Kitchen-Table Cider Making | MAKE http://makezine.

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MAKE: PROJECTS

By Dr. Nevin J. Stewart Category: Food & Beverage, Home Difficulty: Easy Comments 14

Yes, our new neighbor got as drunk as a skunk. Blootered, bladdered, and blitzed as
we Scots say or, in Cockney slang, Brahms and Liszt! He and his partner came along to
a cider-themed evening at our house where he was initiated into the Scillonian Road
hard cider making cooperative.
We started the evening with a hands-on practical session of how to use my juice and
strain method to make clear apple juice and crystal-clear hard cider, quickly and with
minimal mess. Rather than smash the apples outdoors with a messy, old-fashioned
cider press, I use modern centrifugal juicers right on the kitchen table.
Dinner was accompanied by last years homemade hard cider (6.5% alcohol by
volume), apple wine (15% ABV), and store-bought Calvados (40% ABV). It was the latter
that did him the most damage.

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The next day our new friend could remember nothing of the evenings proceedings.
He was unable to recall disclosing his lifetimes accumulated prejudices concerning
ethnic minorities, politics, religion, and relationships. Also my introduction to the juice
and strain cider method had been lost, as with the spirit vapors.
To save further embarrassment , I said nothing about his verbal indiscretions, but I did
re-explain my method to him as follows.

PARTS

Yeast, Champagne variety, Saccharomyces bayanus 5g packet

Apples 75lbs, twice washed
Sugar (optional) For sparkling cider
Campden tablets For sanitizing. These and other specialty items can be found at
winemaking and homebrewing stores.

TOOLS

Juicer, whole fruit, with spout Such as the Breville Juice Fountain Elite (or Plus). Buy the
highest power rated machine your budget will permit. Try secondhand shops, yard and
garage sales, and eBay.
Food-safe plastic hose to fit juicer spout; typically 1" ID 16" long
Cotton towels
Spring clamp
Fine straining bag typically 24" 24"
Brewing bucket, 5gal, open top, with tap at bottom typically 12" diameter 17" tall
Pails, 2gal (2) For sterilizing and straining. The straining pail should be the diameter of your
brew bucket, or a bit larger; drill 30+ holes in the bottom.
Hydrometer
Funnel
Carboy, 5gal Or demijohns, 1gal (5)
Airlocks(s) and rubber stopper(s) Adds about 5" to your demijohn/bucket height
Measuring cup, 2c

PROJECT STEPS
1. Clean your equipment.
2. Set up the juicer and strainer.
3. Juice and strain.
4. Shoot the yeast.
5. Ferment.
6. Bottle.

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7. Enjoy.

Step #1: Clean your equipment.

Apple juice and hard cider are foodstuffs, and all appropriate food handling and safety
measures should be stuck to. Wash your hands, sanitize all surfaces, double-wash the apples,
and throw away any bad ones.
Sterilize all equipment that will be in contact with fresh apple juice. I use a stock solution of 4
Campden tablets per gallon of water to soak all the relevant parts and buckets for a couple of
hours before use.

Step #2: Set up the juicer and strainer.

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Lay out a clean towel, rinse off the juicer parts, and assemble your whole fruit juicer.
Attach the juice containment and delivery adaptor, aka hose, to the juicers spout, and feed it
into the straining bag, held within a straining bucket that has holes in its base. This assembly
sits neatly in the open brewing bucket with a draw-off tap at the bottom.
Set up your brew bucket on a stool or box, high enough that you can fit your demijohn or
carboy underneath the tap. Apples go in at one end, clear apple juice comes out at the other.
It couldn't be simpler.

Step #3: Juice and strain.

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Feed apples into the juicer with a steady, even pressure on the pusher. The higher the
machines power rating, the faster you can go.
CAUTION: Whole-fruit juicers are powerful appliances. Read and adhere to the safety and
other instructions for your juicer.
When the pulp container fills up, discard the pulp. After every 25lbs of fruit, dismantle the
machine and clean the pulp off the centrifuge stainless steel mesh.
You'll find that the juicing work is done in a flash, although it takes a while longer for all the
juice to strain through. I obtain the last 5% of the expected 65% by weight of juice by wringing
out the straining bag. Scottish, you see!
Whats left in the bag is about 1% of the original apples. This very fine pulp can be used in
apple muffins. You dont want it in your cider.

