Rural Smallholdings Magazine » Home Brewing

Smallholding Projects – Making Pear Cider

Rural Smallholdings — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:42:01 +0000

MAKING PEAR CIDER

Replacing Apples with Pears is All it Takes

Extracting the juice from the pears is the first step to making pear cider, AKA perry. In fact, if you know how to extract the juice from apples, you are already on your way to making pear cider. The only major difference between pears and apples is the need to keep a special watch out for rotting fruit. Most varieties of pears can be turned into juice right off the tree, unless they are picked green.

For the best pear cider, you may want to add a few tart apples into the mix. Pears tend to be very sweet, but often boring, so a little twist of apple can add character to the perry.

You will need the same equipment to make pear cider that you need for making apple cider.

1 hydrometer
1 Campden tablet for every 4 litres of juice
1 25-litre Carboy, preferably glass
20 litres fresh pear juice
1 Rubber stopper and fermentation lock
5 millilitres cider, wine or champagne yeast for every 5 litres of juice

The sugar content of the pear juice is essential to success. Use the hydrometer to check the concentration. If the reading is over 1070, you have enough sugar to ferment and preserve the pear cider. If the reading is lower, you will need to add a sugar syrup or honey. If you use honey, use a mild honey, such as orange blossom or clover honey or the pear’s subtle flavour will be overwhelmed. Stir the syrup into the juice (if needed) and then pour into the carboy using a funnel.

Add 5 Campden tablets to the carboy and seal. It will take at least two hours for the Campden tablets to kill the wild yeasts the fruit picked up from the air. These renegade yeasts can throw off the fermentation process.

Wait at least two hours, overnight if temperatures are cool, before you prepare the yeast mixture. You want all of the action from the Campden tablets to be over before you add the wine or champagne yeast. Prepare the yeast mixture by warming up a 500 ml. of pear juice until it is 38 – 40°C. Any warmer, and you will kill the yeast. Stir in the yeast. When the yeast begins to bubble, pour the mixture into the carboy. Stir with a sterile rod. Place the rubber stopper and fermentation lock on. Now place your pear cider in a warm place, but not over 40°C. Wrap the bottle with a blanket to protect it from cold drafts and temperature fluctuations.

Yeast is very sensitive to temperature. At 10°C, the yeast will grow very slowly. At 20°C the yeast will grow twice as fast. The yeast grows twice as fast again when it reaches 30°C. Depending on the temperature of the room you store the carboy in, it can take anywhere from two to four weeks for the pear cider to ferment completely.

When the hydrometer says that the specific gravity of the pear cider has reached 1005, your perry has enough alcohol to preserve it. Stop fermentation by adding another five Campden tablets to kill off any remaining yeast.

Siphon the perry into another sterile carboy. Cover tightly, and let the cider stand for several days to allow any additional sediments to settle out. Rack off into bottles and seal.

Now, isn’t that simple? The key is cleanliness throughout the entire perry cider making process. Make sure the carboy is sterile. Make sure the bottles that you decant the perry into are sterile. And of course, you need to be patient. Pear cider takes time to reach its prime.

Click on the links below for more info on learning to make your own apple cider:

A Step by Step Photo Guide to Apple Juicing and Cider Making

Presses and Crushers

A Guide to All Things Cider at Old Scrump’s Cider House

How to Make Cider – A Complete Guide

How to Make Cider – A Video Guide

Still looking for Your Smallholding? Visit Greenshifters for the latest smallholdings for sale, rent and exchange.

Article by Rural Smallholdings Magazine

Smallholding Projects – Making Apple Cider – Part 2

Rural Smallholdings — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:29:45 +0000

Fermenting the Juice into Cider

While the equipment has changed over the years, with glass carboys and plastic kegs replacing the oak kegs of the past, the process of making cider has changed very little over the last 400 years. Until beer superseded it in popularity, fresh apple cider and hard cider (as it is called in the United States) was the drink of choice in the late 1800s in that country.

