What apples to make apple cider

Making Apple Cider in 5 Easy Steps

Making apple cider is one of fall’s pleasures when you have a crop of apples that you don’t know what to do with.

Let’s face it, you can only can so many apples, make so many apple pies, jars of apple butter and eat only so many fresh apples.

You have the choice then of making either fresh apple juice or cider, or both, depending on your taste.

It does matter which variety of apples you use for apple cider making, and the trick is to try and use both sweet and sour varieties to get the right balance and taste.

As a result, many people use about 10% volume of crab apples to add the right amount of tart to their sweet eating apples. There are some varieties such as the Golden Russet apple that is also known as a cider apple as it makes excellent cider, but you can use any other varieties just as successfully.

One of the best heirloom varieties is the Red Streak apple . This is an English heirloom apple from Herefordshire that makes an excellent apple cider, and was considered, in times past, to be the apple to grow for this purpose. Unfortunately, over time, it was replaced by other, newer varieties, and there are very few of these apple trees left, although you can still find them in a few nurseries.

What Apples can you use for Apple Cider?

This is a table showing very old heirloom apples that were used in making apple cider generations ago. Some of these varieties are still available today. You really just have to find yourself a good nursery that specializes in heirloom fruit.

Acid — Sub Acid	Sub-Acid to Mild	Aromatic — Spicy	Astringent	Neutral
Rome Beauty	Baldwin	McIntosh	Crab Apple Varieties and Wild Seedling varieties	Ben Davis
Northwestern Greening	Northern Spy	Golden Delicious	Black Ben
Duchess	Winesap	Roxbury Russet	Stark
Yellow Transparent	Rhode Island Greening	Winter Banana	Gano
Alexander	Golden Russet	White Pearmain
Wolf River	Wealthy
Red Astrachan	Wagener
Maiden Blush	Johnathan
Hubbardston King
Grimes Golden
Canada Red

A good cider can be made either by pressing the sub-acid to mild or aromatic — spicy apples on their own, or by blending these two classes together.

You cannot make good cider by pressing either the sub-acid to mild apples or the astringent apples on their own. However, by adding 5% of the astringent apples to either the sub-acid to mild apples or the aromatic — spicy apples you will come up with another good apple cider blend.

None of the apples in the neutral category will make good apple cider on their own, however, if they are mixed with the category 1 apples making up 25% of the total , then you will have a pleasantly tart cider.

Those apples in the astringent category are the apples that you absolutely need in your cider to give it the taste you are after. These are all high in tannin and flavor, but crab apples should be used wisely and in small quantities so as to end up with the right balance to your apple cider.

Quality of your Apples affects the Quality of your Cider

You will find that many people will make apple cider from windfall apples. However, the quality of your apples definitely affects your final product. Ideally, the apples will be:

ripe, as these have the higher concentrations of sugar in them needed for fermentation. They will also be more flavorsome and have a great smell.

not rotten, or partially rotten. Using rotten fruit will add bad bacteria and molds to your apple cider which you really don’t want, or need. This will cause your cider to spoil very quickly or end up with something that is far inferior to what you could have made from good apples. In fact, your cider will end up tasting very «earthy» rather than the clean, crisp taste you are after.

Preparing your Apples for Making Apple Cider

Hopefully, you have made cider with apples that have been organically grown. However, if you have sprayed your apples, then you need to wash them in an acid bath to get rid of the residue spray. This can be done using hydrochloric acid.

Take 100 gallons of water and mix in 6 quarts of hydrochloric acid in a thin stream, stirring quickly and constantly while adding it to the water.

While you are working with the acid, wear gloves and do this in an area that is well ventilated. Use a wooden container or a non-metal container for this process. Place your apples in the water and leave for 5 minutes.

Equipment needed for Making Apple Cider

You need a grinder or a chopper of some sort to cut the apples into smaller pieces. There are commercial grinders for this purpose. If you are only making apple cider on a small scale, then you can cut them up in a food processor.

After that you will need a press to squeeze out all the juice, and bottles to put your cider in. Presses can be expensive and run to many thousands of dollars. You can, however, buy a water-bladder style press, for a fraction of the price, and works extremely well.

Better still, if you are the handy type, you can make your own press. Here are the free plans for a homemade cider press.

If you are processing small amounts of apples, then you can use a juice extractor.

Sterilization solution. If making organic cider is important to you, then you will want to buy Perasan A . This is an organic-approved sanitizer for cleaning all your equipment, including the bottles.

Cider Making Tips:

Don’t let your apple juice come into contact with iron at any stage. It will cause your cider to go black when exposed to air.

Cider will easily take on foreign flavors, so it is important to make sure that your equipment if thoroughly clean before you start, and any press cloths should be thoroughly boiled and cleaned before you start. Avoid using burlap.

Any storage vessels for your cider must also be thoroughly cleaned using scalded water.

How Many Apples Needed to Make Apple Cider?

