Ok, I must be missing something here - why would you want more than 8%
alcohol for apple cider anyway? Most of the commercial ciders I've seen
are around 6%.

EC1118 is often used with ciders, when cold fermented, and that sounds
like what mdginzo is doing, otherwise there is no way the ferment with
that yeast would take 60 days - Joe already covered this.

Pp

wrote:
> mdginzo wrote:
> > I am a beginning winemaker and decided to start with an apple cider.
> >
>
> If you didn't add any sugar, you're not going to get a lot of alcohol.
> My calculations with my current batch of cider are at about 8%, and I
> added rasins, apple juice concentrate, and priming sugar. It was
> pretty low in alcohol when I sampled it before bottling.
>
> >
> > I did the turbo yeast as an experiment and I dont expect to get a good
> > flavor from it. If it is too nasty to drink I figure I can always
> > distill the alcohol out of it (when I go to New Zealand, that is).
> >
> > I used ec-118 yeast in the first jug, btw.
>
> Both yeasts are good choices for high alcohol, but you will have to
> feed it some sugar. A little googleing on wine making should let you
> know what amount of sugar you'll need. You're likely to get a shot
> glass worth of apple jack out of a gallon of distilled cider as you
> have it now -- once you get it to New Zealand.
>
> >
> > Also, as a beginner, is it better to start with making a grape wine as
> > opposed to a country wine, or vice versa?
>
> Either works. If you're going to buy turbo yeast or lavin ec-1118, you
> should have gotten a hydrometer, and measured how much sugar was there.
> It would have come with a table to let you know what amount of alcohol
> to expect.