Once you have extracted the juice from your apples (See Making Apple Cider—Extracting the Juice), you are ready to collect the equipment to begin making your cider. These items can be found at beer and wine-making suppliers.

1 hydrometer
1 Campden tablet for every 4 litres of juice
1 25-litre Carboy, preferably glass
20 litres fresh apple juice
1 Rubber stopper and fermentation lock
5 millilitres cider, wine or champagne yeast for every 5 litres of juice

Before you do anything else, you need to know how much sugar is in the apple juice. If there isn’t enough sugar, the cider won’t keep after it is bottled. That is what the hydrometer is for. It should give you a reading of 1070 or higher. If it is lower than this, add apple juice concentrate or sugar syrup until the reading is high enough (the apple juice concentrate enhances the apple flavour instead of diluting it.

Now, pour 20 litres of fresh apple juice into the carboy, making sure to not get any sediment. Add 5 Campden tablets. Seal the mouth of the carboy. Wait at least two hours. This will kill any wild yeast that could throw off the fermentation process. If the weather is cool, wait overnight. You don’t want to rush at this stage, because all the Campden tablet must be deactivated before you add the wine or champagne yeast.

Now warm up a 500 millilitres of apple juice until it is 38 – 40°C. Add the yeast and stir gently. When the yeast begins to bubble, pour it into the carboy. Stir with a sterile rod. Place the rubber stopper and fermentation lock on. Now place your cider where it will stay warm. Wrapping the carboy with a blanket will protect the bottle from cold drafts.

It’s important to remember that temperature is a very important factor for yeast growth. At 5°C the yeast will hardly grow at all. At 10°C the yeast will do a little better. At 20°C the yeast will grow twice as fast. And at 30°C, the yeast will grow twice as fast as it did at 20°C. Depending on the temperature of the room you store the carboy in, it can take anywhere from two to four weeks for the cider to ferment completely and another two weeks for the yeast to settle to the bottom of the carboy.

When the hydrometer says that the specific gravity of the cider has reached 1005, your cider is finished. The best way to stop fermentation is to add another five Campden tablets. This will kill off any remaining yeast. Rack off the cider into another sterile carboy. Let the cider stand for several days, tightly covered. Rack off into bottles and seal. If you use glass, watch to make sure that the cider doesn’t started fermenting again. If it does, vent the bottles by opening the lids.

It’s all really quite simple. The key is cleanliness throughout the entire process. Make sure the carboy is sterile. Make sure the bottles that you decant the cider into are sterile.

And of course, you need to be patient. Cider takes time.

Click on the links below for more info on learning to make your own apple cider:

A Step by Step Photo Guide to Apple Juicing and Cider Making

Apple Presses and Crushers

A Simple Guide to Making Cider

How to Make Cider.com

How to Make Cider – A Video Guide

Still looking for Your Smallholding? Visit Greenshifters for the latest smallholdings for sale, rent and exchange.

Article by Rural Smallholdings Magazine

Smallholding Projects – Making Apple Cider

Rural Smallholdings — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:58:28 +0000

Apple Cider — Extracting the Juice

Where Tradition Meets New Methods

The first step for making apple cider is to extract the juice from the apples. This is truly where tradition can meet new methods. Making cider is incredibly easy with today’s modern appliances. There are only three things to know. You have to pulverize the apples so the juice can run free. You need to strain out the pulp and seeds so the juice is clear. And then you need to preserve the juice in its fresh state or prepare it for making cider.

Before you do anything with the apples, you need to let them soften a while. Don’t wash them yet, or mold can start rotting the apples. Just let the apples rest for a week or two, so they mellow out a little and develop more sugar. Then wash them thoroughly.

For the best fresh cider, you will want to use more than one type of apple. If all the apples in the cider are sweet, the flavor won’t be as interesting as if a combination of apple types are used. The exception is the Braeburn apple. This apple, while a drier apple that is known for it’s suitability for baking, makes a heavenly fresh cider.

If you plan on making hard cider, then sweeter apples will give the yeast more sugar to act upon. More about that in the next article Making Apple Cider—Curing the Juice into Cider.

