Carbonating With Apple Juice Concentrate

[jakis]

Is there any need to boil the apple juice concentrate or anything when carbonating with it? Or just put it in the bottling bucket right from the can?

 

[Vegetarisk]

Are you talking about frozen concentrate? I would think if it's pasteurized and has been frozen, there shouldn't be anything nasty hanging about, but I would at least boil the water before adding it to the concentrate.

 

[phug]

I prime with apple juice concentrate and just put it straight into the bottling bucket. I will sometimes sanitize the outside of the can before opening it but the preparation process is more sanitary than you would think. I even keep leftover thawed concentrate at near freezing in a sanitized mason jar when I don't use the whole can and it will keep for a couple of months


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[drainbamage]

Any store-bought apple juice should already be pasteurized. If you're adding that directly to the beer at bottling, you should be good. If adding water separately (like Vegetarisk said), you'll want to boil that to sanitize.

 

[Suicid]

How you guys are calculating amount of concentrate to use for priming?
I'm not sure label always has such information... Am I wrong and should it just be read?

 

[phug]

I used a priming calculator to give me an idea of how many grams of sugar I would need, then I used the nutritional label for the ajc to figure out how many grams in the entire can, the figured out how many ml of the total I would need to get the right number of grams of sugar. After I did that math to get in the ballpark I started bumping up the amount by 5 ml per gallon to see the carb I wanted. Right now my standard is 55 ml of ajc from a can that has 283 ml to start with. Since your can size and sugar content may vary that's a good place to start.


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[kennyp1114]

I prime with apple juice concentrate and just put it straight into the bottling bucket. I will sometimes sanitize the outside of the can before opening it but the preparation process is more sanitary than you would think. I even keep leftover thawed concentrate at near freezing in a sanitized mason jar when I don't use the whole can and it will keep for a couple of months


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

How long after adding the concentrate do you leave in bottling bucket?

 

[phug]

I add it to the bottling bucket, and then rack on top of it while I sanitize my bottles and caps. Once I'm done sanitizing, I go right ahead and bottle.

 

[PDevlin75]

I used a priming calculator to give me an idea of how many grams of sugar I would need, then I used the nutritional label for the ajc to figure out how many grams in the entire can, the figured out how many ml of the total I would need to get the right number of grams of sugar. After I did that math to get in the ballpark I started bumping up the amount by 5 ml per gallon to see the carb I wanted. Right now my standard is 55 ml of ajc from a can that has 283 ml to start with. Since your can size and sugar content may vary that's a good place to start.

That's brilliant! I've been pondering a recipe lately, and wondered how to go about possibly adding a bit of Apple flavor to it. I would never have thought of this! Thanks for the great idea!

What kind of beer do you typically carb with ajc for? And how pronounced is the Apple in your beer? I'm looking to get a decent flavor, without it dominating the beer.

-Pete

 

[phug]

I generally use AJC to carb either Cider, or Graff, so I'm not sure if it will go very far towards adding noticeable apple flavour to your beer.

I also want to try making an apple beer at some point, but don't have that planned out.

 

[BigFloyd]

I generally use AJC to carb either Cider, or Graff, so I'm not sure if it will go very far towards adding noticeable apple flavour to your beer.

I also want to try making an apple beer at some point, but don't have that planned out.

Using that little amount of AJ concentrate to prime is unlikely to add any significant flavor to your beer or cider. The same holds true for honey, agave nectar and similar sweet substances. Better to just go with easily weighed table or corn sugar for precise and consistent carbonation.

BTW, I love using a few cans of frozen AJ concentrate (along with other stuff) to back-sweeten my ciders, but only after I've cold-crashed for a week, racked it off the yeast and hit it with 2.5 tsp of potassium sorbate. The only downside is that you cannot bottle carb, but uncarbonated cider is still good stuff.