How to Make Apple Cider

How to Make Apple Cider: Method 1

There are 2 methods of making apple cider ; one is to just juice the apples up, leave the juice to ferment using wild yeast in the air, without any additional yeast or sugar.

This is a very straightforward recipe but has some drawbacks.

Firstly, you can’t always trust that the wild yeasts will be successful, and secondly, cider made this way doesn’t keep very long and has to be drunk quite quickly.

Some of you may be wondering why, of course, that should be a problem!

How to Make Apple Cider: Method 2

The other method of cider making is a little more scientific and involves the addition of commercial yeast and sugar. This method is more successful and the end product can be kept for a year or more.

That is if you don’t drink all the bottles before then!

Making Apple Cider: Step 1 — Pick your Apples and Leave

Making Apple Cider: Step 2 — Chop Apples

After that you will need to wash your apples, and then chop the apples up into about one inch pieces. Now you can either take a knife and do this, which is quite laborious, especially when you have lots of apples to cut, or you can place them in a wooden box and chop them up with a clean spade. Fill the box so the apples cannot move around too much, but not too full that they will escape when struck with the blade of the spade. Chop until all are in little pieces.

If you are really lucky, you will own crusher that will do the chopping for you. This consists of a stainless steel hopper with teeth at the bottom that will reduce your apples into pieces big enough for the press or juicer.

Whatever method you use to cut up your apples, if you have a lot of apples and there is a possibility that they will be standing long enough to turn brown before they are juiced, then submerge them in water to prevent this from happening.
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Making Apple Cider: Step 3 — Juice your Apples

Now they are ready to go through a cider press. Put them through in batches, using the arm of the press to reduce your apples to pulp, getting every last drop of juice out of your apples. The pulp or ‘cheese’ as it is called that is left behind can be fed to your chickens, goats, pigs or placed on your compost heap . It is best to get rid of the cheese after each batch.

Your juice should flow into a large, sterilized fermentation bin, preferably plastic or stainless steel. If you use any other metal the acid in the juice reacts very badly and you will have some nasty tasting juice and cider. So stick to stainless steel or plastic. Like wine making your equipment must be clean, so it is important to make sure that everything has been well sterilized before you begin.

Making Apple Cider: Step 4 Leave to Ferment

Making Apple Cider: Step 5 Decant

Making Apple Cider from Store Bought Apple Juice

Making Apple Cider from Apple Juice: Step 1

Making Apple Cider from Apple Juice: Step 2 — Add the Yeast

Making Apple Cider from Apple Juice: Step 3 — Leave to Ferment

Making Apple Cider from Apple Juice:Step 4 — Rack and Add Sugar

Making Apple Cider from Apple Juice: Step 5 — Leave and Drink!

VIDEO TO MAKE APPLE CIDER

1. Video Making Cider from Store-Bought Apple Juice

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How to make cider

Cider expert Gabe Cook gives a step-by-step guide creating homemade cider, including tips on selecting apples, extraction and fermentation.

Many people have an apple tree in their garden. It may be one that they have planted themselves for ornamental purposes, or an older tree of an unknown variety. But how often is the fruit of this tree actually put to good use?

Sometimes the incentive isn’t there, especially if the apples are too sharp or bitter to eat. Frequently, however, in our hectic lives, this fruit lies unwanted, rotting on the ground or providing food for the birds and the beasts.

Well, why allow perfectly good fruit go to waste when you can enjoy its wonderful fermented bounty? Cider-making is essentially an easy process that can be done in the comfort of your own home.

You just need a few simple pieces of equipment to turn a wealth of unwanted apples into their ultimate form – glorious cider.

How to make your own cider

Step 1: select the apples

Any apple can be used for making cider, but it must be accepted that nature will determine what the flavour profile will end up like. To make the best cider, you need to ensure that the fruit is ripe.

This can be done with a simple prod test – when you can leave an indentation in the skin with your thumbnail, they’re ready to go.

Importantly, also, the fruit needs to be clean, so as to not introduce spoilage bacteria. You don’t want any mud or bird poo, so wash your apples with a hose pipe or by dunking them into a bucket of water.

Step two: juice extraction

This step of the home cider-making process is probably the most challenging because of the need for some equipment and/or elbow grease. Ideally you will have access to an apple mill – a contraption designed to crush, chop or chew the apples into a pulp.

If you’re making a very small quantity of cider, you can do this by simply halving apples and popping them into a food processor, using the coarsest blade.

This, however, is quite laborious (not to mention messy). The other very simple option is to place the fruit into a bucket, known as a ‘trub’, and pound it with a big pole until it turns into a pulp. Prior to use, the equipment does not need to sterilised, but it should be thoroughly rinsed.

Regardless of your methodology, this pulp now needs to be squeezed, or pressed, in order to separate juice from the solid component, which is not wanted. This is done by applying pressure to the pulp and straining the juice through a suitable medium.

The most basic form of kit for this part of the process is a basket press, which you can buy fairly cheaply and easily. If you’re looking to make hundreds rather than tens of litres, a small pack press would be best.