Traditional cider presses include two parts—one to crush the apples into pommace (pulp) and one to press the juice from the pommace. A new cider press designed after this traditional style can be a major investment. If you are handy and have access to the tools, it costs far less to build your own press using oak, birch, alder or maple. Softwoods known for their own aromatic properties, such as pine and fir, will ruin the juice so are only appropriate for the framing.

There are several sites on the internet that offer plans. Mother Earth News offers a free plan online http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/1976-09-01/How-To-Build-A-Cider-Press.aspx but doesn’t include any pictures, just instructions. Herrick C. Kimball has written a well-laid out book, Anyone Can Build an Apple Grinder and Cider Press Plan, published by Mother Earth News. It may be difficult to locate in the U.K. ‘Making Cider’ by Jo Deal and published by Amateur Wine Maker Publications Ltd is a very handy little book which offers info on making cider, making your own cider press, cider and cider punch recipes and even offers some traditional food recipes using cider.

The plan available at: http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade_cheese_and_cider_press/ is excellent if you are skilled in woodworking and can be used for both cheese making and cider. It costs the price of membership.

If you do not want to add another piece of equipment to your collection that you only use once a year, modern technology comes to the rescue. You can use a blender to pulverize the apples. The best on the market is the Vita Mixer®, which not only makes quick work of pulverizing the apples, it is useful for the rest of the year as well.

If your blender isn’t as heavy-duty, cut the apples into quarters. Remove the stems and blossom ends. The cores can be left behind. Then blend the apples in small batches. If you leave about 250 ml of sauce in the blender, it will be easier to get the next batch going. Another way to crush the apples is to put the quartered apples through a meat grinder with small holes, so the fruit is crushed completely.

There are several small wine / cider presses available on the internet. This is the easiest way to press the cider out of the pulp if you don’t purchase or build a cider press. Line the press with fine nylon mesh or cheesecloth, and follow the manufacturer’s directions from there.

If you want to work with things you already own, set a colander over a large pan. Line it with fine nylon mesh or cheesecloth. You don’t want the pulp oozing through, so the finer the mesh the better. A clean pair of tights works very well. Pour the apple mash into the colander, then bring the mesh up around the pulp and twist the edges so the pulp is completely enclosed. Apply gentle pressure to extract the juice. One of the best ways to do this is to rest a plate on top of the mesh after you have twisted it shut, and place a clean stone or brick on top. If you use bricks, you can add more bricks each time the juice stops flowing out. When the pommace is dry enough to hold together, throw it in the compost.

Would you like a quicker way to extract the juice? Use a Champion^® juicer or a centrifugal juicer. The Champion works by masticating the fruit and allowing the juice to drain through a fine screen. The pulp comes out the end of the juicer. To extract the maximum amount of juice from the pulp, put it through the juicer several times. Pour the juice off into a tall kettle and store in a cool place for several hours. The sediment will settle to the bottom and the clear apple cider can be poured off the top.

Centrifugal juicers also masticate the fruit. Fine teeth tear up the apple, then the juice drains through a mesh screen on the sides while the speed of the rotating basket throws the pulp into a pulp bin. A great deal of juice remains in the pulp, so you may still want to press the pulp for juice.

At this stage you can choose to preserve the apple juice in it’s fresh, non-alcoholic state, or proceed to the next stage of making apple cider. The easiest way to preserve your fresh cider is to freeze it. This preserves the flavour and nutrients the most effectively. The next best method is to heat the juice and can it in litre jars in a hot water bath canner. While you will lose a little of the fresh-off-the-tree flavour, you will be able to enjoy the taste of fresh apple cider throughout the cold months of winter.

Still looking for Your Smallholding? Visit Greenshifters for the latest smallholdings for sale, rent and exchange.

Click on the links below for more info on learning to make your own apple cider:

A Step by Step Photo Guide to Apple Juicing and Cider Making

Apple Presses and Crushers

A Simple Guide to Making Cider

How to Make Cider.com

How to Make Cider – A Video Guide

Article by Rural Smallholdings Magazine