Peach Cider SNAFU

I'm trying to make something drinkable out of a peachy SNAFU. I started with 5 gallons of lite peach juice which had a wimpy little OG of 1.004, and dumped it onto a yeast cake from an apple cider I just bottled. The yeast is Wyeast 4766 for cider. Then I cooked up about 4 pounds of white sugar, and pureed 4 cans of peaches in heavy syrup, and dumped it all in. All that got me was 1.034. Fermentation took off right away and went about 5 days before it stopped. I haven't checked the SG, but it's probably down around 1.000 with about 3.5% ABV. I'd like to end up with something sweet (for swmbo) with about 5-7% ABV. I've considered peach extract for flavor and peach schnapps for flavor and alkeehol, and I'm assuming I'll have to pasteurize after I backsweeten, which I do for all my ciders. This batch isn't going so well since there isn't much peach stuff in the stores. I'll take any suggestions I can get. Thanks in advance!

Well I just had a glass of white grape peach wine that I think knocks the socks off any peach wine I have ever had. It had a starting gravity of about 1.08. I'll give you it's recipe and you can see what you like to adapt to your brew:

1 gallon white grape peach wine

4 cans of Welch's 11.5oz frozen white grape peach concentrate
1tbs black tea (earl grey)
1tsp yeast nutrient
1/2tsp yeast energizer
1tsp pectic enzyme
Yeast (lalvin 71b)

So I know the white grape peach Welch's frozen concentrate makes great peach wine. You might think of using it.

That wine sounds good! It sounds like more grape than peach though. I need something peachy to ferment, like concentrate, to strengthen the peach flavor and kick up the ABV. Backsweetening and bottle-carbing are easy. Have you ever seen any kind of frozen peach concentrate? That's what I need!

EDIT: Pardon my drunken rambling... What I meant to say is: So is that concentrate more grapey or more peachy?

The wine is very peachy actually.

Cool. Time to hit the store. Thanks much!

Keith66 said:

That wine sounds good! It sounds like more grape than peach though. I need something peachy to ferment, like concentrate, to strengthen the peach flavor and kick up the ABV. Backsweetening and bottle-carbing are easy. Have you ever seen any kind of frozen peach concentrate? That's what I need!

EDIT: Pardon my drunken rambling... What I meant to say is: So is that concentrate more grapey or more peachy?

Click to expand...

You're not going to get any real flavor off of that white grape juice. White grape juice is used as a sweetener in place of sugar or corn syrup so that the folks in the marketing department can claim that their product is "100% real juice".

Good to know. Maybe I could use it to raise the alcohol. Any suggestions for peach flavor?

Keith66 said:

Good to know. Maybe I could use it to raise the alcohol. Any suggestions for peach flavor?

Click to expand...

Grab some 100% peach concentrate here.... http://www.homewinery.com/cgi-bin/concen.cgi. If you need a pint, which makes one gallon of juice, you have to order by phone.

So after procrastinating for a couple weeks, I took a taste and a reading. 0.994 and still fairly peachy and sweet (somehow), but still only ~4.5%ABV. I dumped 750ml of DeKuyper's peach schnapps (30 proof/15%ABV) and 3 cans of Welch's white grape FJC. Another taste: nice and sweet and very peachy. In the bottle it went. That was 2 days ago. I'll open a bottle tonight and tomorrow, and expect to stove top pasteurize tomorrow night based on carb level. I figured that 750ml (schnapps) is about 1/2 gallon, so 15%ABV divided by 10 (half-gallons in my 5 gallon batch) equals an ABV increase of about 1.5%. If that's correct, I'm up to about 6%. Not bad. Stay tuned...

I can get 4 750ml bottles topped up to the cap with another 1.5 - 2 inches left at the bottom of the gallon jar I use for small batches. Your 1 bottle of schnapps is closer to a quart than a half gallon.


The calculator at the bottom of this page should help. I estimated with that calc an ABV close to 4.98%

got mead dot com blending calc

Crap! You're right. I remember looking up the conversion, and 750ml is 0.189 gal, so about a quart. I used the calculator (Thanks!) and input 5.5 gallons at 4.4% plus 0.2 gallons at 15% and got a result of 4.77%. Whooptie-doo. Oh well, it's swmbo's and she'll like it. She'll just have to drink 2 or 3 to get a buzz. Thanks for your help!

It carbed a little in 2 days, got a gusher in 3, and 2 bombs out of 53 bottles during pasteurization. I knew better but did it anyway. Not enough room to cold crash then all. No injuries, but a couple dents in my brew kettle from the inside. Good times! And swmbo loves it, even with only 4.8% ABV! Mission accomplished!