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Step #4: Shoot the yeast.

While the last juice is draining, pitch the yeast into a measuring cup containing fresh, clear
apple juice held at room temperature. This will allow the dried yeast to rehydrate and
kick-start your fermentation. Use a champagne yeast for simplicity and reliability. A 5g packet
is enough to inoculate 5gal of juice.
At this point measure the original gravity (OG) with a hydrometer and write it down. Later, this
figure will allow you to estimate your ciders alcohol percentage. If the OG is low, top it up with
a little white sugar to reach 1.040.
After half an hour, stir the cup to thoroughly disperse the yeast, then pour it into your sterilized
carboy or demijohns. Fill these up nearly to the top with apple juice and put airlocks on top.

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Within the hour you should see bubbles coming out through the airlock.

Step #5: Ferment.

Keep the fermentation vessel(s) in a warm place like the kitchen and after 3 weeks you should
have a crystal-clear cider ready to be racked and bottled. Check it with your hydrometer. The
reading needs to be 1.000 or less. If its still high, let fermentation continue.
When the hard cider is finished, measure the final gravity and read off the alcohol content
from an ABV chart or online calculator. For reasonably good storage, 5% ABV is considered
the target minimum

Step #6: Bottle.

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Siphon your cider into recycled, sterilized beer bottles that will take a crown cap.
If you want a still hard cider, just bottle as is. If you want bubbles, then add teaspoon of
white sugar to a pint bottle, fill up with your hard cider, and cap. After a few more weeks, a
secondary fermentation should be complete and youll have some fizz.

Step #7: Enjoy.

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Serve chilled. Take care when opening. If you've overdone the sugar, it can go off like a fire
extinguisher.
When serving, you can adjust the sweetness to taste by adding sugar syrup. But I prefer my
cider as dry as it can go.
Watch the Scillonian Road crew brew a 5-gallon batch at http://youtu.be/Qvc0cCh5r0c.

BY DR. NEVIN J. STEWART

14 RESPONSES TO KITCHEN-TABLE CIDER MAKING

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Rahere on August 12th, 2013 at 1:41 pm said:

Zere woz a young laydy vrom Rhyde
Ated zo many apples she died
The applez vermented inzide the lamented
Turned to zoider inzoider inzoid.
Reply

onslowsdry on August 13th, 2013 at 12:35 pm said:

Cider Haiku
Apples go to waste
Juice and strain will stop the rot
The cider breakthrough Anon.
Reply

Tim on September 27th, 2013 at 11:05 am said:

Why the reference to Hard Cider are you American?
Reply

onslowsdry
on September 27th, 2013 at 11:33 am said:

Hi Tim,
Im Scottish writing for a, primarily, US audience.
Over here in the UK, we just talk about apple juice
and the fermented product as cider.
Nevin
Reply

Alan Weaver on October 5th, 2013 at 5:01 am said:

Hi, I live in Hampshire UK and tried to make cider using a low

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power juicer and without peeling or coring apples. Unmitigated
disaster.
What juicer should I use. Can you recommend any makes?
Alan Weaver
Reply

onslowsdry
on October 5th, 2013 at 5:25 am said:

Ive only used Breville machines. Starting out with a

450W JE2 juicer which worked just fine, I now use
the 1200W JE4 model which is a semi-commercial
juicer. This machine will juice apples as fast as you
can feed them in to it. I have, however, also had
good reports for an Andrew James juicer used for
this duty.
Im demonstrating J&S live on the 17th of Oct.,
7.30pm at The Worplesdon Memorial Hall, if this is of
interest to you?
Reply

Alan Weaver
on October 8th, 2013 at 9:49 pm said:

Thanks for your help. I hope to come

along to the demonstration next week.
Alan
Reply

Nick Sloan on October 9th, 2013 at 12:24 pm said:

Hi, thanks for the article. I cant wait to try it.
Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?
Ive looked for a straining bucket but not found one. Is it home
made?
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What size filtration does it need? e.g. microns.
Finally, sorry for sounding stupid but how much is 75lbs of apples.
Would this be around, say a dustbin full? How much juice does
this produce? You seem to have 9 one gallon demi-johns there,
could I assume 75lbs makes this amount?
Thanks again.
Reply

Nick Sloan
on October 9th, 2013 at 12:27 pm said:

