Homemade Hard Cider Recipes

HOMEMADE APPLE CIDER

Steps:

• Place apples in a large stockpot and add enough water cover by at least 2 inches. Stir in sugar, cinnamon, and allspice. Bring to a boil. Boil, uncovered, for 1 hour. Cover pot, reduce heat, and simmer for 2 hours.
• Strain apple mixture though a fine mesh sieve. Discard solids. Drain cider again though a cheesecloth lined sieve. Refrigerate until cold.

HOMEMADE HARD CIDER RECIPE

Steps:

• Clean and sanitize all cider making equipment before starting.
• Pour the Apple juice into the fermenting vessel.
• Take a hydrometer reading to measure the original gravity and record.
• Add Campden if using fresh unpasteurized cider if desired.
• Add yeast nutrient if desired.
• Pour the yeast into the fermenter.
• Close the fermenter and install an airlock filled with sanitizer.
• Allow the cider to ferment in a cool and dark place for about two weeks.
• Cold crash, rack and bottle.

HOMEMADE HARD APPLE CIDER

Steps:

• In large stock pot, combine apple cider with the sugar. Heat to almost boiling, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Continue to heat for about 45 minutes - never allowing it to come to a boil. Remove from heat, cover with sanitized pot lid. (If you don't have a 7-10 gallon stock pot or turkey fryer, you can do this in batches.)
• Once mixture has cooled to room temperature, use a sanitized funnel to transfer cooled mixture to a sanitized 6.5-7.5 gallon fermenter. Using clean hands and sanitized utensils, add any flavoring ingredients you'll be using to the fermenter. Go easy on the flavorings - you can always add more later, but cannot take it away if you overdo it!.
• Using sanitized equipment, take a gravity reading. Keep track of the number! (This is an optional step, but will allow you to calculate your final ABV %)
• Sprinkle yeast into fermenter, cover with sanitized air lock. Let sit, undisturbed, overnight.
• Within 48 hours, you should notice fermentation activity - bubbles in the airlock, carbonation and /or swirling in the cider must. This means you're good to go! Put the carboy somewhere cool (not cold!), and leave it alone for a month or so.
• Using sanitized equipment, rack the clarified cider off the sediment, into a clean, freshly sanitized 6.5 gallon carboy. Cap with sanitized airlock, leave it alone for another 2-3 months.
• When you've let it clarify as much as you have patience for - with no more sediment being produced - you can move on to bottling:
• For uncarbonated cider:
• Using sanitized equipment, take a final gravity reading, then rack the cider into clean, sanitized beer bottles, and cap them. Allow to age for a month or so before drinking. (Like wine, the flavor improves with age!)
• For naturally carbonated cider:
• In a small pot, mix together 1 cup of water with 1 cup of sugar or brown sugar. Use a sanitized funnel to pour this into a sanitized large carboy. Rack the cider over into this carboy, swirling it as you go. Bottle cider as described in the previous step. Allow to age at least a month or two - residual yeast will ferment the added sugar, carbonating the cider.
• Alternatively, you can rack the cider (without the added sugar syrup!) into a keg and force carbonate it, if you have the set up for that. That's what we did with our last batch, and blew through it pretty quick during the tornado clean up! Chilled hard apple cider is just what's needed for that sort of thing, LOL!
• Enjoy.. and start planning for next year's batch(es)!

HARD APPLE CIDER FROM JUICE

Steps:

• Be sure to sanitize anything that is going to touch the cider. If you are fermenting in a store-bought jug of apple juice, then you will only need to sanitize for racking and bottling.
• Remove 1/2 cup of juice from the jug. This will leave enough room to prevent the fermentation from bubbling over. I recommend testing the sugar content of your apple juice using a hydrometer. It needs to be at least 1.050. Feel free to add up to 1 cup of sugar, as needed. This will increase the potential alcohol content and/or sweeten the cider.
• Add the yeast and yeast nutrient. Put the cap back on the bottle of juice and give it a good shake to mix everything up.
• Remove the lid and top the bottle with an airlock.
• If you are using unfiltered apple juice, then you will need to rack the cider to a clean jug after 1 week. If you are using filtered apple juice, then racking isn't necessary.
• Allow the cider to ferment for 2-4 weeks (1-3 weeks after racking) before bottling. Exactly how long you leave the cider to ferment will depend on your personal taste. If you like sweet cider, bottle it after 2 weeks. Wait 4 weeks for a dry cider.
• To prime, the carbonation, add mix 2 Tbsp of white sugar or dextrose in 1/4 cup of boiling water. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Then mix the sugar water into the cider just before bottling.
• Leave the bottled cider to ferment at room temperature for another 1-2 weeks, until it is carbonated. Store the cider in the fridge and enjoy it within 2 months. Because this recipe is a sulfite-free recipe the cider is not shelf-stable and will continue to ferment, even in the fridge. So if you like sweet cider, drink it within 1 month.

