Maiden turbo cider experiment

[Drzava]

I have 2 5L batches of turbo cider to bottle - definitely going to add xylitol (~20g per bottle) and green apple flavouring (start at 0.5ml per 5L and adjust upward if required) to them. Will also check re other flavourings in that range - cheery or raspberry & lime cider anyone?

Bottled these at the weekend. Two batches: one with Lidl cloudy apple juice, one with conc apple juice and some grape juice. Rather surprised that the cloudy juice cider has carbed well since then, and has a good sediment of yeast, yet the other one has hardly carbed at all, and has no sediment. Hopefully it'll catch up!

Two potential points of interest to others:
1. Lidl's cloudy apple juice has dropped from 10.5% sugar to 9% (makes my cloudy juice carbing slightly out, but hey).
2. Aldi Saint Etienne cider bottles are much easier to cap than Franziskaner bottles!

[Drzava]

Batch 2:
~4.2L cloudy apple juice added straight to lees from first batch, plus 1/2 tsp nutrient.
OG 1.050.
Doing this batch as the first is VERY cloudy. Noticed when topping up first batch with juice after the first week that the apple juice cartons have a lot of sediment at the bottom if let sit (I had shaken the first four up before pouring). So this time I let the last 50ml or so in the carton after letting them sit overnight. Obviously the juice is still cloudy, but nearly as much as first time.

Haven't tried this in a couple of weeks, but it had quite a mild taste, with not much hint of apple.

Batch 3:
3.5L clear Lidl 'from concentrate' apple plus 1L red grape juice NFC, and 1/2 tsp nutrient.
OG 1.050.
Using plain juice from concentrate seems to result in a mediocre cider - maybe a good dash of grape juice will fill it out? We'll see!

Surprisingly, given I used concentrate juice, this is actually tastier than the NFC cloudy juice. Pours orange / red and is quite sweet. Pours with a surprisingly foamy head, which soon disappears.