No matter what press type, the premise is the same: to exert pressure. The squeezed pulp releases the juice, which passes through a cloth, ensuring a most satisfying flow of juice which can be collected in a bucket or jug.

A fantastic range of milling and pressing equipment for all scales and types of hobbyist can be found at vigopresses.co.uk.

Step three: fermentation and maturation

First, choose a fermenting vessel. If you are making a small quantity, a 4.5-litre demijohn is ideal.

For a larger quantity, you may wish to use a 25-litre plastic container. When you use a basket press, you would hope to achieve a 50 per cent juice yield: that is to say that every 10kg of fruit pulped and pressed will equate to 5 litres (9 pints) of juice.

Ensure your container is free of detritus and thoroughly rinsed before pouring in your juice. If you are concerned your container is still not super-fresh, you could use a basic sanitiser for a belt-and-braces approach.

You may choose to measure the sugar content of the juice using a hydrometer – it looks like a thermometer with a bulbous end. Place this into the juice, it bobs around and you read a measurement of where the hydrometer sits in the juice. It”s actually measuring the density of the juice which is a proxy for the sugar content, which you can then extrapolate into a potential alcohol.

Two choices now present themselves – either allow a ‘wild’ fermentation to occur, or add a cultured yeast. A wild fermentation can give extra complexity, but you lose control and it could gain unpleasant characters. A cultured yeast gives ultimate control over the fermentation.

Either way, it is advisable to add a small quantity of sulphur dioxide to the juice, to give it some protection from spoilage bacteria and yeast.

Sulphur dioxide is most easily purchased in the form of Campden tablets. If you want to go ‘wild’, add half a Campden tablet per 5 litres of juice. If you’re adding a cultured yeast, add one Campden tablet per 5 litres of juice, wait 24 hours, then add the yeast.

Both Campden tablets, hydrometers and a range of cultured yeast are easily available from all good home brew shops.

Place the fermentation vessel into a cool/mild environment with little temperature fluctuation (between 12–15C will be perfect). Any colder, and you will get a longer, slower fermentation, but any higher, and the fermentation will run away too quickly, potentially increasing the likelihood of off flavours.

With a wild fermentation, depending on the temperature, it might be a few days before the cider shows visible signs of fermentation.

If in any doubt, add a cultured yeast to the juice. Under normal circumstances, within 48 hours of adding the yeast, you will start to see the signs of fermentation, notably the production of bubbles. This is carbon dioxide – the primary by-product of the cider-making process.

Once the fermentation has started, put a lid on the fermentation vessel, but ensure you place an airlock on the top.

This ‘bubbler’ is a small plastic pot which you put water into – this will allow the carbon dioxide to escape, but keep the air out.

Fermentation will take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks if you have used a cultured yeast, but could take several months if you have allowed it to go ‘wild’, again depending on the temperature.

When is cider fermentation complete?

Fermentation will have finished when you notice that the liquid clears, bubbling ceases and a heavy sediment deposit forms at the bottom of the vessel.

This sediment is known as ‘lees’ and is formed from the dead yeast. You want to remove the cider from the lees: do so by siphoning the clear, freshly fermented liquid into another clean container, a process known as ‘racking’.

Ensure that the container is full to the brim, topping up with a bit of water if necessary. Then, screw the lid down nice and tight.

The cider will now sit in this maturation container for as long as it takes to soften and become palatable, which could be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, depending upon the type of fruit that has been used.

You have to make this decision yourself. You can drink the cider from this container and it will be still and dry, but if you choose to do so, you must consume it within a few days (not always an issue, granted!).

The reason for this haste is that by taking out a quantity of cider, you allow air, and all its associated spoilage organisms, to enter.

Step four: bottling

The preferable option is to bottle the cider. First, however, it is absolutely crucial to ensure that no sugar remains. If fermentable sugar is present when bottled, the bottle could explode under the pressure.

You can check no sugar remains by using a hydrometer. If the reading on the hydrometer is 1.000, then you’re good to go.

If the hydrometer reading is greater than 1.000, then you still have a little bit of sugar left to ferment. You can encourage the final portion of fermentation by putting the cider in a warm place (above 20C).

Take the dry, still cider and pour it into standard 500ml (1-pint) beer bottles with the addition of one level teaspoon of granulated sugar to each. Ensure that the bottles are rinsed clean, ideally using a mild sanitiser first.

Using an inexpensive and easily purchased capping tool, put crown caps on the bottles. The yeast that is still within the cider will enable a secondary fermentation of this newly added sugar in the bottle, producing a touch more alcohol, but, crucially, producing carbon dioxide too.

This gets trapped in the bottle and will dissolve into the cider, creating a natural sparkle and also preserving the cider. The bottles should be stored somewhere cool (around 12C) to allow a gradual but full secondary in-bottle fermentation.

Step five: drinking

The most important and enjoyable step of all! The cider could stay at its prime for at least a couple of years if the carbon dioxide has successfully filled all of the headspace in the bottle.

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