HOW TO MAKE HARD CIDER FROM WHOLE APPLES

Steps:

• I don't use any vinegar or veggie wash because I want to keep the yeast on the skins on the apples.
• This is mostly just to check for bugs or other issues with the apples. Discard or cut around any that have an infested core, and cut out major bruises. It's nice to have a partner for this part, and it's the perfect job for a kid with basic knife skills. But I have done it by myself, too. Transfer chopped fruit to a clean bowl by your juicer. You don't need to worry about coring or taking stems out- the juicer will do that for you.
• As your juicer pitcher gets full, pour it through a funnel into a sterilized demijohn.
• When the pulp container starts getting full, take a few minutes to squeeze the juice out of the pulp. Place your sieve over a clean bowl, and line it with your kitchen towel. Put a couple heaping handfuls of pulp in the towel, and gather the edges and twist to wring out as much of the juice as possible. My own juicer is not great, so I actually get 50% of the total juice this way. Your pulp (now called pommace) should be really dry when you're done, and you can just compost it. Pour the juice into the demijohn, and get back to juicing.
• Once you have juiced all of your fruit, taste the juice and add sugar. This is where a little guesswork will come in, because the acidity and tannin content, as well as the sweetness of your fruit will vary. I usually add about a cup of sugar to a gallon of juice, and I don't like mine very sweet. During the fermentation process, the yeast will eat the sugar (both the fructose from the fruit and the added sugar) and turn it into alcohol- so this step is both for flavor and alcohol level. Those of you in the USA may not really need to add much sugar, as most of the apples there tend to be really sweet. Don't get hung up on this step, as you can add more sugar later if the brew is turning out too dry or tart for your taste.
• (This step is optional, depending on whether you have a lot of foam/ pulp floating at the top of your demijohn.) Put your demijohn on a tray or in a bowl, and keep it in a warm spot for about a day or so. The yeast will start to become active, and things will get bubbly. Your cider will split into layers, with foam floating on top. If your demijohn is pretty full, the foam will come out the top. I think this is great, as it's a good way to get rid of that funky stuff.
• Put a rubber stopper and an airlock on your demijohn, and let it sit for a week.
• - siphon it into another sterilized demijohn, leaving the yeasty sediment in the bottom of the first one, so you have a much cleaner cider in the new demijohn. Taste it and see how it's doing. If it's already tasting pretty dry, you can add some more sugar before you put the airlock back on.
• Some people like a pretty sweet cider, and bottle it after a week. I like mine pretty dry, tart and strong, so I usually give it three weeks or even more. Fermenting it this long means that it won't be very fizzy in the end- but you can also add a little sugar just before bottling to regain some carbonation. This is totally up to you, of course. You could experiment and bottle half to drink and leave the rest for another week. Whatever you decide, the next step is to bottle your hard cider. Use the siphon hose to fill swing-top bottles. The type of bottle is really important, since it lets out small amounts of the pressure that builds up, so you don't have a glass explosion later.

HARD APPLE CIDER

Steps:

• Sanitize everything that will come into contact with your cider.
• Heat ½ gallon of apple juice in a pot on medium heat, do not boil.
• Add the brown sugar and stir to dissolve, then remove the pot from the heat.
• Put the cinnamon stick, cloves, and raisins into the empty one gallon brewing jug.
• Use the funnel to transfer the warm cider from the pot into the one gallon brewing jug. Allow the warm cider to steep with the spices for about 20 minutes.
• Top off the jug with the remaining ½ gallon of apple juice, leaving 2 inches of headspace at the top of the jug. You will have a bit leftover apple juice.
• Cap the jug and shake to combine everything.
• Use a thermometer to check the temperature of the juice in the jug. When it has cooled to 90°F or less, you can add ½ package of yeast to the jug (doesn't have to be exact). Store the opened package with the remaining yeast in the refrigerator for later use.
• Cap the jug again and shake vigorously for about a minute or two to aerate the yeast.
• Attach the airlock to the rubber stopper if you haven't already, fill it with water to the fill line, then place it firmly on the top of the jug.
• Put the jug in a cool (not cold) place out of direct sunlight to ferment. After several hours, or overnight, you will start to see bubbles forming in the jug and airlock.
• Allow the cider to ferment for 3-4 weeks, until the bubbling in the jug and airlock has stopped.
• Bottle the hard cider.

HOW TO MAKE HARD CIDER IN 5 EASY STEPS

Steps:

• The hardest part of making cider is getting the juice out of those apples, and for that you need a cider press. To make it affordable, we co-bought this high quality cider press. My video shows the apples being ground to a pulp, the cider being pressed, and then us pouring the cider into a carboy.
• We pour the cider right from the press directly into the carboy though a strainer and funnel, as you can see in the video above. When almost full, we pop the airlock on and stow it out of the way in a cool spot in the house out of direct sunlight (we place it in our homestead root cellar).
• Then ... just do nothing. Organic or unsprayed apples, like grapes and other fruits, grow with naturally occurring yeast right on their skins, so your fresh cider will start fermenting almost immediately. (Which means those microscopic yeast cells will start "eating" the sugars in the juice and "excreting" alcohol and carbon dioxide gas).
• The initial fermenting process will create bubbles and foam caused by the release of carbon dioxide, which can come up through the airlock and sometimes clog it, (especially if you haven't strained out larger apple chunks), so monitor this during the first few days, and clean the foam out of the airlocks.
• Alternately, you could use a large diameter hose the size of your carboy jar opening (sometimes called a blow-off tube) fitted snugly into the opening with the far end curved down into another smaller jar of water, that allows the foam to bubble out safely without clogging for the first few days, and then you can install the air locks.
• And that's it! Hard cider is on the way. Now all you need to do is wait for the bubbling to slow and stop, signifying that most or all of the sugar left in the juice has been digested by the yeast, and converted into alcohol (and CO2). This could take several weeks or up to several months, depending on a variety of factors including temperature, initial sugar in the apples, yeast vigor, etc.