Water vs juice question

[craynet]

Hi
Today I'm starting a new strawberry cider brew.
I mashed the strawberry's and boiled 10l of juice down to 7l.
I was wondering what would happen if I didn't added water and just added sugar / yeast and yeast nutrient ?

 

[wonderbread23]

Hi
I was wondering what would happen if I didn't added water and just added sugar / yeast and yeast nutrient ?

You'd have more alcohol, provided that the fermentation doesn't stop early. Are you following a recipe, or is this your own concoction? I typically wouldn't have boiled the juice.

 

[craynet]

My own concoction.
Boiled it down to get more concentrated flavor
Thx

 

[bja]

Boiling fruit is not done. Search for pectin haze.

 

[TopherM]

Is there any grain in this recipe?

You don't have to mash or boil fruit and juice. You mash grain because it is made up of starches that need to be converted to sugars. Fruit is already made up of sugars - nothing to convert. You boil to properly utilize hops and boil off DMS precursers, but with a fruit cider, no hops/grain = no boil.

For a strawberry cider, you can just put the apple juice and strawberries (sanatized strawberries, of course) in a carboy and dump in yeast. You don't "brew" it.

Cider is a carbonated fruit wine, not a beer. It's made like wine.

Oh, and there's already water in apple juice. You don't need to add additional water unless you are trying for a lower ABV.

 

[Felixio]

You don't have to mash or boil fruit and juice. You mash grain because it is made up of starches that need to be converted to sugars. Fruit is already made up of sugars - nothing to convert.

For a strawberry cider, you can just put the apple juice and strawberries (sanatized strawberries, of course) in a carboy and dump in yeast. You don't "brew" it. It's made more like a wine.

I think he means mashed the berries as in squishing them (almost used crush, but that word is taken too) and not steeping them at a set temp.


As an alternative to sanitizing the berries, you could add 1 Campden Tablet per gallon (this does not replace washing the berries of course), let it rest for 24 hours, then pitch yeast. If you're going to do that, may I suggest adding pectic enzyme at 12 hours?

So the new schedule would go 1 crushed Campden Tablet per gallon, wait 12 hours, 1 tsp Pectic Enzyme per gallon, wait 12 hours, pitch yeast.

 

[harry_the_face]

While boiling the fruit may not be necessary it doesn't hurt anything either, except make it cloudy. I make a raspberry ale that I boil the fruit so that it will give a hazy beer. It looks like a pink Hef. The raspberry flavor is strong and the ladies especially like it.

 

[bja]

While boiling the fruit may not be necessary it doesn't hurt anything either, except make it cloudy. I make a raspberry ale that I boil the fruit so that it will give a hazy beer. It looks like a pink Hef. The raspberry flavor is strong and the ladies especially like it.

That's great if you want the haze. I don't.

 

[Captain Damage]

You can use pectic enzyme to remove the pectin haze. It works very well. You can get it at most LHBSes.