Just wondering if anyone ever used some booster in a cider in place of plain sugar for more abv? Thinking it might keep it from drying down too much...i like ciders a bit more balanced. Yeah, I think its time for a nice easy cider.

Why not? 2 gallons of cider/AJ one pack of booster...it'll still probably need a lot of conditioning time, but you could add a can of AJC at bottling and fridge immediately, and that'd way cut down on conditioning time.

It wouldn't have much carb, but it'd be damn tasty!

Whipped up some cider tonight. I combined 1 gal of apple cider, 1gal of water and 1 pack of booster. Gravity was a little low, mixed in a little plain sugar and split that between two containers making one of them a spiced cider. I added some cinnamon, allspice, coriander and 1 clove to a coffee grinder and added that to one container. Used rehydrated Nottingham. Going to carb it later and let it condition a while.

sounds nice Ken! rough "brew night" of like 20 minutes huh?

Sounds like it'll be a nice, crisp and dry cider, once it's had the proper conditioning time!

I've always done ciders without diluting with water. That alone helps immensely keep the gravity up.

Yeah, that would have made sense and not defeat the purpose. I only added the water when I decided to to make half of this a spiced cider. So I had to up the volume but didnt have more juice. Im already thinkimg of the next cider. This one will probably be thinner and drier like jon mentioned.

You got me thinking on trying something out here Jon. I'm going to bottle these ciders up today, what if I added some plain apple juice or cider at bottling and let them carb a little say a couple days to only a week, then fridge them. The cold would drop the yeast out and no more carbing will take place, but it should give just enough to backsweeten some and carb the cider slightly. Or am I asking for bottle bombs?...I don't experiement much with ciders, I've only brewed a few. If I did try this, should I heat the cider up before adding it to the finished cider at bottling or are there not any worries there?

I wouldn't worry about heating it up, but I'd for sure batch prime and make sure you bottle at least one PET to monitor the carb level.

Other than that, it should work great!

Yeah, thats the plan, add it all to the bottling bucket and bottle on in a PET to monitor the carb. This is what I'll go for.

Thanks.

I sampled a bottle I had in the fridge since this morning. It was carbed since last sunday. I should have put them in the fridge sooner for the batch to be better. It tastes great, has a bit of sweetness left and some apple flavor from the plain juice, but it's a bit spritzy. From being lighter bodied to begin with and then the carb on top of it.

I think it was a good experiment and it did what I thought it would do, just should have pulled them a couple days ago so they would be a bit sweeter with more body and less carb. Now it's more of a sparkling cider than what I had in mind...but still tasty.