Now that me having two jobs and walking to work, I’ve been able to read substantially more than I have in the most recent years (not counting school books, of course). I’ve subscribed to a few new magazines, both of which I have to say that I really enjoy. Those magazines are Mother Earth News and Countryside Living and Small Stock Journal. I’ve been waiting to try out ideas in most of the issues i’ve gotten because they require more land than I currently have, or are not relevant to my current situation (like a wood stove). Once I found an article on how to make homemade hard apple cider from Mother Earth News (here), I knew I had to give it a whirl. Here’s how it’s done:
First, you’ll need two categories of things – some food items for the cider, and some homebrewing items for the processing and storage of your cider (unless you try to drink it all at once, which for the record is something I suggest you do not attempt).
For the food ingredients, you’ll need:
- Apple cider with out preservatives (If it has sodium benzoate or potassium sorbate, it wont work)
- Brown Sugar or Honey – Optional, to increase alcohol content
- Wine Yeast (I used a dry wine yeast recommended by the guy at my local homebrew shop)
I didnt have the yeast at the time, but this is all you really need (though you’ll need more than 1/2 gallon of cider)- Large cooking pot (this recipe produces 5 gallons – I had to use my 3 gallon pot and heat 2 portions)
- Carboy – basically a large glass or plastic jug to store the cider in while it’s fermenting (I borrowed this)
- Bubbler – I borrowed this from a friend too
- Bottles or some other storage container
- Bottle capper – borrowed from a friend
- Caps – if you’re using bottles
- Corn sugar/honey – not necessary, but is if you want your cider carbonated
- Bottle filler/siphon - clear plastic tubing will work
Empty Bottles and Caps
To get yourself started, you’ll need your large cooking pot and your cider. What you’ll need to do is put all of your cider into the pot (or as much as can fit) and heat. If you’re adding brown sugar or honey for extra alcohol content at the end, this is the time to do it. It’s about .4 lb of sugar or honey per gallon. I made 5 gallons of cider, so I put 2 lbs of sugar in. Of course, the pot I was using at the time was too small, so I had to heat in 2 batches of about 2.5 gallons each time. You warm up your cider on the oven for about 45 minutes, then put it in the carboy. You’ll need to do this twice if your pot isnt big enough for all 5 gallons like I did. You can get some pretty large pots for cheap these days – I wont be using this method next time as I now am the proud owner of a turkey deep fryer kit, which is what i’ll be using for this (and brewing) from here on out.
Fermentation
Once you’ve got the cider into the car boy, you’ll need to bring the temperature down so that you dont kill the yeast. Once the cider is cool to room temperature, you can go ahead and “pitch” your yeast (this means toss it in the carboy). Stir your mixture a bit and then put the airlock on. Once this is done, the first part of the cider making is done. After this, let it sit in a temperature controlled room out of the light. The yeast will get to work, and you’ll start to see bubbles leaving the airlock (this is the yeast eating the sugars, making alcohol). Below is a picture of the fermenting process.
Bottling
After a few weeks, the yeast will have run out of sugars to eat and start to sink to the bottom. Once this happens you can let the cider sit for a while for the yeast to continue to settle so that you dont get a bunch of yeast into your bottles.
Sanitize your bottles and cover the tops with a bit of foil so nothing falls into them [you can get sanitizer at a brew shop,
Box of Full Bottles
or just use a bit of bleach]. As you’re ready to start bottling, you pour in 3/4 cup of corn sugar for carbonation [put this in your fermentation pail, before bottling] (this is optional), and if you dont do it the cider will still taste just fine. Swirl the corn sugar around, and then you’re ready to bottle. Id suggest putting down a towel to absorb the spills that will happen. Start your syphon, and fill each bottle, cap it, and move on to the next one. I got 22 ounce bottles (bombers) and filled 24 completely and had about 3 pints left over, which I drank that night. Once the bottling is done, let the corn sugar and the last bits of yeast do their work and carbonate the bottles. They should be ready after about 2 weeks. I left mine for around a month because of the holidays.
Once you’ve got all this done you can enjoy your cider! Dont toss those bottles in the recycling bin though, you can reuse them for you next brewing project.
Readers: Do you brew beer or cider at home? Are you interested in it at all, or is this something that’s not really for you? It honestly really wasnt as difficult as I thought it’d be, but you do need to make sure you have all the equipment.
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Never had the itch to try anything like this. I don’t drink beer at all so that eliminates most of what people do as far as home brewing. But cider is something I hadn’t considered. Don’t drink much of it but if it’s that good it might be worth drinking more. Probably not a thing I’ll be looking at anytime soon, but always something to keep me thinking
Interesting – I thought it was a pretty fun experiment, and the fact that it didnt taste horrible made it all the better.
That is pretty awesome. I have not done any home brews myself, but have tasted many from my friends. Both good and bad to be honest, but I have never tried hard cider. Sounds delicious.
THe cider did come out to be pretty good, and like you I’ve had good and crappy homebrews. It just depends on if the person making it follows careful instructions and keeps stuff clean.
