different apples are more aromatic than others.

Be thankful. I could have smelled and tasted like the north end of a south bound mule. That's what I ended up with.

Didn't think about the pasteurization process. That's probably it. I forgot to add the pectic enzyme too, which I usually add to all my batches. I added a bit of strawberry flavoring and acid blend to it to cut down on the applesauce flavor. I think I'll go back to juice for the next batch. It's much more predictable. I have two more 5 gallon batches of this same cider aging, so it will be interesting to see if they turn out the same. They're both still cloudy, so I suspect they will.

Thanks.

I have a batch that I forgot the enzyme, and it was really cloudy. It was also pasteurized cider, but any other time I added the enzyme, it cleared. Anyway, I bottled that batch, and it is kind of sort of attempting to clear in the bottom. Looks like lees, but I know it is just apple solids precipitating out finally.