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“As a home brewer who brews both beer and cider, I found this fascinating.”

Have you (or anyone else on this ping list) posted links to good recipes or recipes of your own for making hard cider at home? I’d be interested in reading them and giving one of them a try.

Ping Knews_hound above. He has some excellent documentation relating to home brew techniques and recipes.

Cider is extremely easy to make.

1 - Get the best, freshest juice you can find. Fresh pressed is preferable. Since it is 99% of the finished product, its quality is key. If you cannot get fresh pressed you can use store bought but the quality will suffer.

2 - We want the cider to ferment with the yeast of our choosing, not what randomly appears in it. I pretreat with potassium metabisulfate...also known as k-meta or campden tablets. It will kill off any of the wild yeast. I add this the day before I intend to pitch the yeast.

3 - If you dont care if it is clear, skip to step 4. If you do want it to be as clear as possible, then you need to add some pectic enzyme to eliminate pectin haze. I add 1 tablespoon per 5 gallons and let it sit overnight. It will cause the pectin to drop out.

4 - 24 hours after adding the Campden tabs, rack off the juice, being careful to leave the trub in the bottom. Add your yeast and cover with an airlock or other cover. I have had good luck with nearly any quality ale yeast. SA05, SA04, WLP001 or WLP1028 have all made excellent cider.

5 - Wait. Patience is key. It ferments somewhat slowly compared to beer. figure 2 - 3 weeks to finish.

6 - It will finish extremely low, 1.005 is not uncommon. It will be extremely dry at this point. If you like it dry, Transfer to a second container, prime with sugar and bottle. You are done. If you want it a little sweeter, I backsweeten with apple juice concentrate. It adds more apple flavor and supplies the sugar it needs. I use 2 cans per 5 gallons or more, depending on how sweet I want it. I transfer it to a second container, add the concentrate and keg or bottle.

7 - Let it sit at or near room temps. It will restart fermentation with the sugar or concentrate you added. If you added sugar it will be ready to drink in 2 - 3 weeks. If you added concentrate, watch it like a hawk after a week. Pop a bottle daily until it is at the desired carbonation. Once there, refrigerate ASAP and keep it cold. If you do not, it will continue to ferment, making bottle bombs.

8 - Enjoy. I prefer mine ice cold on a hot day.

Questions?

Feel free to ask.

Cheers,

knewshound

Have you (or anyone else on this ping list) posted links to good recipes or recipes of your own for making hard cider at home?

i like my cider a bit stronger, up to around 10% or so.

overview: take one gallon of good cider, add sugar to bring the specific gravity (measured with one of these) up just shy of 1.08, add yeast and let sit (depending on temperature--my house is 76 degrees) for about a week.

details:
you will need;

-one gallon glass jug
-one gallon of cider
(you can get 'tree of life' apple juice in a glass gallon jug at nature's pantry for $10 or so. depending on season, etc there may be cheaper options)

-a rubber plug with a hole (Link)
-bubbler/airlock
-sugar - a couple cups worth, give or take. i dissolve in equal amount of water and boil for a few minutes. white sugar works just fine for primary fermenting.

-yeast (i use dry wine or champagne yeast)
-i use a little DAP also
-Sanitizer (5 star Star San is very convenient to use, but there are other options out there)

NOTE: sanitizing is the most important factor in making booze. if you dont do this right, you wont get good booze. contamination by other yeasts/bacterias/molds is no good. anything that touches or might touch your booze should be sanitized. this is also why i boil the sugar before it goes in.

glass gallon jugs vary in the size of their opening, so you may need to take the jug to your local homebrew place to fit a plug, or get a few different size plugs. they are cheap. take a little of the juice out of the jug, add your (cooled) dissolved sugar and yeast, plug it and put your airlock in it. the airlock should have either vodka or Star San and water. wait a week or so, or until it almost stops bubbling. taste, check specific gravity (to determine if its done and to calculate alcohol content), and back sweeten with some sugar if desired.
you can experiment with different sweeteners to back-sweeten, such as brown sugar, moleasses, other fruit juice, etc.

i siphon my finished cider into two liter bottles with about 3/4 cup of sugar to sweeten a little and let it sit out for a few days until the bottle gets hard to carbonate. then put in the fridge.

one other thing i forgot to mention, is make sure whatever cider/juice you use has no preservatives other than vitamin c/ascorbic acid