Rural Smallholdings Magazine

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 Until beer superseded it in popularity, fresh apple cider and hard cider (as it is called in the United States) was the drink of choice in the late 1800s in that country.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:

Apple Presses and Crushers

A Simple Guide to Making Cider

How to Make Cider.com

How to Make Cider – A Video Guide

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Article by Rural Smallholdings Magazine