Sorry, youve answered the second question in the

equipment list. I hadnt seen that.
Reply

onslowsdry
on October 9th, 2013 at 3:10 pm said:

Hi Nick,
Ask away.
Yup, the bucket with holes was home made.
The straining bag came from the local hombrew
shop. I dont know what the mesh is, I just assumed
that it is a standard product.
75lbs of apples should give you about 5 gallons of
juice.
Nevin
Reply

MattFriedrichs on November 1st, 2013 at 3:35 pm said:

Thanks for the great tutorial. My notes from one batch of apple
cider and two batches of pear:
First, the filtration bag gets heavy. I made the apple cider without
the bucket with holes and the bag slipped off the larger bucket
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and fell in, causing me to have to strain everything again.
Second, my brewing bag gets clogged up pretty fast. Strains
really well, but requires a lot of squeezing at the end to get all the
juice out.
Third, the bottled cider flavor really reflects what you put into it.
The apples, for example were tarter than my pears (earlier, and
although mostly ripe, could have used some sweeter varieties).
Ive only sampled a bit of the pear off the fermenting bottle, but it
clearly is going to be sweeter and more palatable to many of the
people Ill share with.
Fourth, the added sugar added beautiful little bubbles. Havent
sampled the non-sugared bottles, yet.
Without the suggestion of using a juicer, I might not have made
any cider this year. But the above instructions provide a clear and
easy path for a first-timer.
Well done.
Reply

onslowsdry
on November 2nd, 2013 at 12:10 am said:

Thank you Matt. Im glad to learn that juice and strain

has worked for you.
I can relate closely to the full straining bag slipping
into the fermenter bucket situation. We started off by
tying the bag in place, but this was a nightmare to
change over. The straining bucket solved this
difficulty, and we now have two. When the first bag
has filled up we just swap over to the fresh one and
carry on. In the meantime, the first full bag can be
wrung out.
Reply

Ian Sutherland on November 1st, 2013 at 4:42 pm said:

This is my 4th year of making apple wine, all from a single, fairly
ancient, gnarled tree growing in our garden (variety Newton
Wonder).
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Up until this year I used a Breville Anthony Worrel-Thompson
centrifugal juice- B19 model I think, about 10 years old. It produces
a mixture of clearish juice, with a considerable fruit cap which can
be strained through a fine sieve to extract more juice. Its main
drawback is that its not gas or juice tight and produces
considerable widespread floor and worktop splatter after a 1-2
hour juicing session.
I used to re juice the waste pulp 2 or 3 times to try and get more
juice, but this year I decided to press it in a juice press and am
glad I did- 2 full juicer bins worth squeezed tightly can produce
around 4-5 pints of very clear juice indeed- about an 80%
increase in juice production.
I have plenty apples, so always ferment 100% juice, with sugar
added to get the desired alcohol content
The first wine I produced (2010) was 14%, amber coloured and
with lovely flavour complexity after 2 years maturation the finish
being quite different to the initial taste, but it was a little sweet, so
I have gone for a lower alcohol levels and a drier wine since then.
2011 was a little disappointing, drier but much less complex
flavour- OK but not stunning. Perhaps it got corked or cooked a
little in storage (above garage store, gets warm in summer) so the
2012 batch (untasted so far) was stored in a dark shaded part of
the garage, with airlocks retained and kept topped up to avoid
cork loss if any expansion or secondary fermentation took place.
For the first 3 years I used Lalvin EC118 yeast. This year I have
switched to Gervin GV5 for the whites (Apple, Apple and Plum,
Apple and white grape) and GV8 for the Reds (Apple and red
grape, Apple and blackberry). Starting SG around 1.090 aiming for
a dry 12% wine.
The grapes are home grown and this year Ive used about 1.16Kg
red per gallon (1.4L red grape juice), and 2.5kg (all I had) of white
grapes in a single, hopefully high quality, gallon. I used I kg wild
blackberries per gallon, and about 2kg pulped plums in a gallon.
Well see how things have turned out in about 18 months.
Reply

onslowsdry
on November 2nd, 2013 at 12:18 am said:

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Ian, interesting to read of your experiences.
I have a friend who, once he has juice and strained
his fruit, will put the pulp through a small basket
press. By using this combined method, Rich has
reported juice yields above 70% by weight.
Reply

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