I tried this last month with a small 2 gallon batch in a Mr. Beer keg, of all things. Since I lacked the necessary ingredients and the LHBS was closed, I ended up with the following:
2 gallons of cheap Apple Juice (Mott's, I think, in 1/2 gallon jugs).
0.8 lbs of table sugar.
Some random ale yeast I had lying around (I forgot which one because I frankly didn't care, I just wanted to see how the fermentation worked on this).
Results: Took almost 2 days before there was any sign of fermentation, but when it fired up, it fired up huge and stayed cloudy and bubbling for almost 10 days. Clarified on its own after 3 weeks. I bottled it after another week to let it settle a bit more, which worked almost too well. I think the juice from concentrate let it clear up almost too much, the end result was almost crystal clear, just a slight hint of apple coloring. Final ABV was approximately 8.5%, which tells me that that was some damn good ale yeast and means I need to find out which one I actually used.
Bottled half of it into two 64 oz growlers for a party that night, the rest into normal bottles with some priming sugar, to see how carbonation works. Haven't tried the latter, but the flat stuff was basically the hit of the party. Very dry taste, with only a hint of apples. It did not taste like cider in the slightest, which surprised me having used both apple juice and table sugar in the darned thing... Everybody was a big fan and all the girls pressured me to make some more. Can't ignore the women folk, eh?
So I went to the store today, got some dextrose and Red Star Champagne yeast, along with 5 gallons of juice. Got 3 gallons of non-concentrate juice, and 2 gallons of juice from concentrate, with the idea here being to mix the two and produce something with slightly more color but not very cloudy, as such. The non-concentrate juice is cloudy in and of itself, the concentrate juice is super clear by comparison.
Should turn out good, I think.
and B) Apfelwein is awesome I had no reason to whip up a batch of this myself!
