Turbo Cider

Being able to make drinkable cider from supermarket 'value' apple juice appeals to my tight northern nature, so when I read about Turbo Cider, I thought I'd give it a go.

The recipe is simplicity itself, and it therefore doesn't take long to knock up a batch, hence the name. After reading many articles and forum posts on the subject, I came up with a generic recipe and method as follows;

4l Supermarket Apple Juice (from concentrate is fine, get the clear stuff with no 'bits')
About 85g of normal white sugar
Juice of half a lemon
Cup of really, really strong tea (without milk!)
Half a teaspoon of glycerol
Suitable Yeast

The method is simplicity itself. Sanitise a gallon demijohn.  Make a cup of strong, undrinkable, black tea (5 teabags in a cup of boiling water for 15mins). This gives the brew the tannins required. Dissolve the sugar in about a cup of boiling water. Add all the ingredients into the demijohn (boiling sugar solution last) and pitch the yeast.

Pop the airlock on and leave it somewhere warmish, i.e. 20 degrees or so.

After about a week or so, the cider will start to clear. Check it's FG with a hydrometer, and if it is below 1010, bottle it with a teaspoon of sugar per 500ml bottle. Leave it in the same warm place for 7 days or so, to allow for secondary fermentation, then place it somewhere cool. Mine dropped completely clear within a week, but I left the bottles for 2 weeks before sampling it. I made one batch with Young's cider yeast, and one with Young's champagne yeast. At the bottling stage, the cider yeast batch smelt and tasted OK, whereas the champagne yeast batch didn't appear very promising at all. However, after 3 weeks or so in the bottle, the position has revered, and the cider yeast stuff is nice, whereas the champagne yeast stuff is even better.

Be warned, however, folks ~ this stuff is potent. I've calculated that mine has come out knocking on the door of 8%!