Prime a sparkling hard hard cider with apple juice concen...

[Test_Engineer]

I got 2 5 gallon batches of cider in the basement that are ready for bottling. i got 50 Champange bottles ready to go. I want to make them sparkling ciders and was looking at priming options.

I was wondering if I could use an organic frozen apple juice concentrate as my priming sugar???? Anyone done this before? How much to use? I was considering just putting an entire concentrate container in the 5 gal batch and try it. The problem is, I've been bulk aging this cider for a year now, and don't want to mess this up now( a lot of time invested). I'm adding Champagne yeast at bottling, and have thick bottles....

I might just use 5oz of table sugar and call it a day. I was just thinking I might be able to add a bit of apple flavor with the concentrate, but it also might create a whole new host of problems with not being able to push out the funky stuff during bottle conditioning.

[Test_Engineer]

I found a label on the web that said a 12oz can of frozen concentrate contains about 162 g of sugar. That would be about 5.7oz of sugar.....Should yield about 3.4 vols of CO2 in my 4.5 gallon batch. That sounds reasonable for a sparkling cider in Champagne bottles.

[Ozwald]

Have you tried it yet?

I have a couple questions,
#1, When looking up sugar content, did you look up the specific brand that you used, or just concentrate in general?
#2, Did you split the batches at all, to test different methods?
#3, What kind of concentrate did you use?
#4, Well... 4 is more of a thought than a question. 3.4 vols seems a little high IMHO. Why 3.4? Just because that's what one can produced or was it a little more intentional than that? Did you actually get 3.4? (Different types of sugar break down a little differently, dextrose isn't DME, therefore giving different CO2 vols with the same sugar content)

Just curious. Thanks!

[GooberMcNutly]

Also, don't forget that most frozen concentrates are not pasteurized, so you do have to be aware that unless your ABV is already high enough or your FG is low enough you may get some wild yeasts in your bottles and they will work for quite a while.

[yabodie]

Make sure the concentrate is sulfate free otherwise nothing will happen...

[Zietgeist]

I'm about to bottle my 10 gallons. But, I've racked the cider over a few times. Will there be enough yeast left for carbonization? Will I need to add yeast too? And do I need to worry about adding sugar/concentrate and yeast and making bottle bombs?

Zietgeist