Turbo Cider – What Is It?

Not to be confused with ‘cheap’ shop bought items in large plastic bottles drunk on a ‘park bench’ when under age (as the name may suggest) lol!…

Turbo Cider, or ‘Hard Cider’ for our friends ‘across the pond’, is so called because of the speed it takes to make.  It is extremely quick and very cheap to do!

It is all about not spending hours of time shredding/chopping apples (and/or other fruits) ready to press.  You work with the fruit juices readily available in your local shop/supermarket.

Given persistence and experimentation there are some brilliant ciders with bags of flavour out there, just waiting for you to enjoy!  They are truly fantastic.

How Do I Make It & How Easy Is It?

The basic principle is to use cheap shop or supermarket bought juice FROM CONCENTRATE that doesn’t come with any ‘nasty’ additives that can effect your brew.  Many artificial sweeteners kill the yeast before you even get started.  You have to look at the back ingredients label and avoid them.  You could, in truth, boil these out; however for the sake of simplicity and getting started, we suggest just avoiding them all together in the outset.

Turbo Cider can be as simple as shop bought apple juice carton, a yeast of choice and the most basic equipment out there.

There are of course things that can be added to improve the quality of what you are making once you get going.  ‘Tannins’ for example can be bought from brew shops.  Even a cup of strong ‘Yorkshire Tea’ will achieve this!  They will alter the profile and aging of what you are making.  Again, for now, let’s keep it simple!

Sweet, Medium & Dry Cider

When making Turbo Cider you will probably start out by fermenting all the sugar in your juice.  That is to say you will let it ferment until the bubbles stop coming through the air lock and/or the hydrometer shows no change.  This will produce a very very dry cider with no residual sweetness at all.  Many people like dry cider, however we are talking ‘pallet-stripingly’ dry and a cider that you may have to ‘scrape off your gums’ so to speak lol.

One way to tackle this is to ‘Back Sweeten’.  This involves adding a non fermentable sugar, such as Stavia or brewshop bought sweeteners that you add later to bring the sweetness up to taste after fermentation.  You could also add other sweeteners such as commercial cordials and/or syrups.  If non-fermentable the yeast still left in your brew will not convert this to alcohol and the sweetness is retained.

The other way is to stop the fermentation early and leave some of the sugar in the brew.  There are things like ‘Fermentation Stopper‘ to do this.

If this sounds like it is of interest and you would like to learn more…  why not join our Facebook Community Turbo Cider UK and see what can be achieved?  There are literally thousands of people on there.  It is great fun!

Jamie Nixon – Turbo Cider UK – Facebook Group Admin (Last Updated: 27th October, 2022)