How’d it taste? Since it’s winter, I’ve been drinking store-bought hard cider. Do you know roughly the alcohol % it turned into?
I’m pretty interested in trying this.
it actually tastes pretty good. I dont quite know the alcohol content, but guess it’s somewhere in between 5 and 6%. You’re supposed to measure it while you’re making it and then again when it’s done fermenting to gague the booze content, but I didnt do that, so there’s no real way to tell at this point.
This looks very cool. I am going to have to try it. I haven’t done much else other than canning salsa but I am always up for trying something new.
The one thing that I didnt have was a pot big enough for the recipe (I made 5 gal) so I had to do 2 batches in the same pot and pour them separately in the fermentation vessel.
I used to make my own beer until I screwed up my back and the 36 L of liquid became dangerous to pick up (dead lift) in order to do the bottle filling.
A few extra notes.
1) Some dishwashers have a sanitize cycle you can use to make bottle sterilizing easier.
2) Invest in a good capper. As in, use metal. The plastic ones will break on you.
3) Experiment! I tried adding different flavours to my beers. For example, strawberry extract to the pale ale or lager in the summer. I also tried cocoa, coffee and a blend of cocoa and coffee in my stout in the winter.
I do miss the end product of making my own beer. At a cost of $0.75 a pint the price can’t be beat but given I have a son now and a blog (way less time than before these things) I don’t think I have the time to spend on brewing each batch any longer. Plus, I can’t afford to miss another 5 weeks from work if my back were to go out again.
thanks for the tips SPF!
I’ll remember these once I get my brewing started and that really sucks about your back! I did notice that those damn things were HEAVY when I had to move it for bottling – I may try to fill it at elevation next time so I wont have to move it to bottle. One reason I’d like to get into it is because it was pretty cheap.
One other note. It took me some time but eventually I figured out that I didn’t need the carboy at all. The carboy is annoying because:
1 – glass is heavy
2 – glass is slippery when wet (you need to filly it w/ water to rinse it!)
3 – the opening of a carboy means emptying the water goes glug glug glug and I always feared i’d drop the beast.
Instead I just used 2 buckets – a hole in each lid and the bung/air thing in the top to let the gases escape. The buckets are MUCH easier to clean and lift (given they have a handle).
They’ve got plastic BPA free carboys now, I was thinking of getting one of those.
That’s pretty awesome Jeff! I bet the hard apple cider taste great. There is a big home brew hobbyist in Portland and we have a lot of microbrew here too. Unfortunately I don’t have the space to do this. Maybe if we ever move into a house with a big garage, I’ll try homebrewing.
It did taste good, and I’m glad I took a crack at it. It actually didnt take up too much space – the most space it took is for the bottles (though i did borrow quite a bit of stuff).
I used to live in a mountain town that was big on home brewing. My husband’s former roommate had the bottle tree and everything. Glad this one was a frugal win for you!
I love beer, I just live with less of it these days, or only drink it at parties where it’s free.
That is awesome – I actually need to get a bottle tree for drying everything (once it’s empty!)
This is so fun. We used to have a neighbor that made moonshine, it was really gross, but one sip made your face feel really warm. I guess if you wanted to get trashed it would do the job. The hard apple cider sounds much tastier.
This stuff was pretty tasty!
We’ve been homebrewing for a little over a year and have had pretty good results with it. There were a few weird ones, but it was probably because we didn’t sanitize enough or follow the ingredients/directions exactly. And like you said, it doesn’t take up much space. We homebrewed even when we were in an apartment. You just need a few hours in the kitchen here and there and then we stored our ale pale/carboy in a dark closet for a few weeks.
If you get really serious with homebrewing, you might want to graduate from bottling to kegging. Bottling is messy and time-consuming. I just bought John a 5-gallon reconditioned keg and are planning on filling the keg this weekend. And yes, that means we now have a kegerator. We might still fill a few bottles to bring to parties, but most of the beer will stay in the keg.
Great tips cathy – Most of my friends have graduated to kegging and have their own 5 gallon kegs. I know how much easier it is and I’ll consider that If I get there. THis could just end up being a hobby for me. Also, if you want to bring stuff to parties, dont bother bottling it at all, just pull a growler off the keg before you leave, and everyone will be happy – less to wash and worry about!
Home brewing is tons of fun in the wintertime. I have a carboy and some IPA mix waiting in a closet, just have to get to it. I remember reading in Michael Pollan’s ‘The Botany of Desire’ how the Johnny Appleseed story really came out of the settlers’ needs for alcohol from hard cider.
A couple years back I tried to make my own beer using the Mr. Beer kit – jesus it was TERRIBLE but I had gallons of it and this guy wasn’t going to let it go to waste.
I’ve heard those mr beer kits are really not great – they are easily infected with bacteria (making beer taste awful) and too much can go wrong.
A couple years ago I picked up a Mr. Beer kit at a yard sale along with a few PET bottles. It was only five bucks, so I figured I’d give it a shot. Wish I hadn’t.
those mr beer kits give a bad name to home brewing – they are total garbage.
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