I am new to home brewing, and have started simply because I am overseas and had limits on being able to get good beer. Made about 7 batches of beer so far, and I want to make my first cider. I am going to make a batch of this for Halloween. I have all of the necessary ingredients EXCEPT apple juice concentrate. Should I abandon the attempt? Should I use apple juice instead of concentrate?
This question was asked before by two different people, but no answer. The australian guy couldn't find concentrate, and the pressed cider guy said he was going to try to back-sweeten with cider instead of concentrate but no update.
I have decided to try to convert the recipe using the reduced "3 cans of concentrate is better than the original 5". Online it appears that a 12 once can of concentrate makes 48 ounces of juice. The recipe conversion below would reduce my original fermented liquid by 144 oz (the volume of 3 cans of concentrate when not concentrated) - Fermenting 4.13 gallons instead of 5.25, then adding in the non-conenrated juice (3 12 oz cans = 144 oz juice) to reach the 5 gallons during the phase where you would add the concentrate and caramel.
In theory the only penalty would be that an estimated 9.8% alcohol level would be reduced to 7.7%. It may also be slightly watered down due to the 108 oz of additional water from using non-concetrated juice... don't know. We'll see.
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Ok, math and chemistry here we go... (Juice only, no concentrate conversion recipe)
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Ingredients Part 1:
528 oz (4.13 gallons) of 100% apple juice, pasteurized.
2 lbs Dextrose
Nottingham yeast.
---Primary for 12-14 days to taste----
Ingredients, Part 2
144 oz. 100% apple juice, pasteurized (chilled in refrigerator)
12 oz. Caramel Syrup
Recipe for Caramel Syrup:
2 cups of water
2 cups of light brown sugar
2 tsp. ground cinnamon (Instead of this, I put a few cinnamon sticks in my 144 oz of juice when pasteurizing)
Combine in a saucepan and bring to a boil. At boil, reduce heat and simmer for about 5 minutes (until volume is reduced to half). Combine with chilled 144 oz of juice to bring temp down while mixing syrup.
----Mix solution and bottle----
*Check bottles every 12 hours for carbonation.
*I will attempt the "oven pasteurization method" mentioned in this thread (start at room temp then increase to 150 degrees for 20 minutes, then allow to cool)
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Ok... now I have 3 days until my fermenter is open. Somebody tell me why this wouldn't work, so i don't waste my time.
