Turbo Cider: How to Make Cider from Apple Juice at Home
Quick answer: Turbo cider is cider made from shop-bought apple juice. Pour 100% apple juice with no preservatives into a sanitised demijohn or fermenter, add 1 tsp of yeast nutrient per gallon and a cider or wine yeast, fit an airlock and ferment at around 18–22°C. It's usually finished in 1–2 weeks. Sugar is optional. Bottle with a little priming sugar for a sparkling cider, and it's ready to drink about 3–4 weeks after you started.
If you've never brewed before, turbo cider is a great first project. There's no pressing, no boiling and very little equipment. You can make a single gallon in a demijohn or a full batch in a fermenter.
Choosing your apple juice
- 100% apple juice only. Cloudy or clear, from concentrate or pressed, all work. Pressed cloudy juice usually gives more flavour.
- No preservatives. Check the label for potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate or sulphites. They're there to stop yeast growing, so they'll stop your cider too. Added vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is fine.
- Try a blend. Mixing two or three different juices often gives a more interesting cider than a single one.
What you'll need
- Apple juice: 4.5 litres for a gallon, or about 23 litres for a full batch
- Yeast: a cider yeast such as Mangrove Jack's M02 or Gervin GV13, or Lalvin EC-1118 for a very dry cider
- 1 tsp yeast nutrient per gallon
- Sugar (optional) and priming sugar or carbonation drops for fizz
- A demijohn with a bung and airlock, or a 25-litre fermenter for bigger batches
- A hydrometer, a syphon and bottles that can hold pressure
- VWP to clean (rinse it off) and ChemSan to sanitise (no rinse)
Do you need to add sugar?
No. Apple juice already contains enough sugar to make a cider of roughly 5–6%. Most supermarket juice reads somewhere around 1.045–1.050 on a hydrometer. Adding sugar makes it stronger, but too much gives a thin, hot-tasting cider, so go easy. Our simple apple cider recipe adds just 100 g to a gallon. As a guide, 1 kg of sugar raises the gravity of a gallon by about 46 points (0.046), so 100 g adds about 4–5 points.
Sanitising: the step that matters most
Most failed ciders come down to hygiene. Clean everything that will touch the juice, rinse well, then sanitise with ChemSan at 2 ml per litre and drain. Don't rinse after sanitising. Our guide to cleaning vs sanitising explains the difference.
Step by step
- Sanitise the demijohn or fermenter, funnel, bung and airlock.
- Add the juice, leaving some headspace, because the first few days can foam.
- Take a reading with your hydrometer and write it down. If you're adding sugar, dissolve it in a little warm juice first, then stir it in.
- Add the nutrient and yeast. Stir in the yeast nutrient, then add the yeast as the sachet directs.
- Fit the airlock and leave the cider somewhere steady, ideally 18–22°C. A slightly cooler spot ferments more slowly but often gives a cleaner, fruitier result.
- Check it's finished. When the bubbling has almost stopped, take readings 2 days apart. If they match, usually at about 1.000 or below, it's done.
- Rack and clear. Syphon the cider off the sediment into a clean vessel and leave it somewhere cool for about a week to clear.
- Bottle it still, or prime it for a sparkling cider (see below).
Timeline
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| Day 1 | Juice, nutrient and yeast in, airlock on |
| Days 2–10 | Active fermentation. Most turbo ciders finish within 1–2 weeks |
| Around day 14 | Check the gravity is steady, then rack off the sediment |
| Week 3 | Cider clears. Bottle it, still or primed |
| Weeks 4–5 | Sparkling cider has carbonated. Chill and drink |
Priming and carbonation
To make sparkling cider, add a small amount of sugar to each bottle so the remaining yeast produces CO2. Our simple cider recipe uses 1 tsp of sugar per 500 ml bottle, or you can use carbonation drops as the pack directs. Our priming sugar calculator works out the exact amount for the fizz you want.
- Only prime a finished cider. If it's still fermenting, the extra sugar can over-pressurise the bottles.
- Use bottles made for pressure, such as PET beer bottles or swing-tops. Squeezing a PET bottle tells you when it's carbonated.
- Condition at room temperature for 1–2 weeks, then chill before drinking.
Making it sweeter
Fully fermented cider is dry. Don't add ordinary sugar to sweeten a bottled cider, as it will keep fermenting. For a sweeter sparkling cider, use a non-fermentable sweetener such as lactose. For a sweet still cider, stabilise first with potassium sorbate and a Campden tablet, then sweeten to taste. Stabilised cider won't carbonate in the bottle.
Common problems
- It won't start. Check the juice label for preservatives, and make sure the cider isn't too cold. Give it a couple of days before you worry: some yeasts take a little while to get going.
- It smells of eggs. A sulphur smell during fermentation is fairly common with cider and usually fades. Apple juice is low in the nutrients yeast needs, which is why yeast nutrient helps.
- It tastes thin or sharp. Young cider often does. Give it a few more weeks, and next time try pressed cloudy juice or less added sugar.
- It's cloudy. A week somewhere cold usually helps. A little haze is harmless.
Want to go further?
Once you've made a turbo cider, try fresh juice in autumn with our harvest cider guide, or read our complete guide to making cider at home. If you'd prefer everything in one box, browse our cider making kits.