Just got 5 gallons of free apple concentrate!

[blueberry]

What recipes would work well with apple concentrate? I've been brewing and already made a couple meads. Never tried a cider but I figure since I got free shit I'll ferment it. I'm thinking brown sugar in the recipe but mainly just want to know if you can make good cider from apple concentrate?

[Ozwald]

What recipes would work well with apple concentrate? I've been brewing and already made a couple meads. Never tried a cider but I figure since I got free shit I'll ferment it. I'm thinking brown sugar in the recipe but mainly just want to know if you can make good cider from apple concentrate?

I'd be concerned about all the other stuff in it - preservatives that could mess with/kill your yeast or your fermentation. I've also heard that there is a flavor difference between fresh & concentrate, but since it was free I doubt you're worried about that.

[Bugeater]

This sounds like a time to experiment with different yeasts for a cider. I've done some decent ones with dry Nottingham, Wyeast 1007, and even WLP001. I've even had a few glasses of a really good one fermented with an abbey ale yeast.

It's free stuff so this is the time to figure out what you like and what you don't. You don't want to waste the juice you have to pay for.

Wayne

[spiderwrangler]

If you got it as a concentrate, I'd say that you can forgo using brown sugar to up the OG and just don't dilute it down as much. I like adding in other juices or fruits. Best cider I've made recently had 4.5 lbs of cherries in it last year when they were cheap. Planning on doing a batch with 3lbs of raspberry puree next. I'm a bit more restricted in yeast (wife is Gluten free), but the Danstar dry yeasts seemed to work well, I believe that it was the Nottingham that I used in the cherry cider.