What did I make? (Or do wrong)

This is more than likely make some of you cringe in your seat, please bare with me.

I started out this trying to make a low alcoholic type drink with apples. What I had in mind was cider of some sort. Here is what I did with materials list and numerical order of my process.

Materials:
Quart Jars (2)
Apples (3)
Sugar (About 2.5 cups/jar)
Bakers yeast (2 packs throughout the process)

Process
1. Clean jars (Steamed them out with hot water)
2. 3 Red delicious apples cut with apple corer
3. Sugar in jars with apples in the mix

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Right here is where I stopped the first time to let the apples ferment. I did not add any water or yeast to this and I let this set for 6 weeks. The apples immediately start to ferment in the jar after about a day. >> Fast forward 6 weeks I take and transfer the Syrup-like substance to a new jar.
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4. Added water and yeast to the syrup with more sugar
5. Fermented for 2 days ( I thought it was done )
6. Switched back to another clean jar and it didnt have anything other than a sweet smell.
7. Added more water and yeast and waited a day. The yeast fed and thats about it.

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It is in my freezer right now because I was wondering if it had any alcohol in it at all. To my luck, it has none, or maybe it is because it is in my deep freezer.
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What did I do wrong? I dont know the SG of it, mainly because I have none of those tools. Sorry if this seems long a drawn out. Thanks in advance for the help!

Ranger04 said:

What did I do wrong? I dont know the SG of it, mainly because I have none of those tools. Sorry if this seems long a drawn out. Thanks in advance for the help!

Click to expand...

will... not... cringe...

Sounds like a fine science experiment.

2C sugar in 1 qt puts the OG in the 40s, which is a bit light. If the must is still sweet, then the yeast didn't convert the sugar. Without a hydrometer to measure specific gravity, it's difficult to tell what the yeast have been doing. Highly recommended first piece of test gear. Inexpensive.

No mention of an airlock - you need to let the CO2 out, but not let O2 in. Otherwise the yeast can't get rid of their waste products (CO2 and ethanol) and eventually give up. Osmotic pressure. If you let O2 in, you get vinegar.

I have used small amounts of cane sugar in Belgian Trippel, but it doesn't help the long-term health of the yeast - revs them up, but they don't go anywhere - kind of like kids drinking too much soda and getting totally wired. You may need more fruit to keep the rest of the yeast machinery healthy.

I'm actually getting a 1.196 OG after the water was added. (2.5c sugar at 7oz per cup with total volume of .25 gal) which would kill your yeast more or less.

Fermenting just table sugar will, I read, lead to an absolutely sinister concoction that you won't want to drink.

I highly doubt the apples fermented in the beginning, that sounds like more of a controlled rot with the sugar as a preservative.

Sugar can be used to increase gravity in cider but you need to get juice from a lot more apples to get actual cider. To prevent heavy racking losses, you'd want to separate the juice from the pulp (usually using a cider press). Will also need to add pectic enzyme on this. Alternately, you could use store bought juice if it has no preservatives.

Think about doing at least gallon batches, also, because the work and time involved is a lot for just one quart.

Good luck!

Hey thanks for both the replies! So what I made was some nasty syrup? That sounds about what it smelled and looked like.

Apple juice with no preservatives would work? Awesome info. Thanks to the both of you. Sorry to make you cringe lol.