Hard Cider
Hard Cider and “Inmate Brew” are pretty straightforward homebrew projects for suburban homesteaders, and if you already homebrew beer this is pretty simple.
Organic homebrew drinks are reported to have certain health benefits that you can Google on your own, but basically the benefits of organic ingredients are self-explanatory. Freshly brewed products are supposed to contain various B vitamins like B6 and other nutrients, the byproduct of yeast culturing. There is debate on what has a lower footprint, homebrewing or store-bought organic, I’m going with homebrew but I’m open to entertain any discussions or debates that might convince me otherwise.
At the bottom is a great video from Craig on Youtube and I really recommend subscribing to Craig’s channel if you homebrew. I think he’s got the brew gene or something. Here’s another recipe from the Instructables site so you can see that there is a lot of variability in the recipes and you probably won’t ruin anything if you don’t get it perfect.
Disclaimer: Like cooking anything, cleanliness is pretty important. Most homebrew books STRESS sterilization of your equipment, airlock, bottle, etc. If you do not maintain proper hygiene you will get ‘off’ flavors in your brew. We do an occasional “hard sterilize” on everything with an organic product but on a regular basis clean just like any other dish. We use a white vinegar dilution in hot water for a final rinse, and Vodka in the airlock. I don’t want bleach or cleanser in my airlock, ever, because I don’t want to pollute my organic products if my airlock sucks some liquid into the brew.
Since you’re using organic apple juice it should be just juice with no preservatives. Preservatives like potassium sorbate kill yeast. Generally you’re safe with organic products and the types of alternative preservatives they may use.
Most of the equipment you probably already have. If you intend to brew you should buy a hydrometer. This simple tool helps you determine the starting and ending gravity and potential alcohol, which changes based on how much total sugar is in the recipe (including juice), and also importantly can help you determine when brewing has finished. This is important if you intend to bottle and carbonate. If you start bottling before you have finished your initial ferment you can create too much pressure in the bottle, causing it to burst. Generally speaking when your brew is done with the initial ferment it will stop bubbling the airlock. You can wait a couple of days after that to be sure, but in the unlikely event your yeast stopped early there could be a lot of residual sugar. Learning how to use a hydrometer makes it less of a guessing game. There are a ton of online (free) resources to learn how to use it, like this Youtube video from Brew Your Own Magazine or this article from Grapestompers.
My very basic recipe for 1 gallon of hard cider:
- 1 gallon of organic apple juice
- 1/2 packet of champagne yeast (about $1.50 at a homebrew store)
- 3 tablespoons of organic raisins (for a yeast nutrient – optional)
- 1 cup of white sugar (to increase alcohol level and add carbonation – optional)
- 1/2 teaspoon of pectic enzyme (a $2 bag lasts for 10-15 batches – optional but recommend)
Supplies:
- 1 gallon glass jug (you can use the jug from the juice, but a colored jug is preferred to keep light out)
- rubber plug and airlock combo (from homebrew store)
- saucepan (optional)
- measuring cup
- A funnel
- hydrometer (from homebrew shop – I would recommend buying if you are going to do this more than once)
- Bottles for bottling (you can buy from homebrew shop or use a resealable Grolsch type beer bottle – optional)
- Simple bottling equipment (length of tube and bottling wand are pretty cheap)
Basically the next part of this recipe involves mixing everything into the big jug and putting on the airlock, then you wait. There is not really a wrong order.
Here is a little more detail.
To make some room for the other ingredients, pour about four cups of the apple juice into a separate container.
Optionally add raisins: You do not really need the raisins if you’re using organic apple juice, but some people find that adding the extra nutrients helps the yeast. If you’d like to add the raisins do this optional step. Boil about a cup of water in the saucepan and add the raisins. Let boil until the raisins are soft, then smash them with a fork and take them off the heat to cool. When cool, strain out the mashed raisins and add the liquid to your jug. Hat tip to Craig.
Optionally add sugar: The apple juice by itself will produce a nice, mild hard cider. If you want to increase the alcohol of the final product then you need to add more sugar. I added one cup of white sugar and my hydrometer estimates a potential alcohol of about 8%. Depending on the sugar in your juice your results may vary, and your hydrometer will help get your desired result. Optionally add the sugar into the jug with the funnel.
Optionally add pectic enzyme: If you do not add it, your cider will be cloudy. If you do add it, your cider will be clear. Slight taste difference. I normally prefer to use it, unless I forget to add it.
Now add half of the yeast packet into the jug and pour back in some apple juice, leaving headroom in the neck for the bubbly goo that can arise during fermentation. I leave about 4″. After adding the apple juice, if needed, put the cap on your jug and shake it like crazy to mix the ingredients and aerate. With table sugar you may need to shake for a while to get it all mixed up.
