How to Make Hard Cider at Home
Making scrumptious cider at home is easy and rewarding! First, decide what type of cider you want to make. The two main styles of cider you can make at home are the cheap and easy method using grocery store apple juice or the more expensive and involved method using frozen cider apple juice from Wine Grapes Direct. There are advantages and draw backs to both methods, but in this post we’ll be focusing mainly on using frozen cider apple juice from Wine Grapes Direct because it’s a lot better. You can make cider from Mott’s juice, but it will be of similar quality to wine made from Welch’s. However, we are also working on a flow chart for making “prison-style” wine and cider at home so be on the look out.
Next, decide if you want to make a cider using French or English cider apple varieties. French cider apples tend to be very, very tannic and have moderate acidity. The English varietals have more acidity than the French, but are a little lower in tannin (though still have quite pronounced tannin compared to grocery store juice). Ideally you would ferment both ciders separately and then experiment with blending trials to make the best possible cider, but if you’re going to just make one, our French Blend will have the most tannins and the English blend will have the most acidity.
Then go online to www.winegrapesdirect.com and order your bucket(s). They should arrive 1-2 week after you order, in a partially frozen state. Remove your pail from the insulation and set it down inside on a towel so that it can thaw completely (1-2 days). Once thawed, you need to give the pail a very thorough stir. Some of the acids and sugars will have settled to the the bottom of the pail and those to need to be resuspended before taking any measurements or beginning fermentations. A long-handle silicon spatula works best, but no one has those so instead use a regular silicon spatula, sanitize your hand and forearm, and go ahead and just get real familiar with your juice. If you’re transfering to another container for fermenting, do not lot leave any solids behind on the bottom of the pail, they’re important!
Now we’ll take measurements, make adjustments and pitch our yeast! Hooray. If you can meaure the sugar levels and pH of your juice than go ahead and do so! Your juice should have an initial sugar content of 12-16 brix (%) and pH between 3.3 and 4.0, if your juice falls outide those parmenters you can adjust by adding sugar or malic acid. Cider apples generally have sufficient nitrogen for fermentations, but some cider makers like to add Fermaid O or other yeast nutrients to ensure healthy fermentations. If you want clear cider in a hurry, this is a good time to add some pectic enzyme.
After getting your cider adjusted, it’s time for fermentation. Its easiest to just to start the fermentation in the bucket the juice came in, but if you have a fancy fermentation vessel go fo it. Just don’t try to start fermentation in a caboy unless you have at least 30% headspace because cider is mega foamer. Cooler temperatures and slow fermentations are ideal (55F-65F) but we’ve all got to work with what we’ve got and there are plenty of outstanding ciders that are fermented at room temperature. It’s safest to inoculate with a commercial yeast that’s been properly hydrated, but some wild and crazy people choose to rely ambient yeasts. If you’re new to fermenting I recommend using a commerical yeast strain where you know what to expect, but it’s your cider so you do you.
Cider fermentations can be as short as one week or span across months depending on temperature, yeast, and juice specifications. During first weeks of fermentation, your cider will producing a lot of bubbles and foam and is safe in the open top bucket with the lid on loosely. Once the bubbles slow down and the foaming subsides, it’s important to rack down to a 5 gallon glass carboy or other variable capacity tank. The bubbles are Carbon Dioxide and they’re protecting the cider from oxidizing, so you need to minimize surface area before they go away by moving into a carboy with minimal headspace. The pace of fermentation often slows down towards the end of fermentation as the yeast have used up most of the available nutrients and sugars and the environment is becoming increasingly alcoholic . It may even stop fermenting before reaching zero brix. That’s OK. It might start up again, it might not, could be great either way.
So after a couple weeks or months, let’s assume your cider has fermented to dryness and there are no more fermentable sugars. You should have been tasting your cider all along because fermenting cider is really yummy, but you definitely need to try it now and figure out what you’re going to do next. If you look at your cider and you taste it and you think “This is great just like it is”, then you’re basically ready to bottle. It will probably still be a bit a hazy and maybe even have a slight sparkle, but you’re cool with that, cause it tastes great. You can use wine bottles or beer bottles, but always, always remember that if there are fermentable sugars left in the cider, then there is a chance of fermentation restarting in the bottle. Refermentation in the bottle is awesome for making Champagne and Champagne style cider, but if there is too much sugar left then the bottles may explode, and nobody is cool with that. If you’re planning to age your cider it’s recommended to add 30 PPM S02 at bottling, but also completely optional.
But maybe you look at your cider and you think it tastes amazing, but you want better clarity. Time is one way to clear a cider, but time can take awhile and doesn’t work for certain conditions like protein haze. To speed settling along you could add a fining agent like Super Kleer, which works Super Good but makes some people uncomfortable (it’s made with shellfish!). You can also add pectic enzyme at this point or really any number of clarifying treatments.
Maybe you taste your cider and you think “Dang this is really dry. I only drink dry wines, but this is like mega-ultra dry. Maybe too dry” Don’t fret! Most modern ciders are fermented dry and then backsweetened. But actually do fret because back sweetening at home is more of a challenge. I’m still working on this one. Unless you can sterile filter, you can’t add fermentable sugars without risking refermentation. You could try using Potassium Sorbate, but sounds gross to me. You can also experiment with unfermentable sugars like sorbitol or stevia. Or just backsweeten with apple juice and risk having carbotnated cider or exploding bottles.
“ It's a PITA to backsweeten in bottles. It's breeze to backsweeten in a keg. Any chance you could move to kegging? I serve all my ciders from a keg. To backsweeten a cider in a keg, I ferment 4.5 gallons of juice completely dry, rack to keg, get the fermented juice to fridge temps so yeast activity stops, then add 0.5 gallons of sweet, unfermented juice and carbonate.”
just wait for Mikey to finish writing this article. He’s got to go to Costco now and then pick up the kids from school, but he should definitely finish this soon and not forget about. If it’s November and this isn’t done yet, please send him an email Michael@winegrapesdirect.com