If your are using a different jug to ferment you can now transfer it into that. Add the airlock, and Vodka up to the fill line. Some people recommend water, cleaning solution, or diluted bleach for the airlock. I use Vodka because it’s highly hostile to bad critters, yet safe and tasty if it falls in the drink.
Now put your jug in a dark corner at room temperature – I use room temp because I don’t have a great way to keep anything a specific temperature. Our house stays around 68 during the cool seasons which works just fine for our fermenting projects.
Now you wait.
It should take two or three weeks to ferment although it could take less, could take more. I’ve had beer that was supposed to take twelve days instead finish in two days after a fast and furious rush of bubbling and fermenting. The hydrometer can help with this too if you’re trying to figure out how far along you are in the process.
While it’s fermenting you’ll see the cloudiness of the juice change and bubbles rising to the surface. It may smell like a combination of apple sauce and fresh bread, which is from the yeast. Yeast and other byproducts will settle out and form a layer at the bottom of your jug. Totally normal. Do not shake it again or disturb it to much after you’ve started this process.
After it’s finished fermenting (when the bubbles have stopped for a couple of days) you may want to leave it alone for a full week to let if finish clearing up. I don’t. I’m not trying to get the world’s best, crispest, clearest award winning cider (or anything) so I’m fairly lax on some of these finer points. You can spend as much free time as you’d like perfecting your cider. 
Now it’s Bottling time (also optional).
You don’t have to bottle or carbonate your cider. It’s up to you. If you don’t want to bottle and carbonate you should still transfer your cider out of your brewing jug, being careful to leave behind the sediment at the bottom of the jug. There is nothing wrong with the sediment, it just changes the taste. Too much sediment tastes chalky and bad.
If you want to bottle and carbonate you’ll need to make sure you have some kind of resealable bottle or bottle capping equipment. All of this is available at the homebrew store or online, or buy some beer in resealable bottles like Grolsch or the ceramic bottle types from Belgium. I’ve got a new set of blue bottles from my in-laws — in the picture above. Almost all of my other bottles are rescued from recycling, cleaned, and recapped with a simple capper. Wine bottles can’t be recapped, but champagne bottles can be capped with a beer bottle capper. Beer and cider do not create the kind of pressure that champagne bottling creates so a simple bottle cap seems to work on these larger bottles.
It’s best to use a natural carbonation method which is also the easiest method. The bottling equipment is optional, but you should transfer your cider to your bottles with as little commotion as possible, limiting the exposure to air. To much air won’t ruin it but it will impact the taste. The easiest way to do this is with simple bottling equipment like a bottling wand and a length of tubing.
Take 2 tablespoons of white sugar and dissolve it in about 1/2 cup of hot water. Let cool and pour into a clean jug. Siphon your cider from your fermenting jug into the clean jug with the sugar mixture, being careful to avoid getting a lot of air bubbles. Try not to disturb the sediment from your fermenting jug and leave as much of the sediment behind as possible. Use the bottling wand to stir the sugar water and the cider together in the new jug, again just gently stirring.
Now transfer the cider mix into your final bottling containers and seal them. The remaining yeast in the cider will eat the sugar you’ve just added and produce CO2. Since the container is sealed the gas cannot escape and carbonates the liquid. This process also produces some additional alcohol and makes a smoother taste.
You will want to leave your bottles for a week or two at room temperature to carbonate but you can probably start drinking them after a week. I’ve heard of people aging them for six months but I’ve never done that. When ready, I like to chill the bottle in the fridge for a couple of hours then pour into a glass. I leave about a 1/2″ in the bottle to capture the sediment, and then drink it for the B vitamins. Then I just drink the rest from the glass.
This is a great SustainHillbillity project to share the finished product with your neighbors. Be sure to use the words jug and cider a lot to really stress the down to earth, highly uncivilized aspects.
And here’s the video from CraigTube.
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Hey Brad,
I was wanting to make the hard cider with apples from the neighborhood that I’ve pressed. Can I do this or do I have to buy apple juice?
Thanks,
Mil
Hi Mil – Everyone has been telling me that pressing fresh apples is much better than using organic juice.
There are apples grown specifically for cider but i could not find any at Farmer’s Market last week. The cider makers look for specific sugar content and taste profile, but otherwise you can use any apples you have.
In fact I spoke with several of the organic farmers and they all said they sell their surplus apples (all varieties) to a local commercial cider maker. That commercial producer uses something like 70% apples of a specific variety, and 30% whatever other apples they can source locally.
i bought about $30 worth of “bad looking” organic apples and some pears and I’m going to use them for cider this week.
Brad
Ooohhh, are you going to mix pears and apples or keep them separate? I watched that guy’s video and he said if you had the apples fresh that you might not need the yeast. Are you still going to use yeast then?
I was thinking of making mead too cause I have my honey. Are you going to make mead?
Mil – I would LOVE to hear about your mead experiment if you try it.
I am mixing some pears in with the apples and using champagne yeast. i should have some new videos this weekend. There is a type of pear cider called “peary” but it’s all pear. it also has a higher content of non-fermentable sugar, so rather than doing a 100% pear attempt, I’m just mixing some in with Apple Wine.
Hello Brad,
I followed this recipe (minus the pectin or raisins), using a wine yeast/white sugar for 1 gallon, and champagne yeast/dextrose for a different gallon. While both of them came out resembling a slightly carbonated hard cider, they were both quite bland. There is no real apple flavor to either one of them.
The juice I used was a 100% pure apple juice (no sugar added), unfiltered from Whole Foods.
If you could provide some expertise on what I might be doing wrong, I would appreciate it.
Thanks,
Vince
Hi Vince – first of all, sorry it turned out bland.
Cider taste varies a lot with the type of apples, so if you use the bottled juice method it has it’s limitations. I’m not sure what you’re used to in terms of store bought cider, but store bought also varies a lot from brand to brand, some with a strong apple taste, and some with almost no apple taste at all. Mine usually turns out with a slight apple taste and when i use the champagne yeast it can get very dry with no residual sugar.
I would definitely try another batch using the pectic enzyme. i have left it out of mine before and i think there is a big taste difference if you leave it out. i would also try juicing an apple or two and adding that in.
i just tried a batch recently that was almost half fresh apple juice from the farmers market, and i made two other batches that had about 20% fresh pear juice. normally i won’t spend the money, but at the end of the season we were getting organic apples for less than $1 per pound. Unfortunately I followed a different recipe and topped them off with some water during racking – killed the taste. But, waste not want not, we’ll drink this before we start another experiment.
Another idea to try some different yeast. Last year we made some batches with very cheap bread yeast and the flavor was totally different. It think it’s about $1.50 for several packets and was less “dry” than the champagne yeast.
I read a couple of forums today for some other suggestions and found pretty much the same thing, try different types of yeast was a consistent theme, and several comments that most craft cider doesn’t taste like apples. I’ve had some that does and some that doesn’t, so I’m not sure about that answer. One person recommended a specific yeast brand called “wyeast” that cuts out earlier and leaves more sugar and apple taste.
This site had some good comments – I’d imagine probably things you already read yourself.
http://homebrewexchange.net/content/perry-and-cider-should-it-taste-way
Please let me know if you try again, and especially if you get a winning formula.
Thanks
Brad
Hi Brad,
Thanks a lot for the reply. I have started another gallon, with the raisin juice and pectic enzyme as you had suggested. The differences in mine vs. from your recipe is a ‘wyeast’ and dextrose (in lieu of white table sugar). I will absolutely report back on how it goes.
The other stuff I made didn’t go to waste. I just added a little cider to the hard cider and it was definitely drinkable. One might go so far as to describe it as ‘an apple flavored, slightly tart bubbly treat, which blah blah blah.’ Whoever the guy is who says that, is not allowed to drink at my place.
Thanks again,
Vince
Vince – a side note. I just watched “The Botany of Desire” on Netflix streaming. Great video about food, cultivation etc.
Anway, one of the specialty farmers grows apples for Cider and explained that some of the world’s best cider apples are considered the worst for eating – basically the most awful tasting apple varieties are the ones they cultivate for cider. Unfortunately this is always going to be a drawback using store bought juice made for drinking.
I was trying to overcome this by using 30% juice from Farmer’s Market – my last batch turned out “ok” but that’s the batch I made the mistake of topic off with water. So I’m going to try again. A couple of the guys at our Farmer’s Market said they sell a lot of surplus apples to the local cider company, and I’m going to ask them what apples to use too.
I’m working on a batch now and I have ordered some Xylitol (sweetner) and some Natural Apple Concentrate from Natural Flavorings. I’m going to use the sweetner and the apple flavor to help with the blandness. The sweetner is one that won’t get eaten by the yeast, so it will actually end up a sweet cider and not so dry–that’s the Hope anyway.
Hello Brad,
Sorry for the late reply, been busy with brewing. I made some meade that turned out awesome. I have another batch going now, and if it turns out well, I’ll post what I did.
On to the cider… Yes, I had heard the same thing regarding the more tart apples producing a better hard cider. My wife and I are planting some apple trees with hard cider making in mind, so hopefully that will yield some great results.
I learned a couple things, and I had a great tasting batch just come out. Here’s what I did:
-Gallon of filtered Apple Juice (100% juice, no added sugar, etc.)
-Pectic Enzyme (according to the maker, mine states to add the enzyme an hour before adding yeast and beginning fermentation)
-1/2 Box of raisins (the small box like we used to get in our paper sack lunches)
-1 cup of corn sugar (very powdery and dissolves easily)
-1pkg Wine Yeast
As far as the brewing goes, I did everything mostly by the book. I like to start my yeast in some luke warm water before adding to the juice. The fermentation wasn’t absolutely done, but it slowed way down. I racked it into another jug, with 3 shots of some home-made brandy (from grape wine) that someone gave me.
The result: A nicely carbonated cider, very tart. The fermentation is stopped by the brandy. Much more flavor, but hardly any residual sugar. Which is ok for me, since I avoid sugar as much as possible. One could add some juice after, and I would suggest possibly 4 shots of brandy just to make sure the fermentation stopped, otherwise use a very strong container and keep cold to prevent the bottle from bursting.
Thanks for inspiring me with your hard cider method, Brad. I will continue to experiment and drop in with some hints if I discover something worth sharing.
Hey Vince – thanks for inspiring ME with the great note. My basic cider seems to get better every time I make it. Last night I opened a bottle from November and wow, the aging makes such a huge difference. I’ve read several times that you should age them at least 6 months, but this batch at ~4 months is the longest I’ve gone.
I’d love your meade recipe. We have some beekeepers here like Mil, and I know she was looking for a good recipe last year.
Best
Brad
Just about to bottle mine, I did everything like you said, find it dry for my taste. So will be adding the sugar when I bottle. Nice to see someone else totally taken with the idea of making your own cider. Love the idea of perhaps using pear juice!!
Using your recipe for basic hard cider, started with 3 gallons of great cider from Kauffman’s. Pasturized but no preservatives.
Started on Jan 3, 2013. Bubbling nicely..used raisins and 1 C. sugar per gallon, Lalvin EC-118 champagne yeast. Forgot to add pectin at that time. Can I add it anytime or is it too late? How much pectin for 3 gallons. Thanks a lot. Love your website.
Hi Chase. I was taught to add it in the beginning. I’ve forgotten to add it several times and just didn’t worry about it. My cider usually doesn’t make it past 2 or 3 months of aging before i drink it, but i actually do have two bottles that are now at the 4 month mark. i’m on a diet and reducing my alcohol intake, so on the chance they make it to six months or beyond, I’ll post a picture of their clarity level.
Here are some comments I just read on some other sites, these might give you some more info to continue your research.
On this site, there’s a debate back and forth about whether you even need to add pectic enzyme to get clear cider. One person says you only need it if the juice is boiled, and that is also debated. I normally use a bottle of juice which has been pasteurized, but I try not to use heat pasteurized if I can avoid it. When I don’t add the enzyme I don’t get clear cider.
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=4519.0
On this one, scroll down to the comments from St. Allie:
“…should you find yourself stuck with a pectin haze after fermentation is complete.. you can add pectic enzyme then . It’ll work fine.”
http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f45/pectic-enzyme-when-6604/
Best of luck -
Brad
how long will cider be good after it is bottled
i’m not sure. they say that you should really age it at least six months before you drink it, but mine rarely lasts that long before i drink it.
can i use pastreized appl juice
definitely – since you’re adding yeast. in the video above from Craig Tube, he’s using regular apple juice from the store, in a plastic bottle. just use the best ingredients you can get, i always try to get organic. I also try to use juice with NO preservatives, because they can stop the yeast from producing, but some people just use regular, very cheap juice.
what kind of raisins do i need to use for a yeast starter ( would the kind in a little box like we use to take in our lunch to school do )
I think any kind, but prefer anything organic.
how to make hard apple cider taste like apples
I’m not sure I understand your comment. But as a side note, most of the sweeter tasting juice isn’t actually the best juice for cider. Apparently the best cider apples (that end up tasting more like apple) are not the kind of apples that people would like to eat. Unfortunately I don’t have access to these kinds of apples.
Everyone says either bought juice or use an apple press – would a juicer yield the same results as a press?
Hi Emma -
The problem I had with the juicer is that it makes the juice too “foamy”. The foam creates an issue when the yeast activates, because it expands into the air space of your container, and in my case, created enough pressure to pop my airlock off. If you have a juicer that is the “crushing” kind, there is probably a lot less foam, but my juicer is the fast spinning kind, and therefore the foam issue. A press doesn’t create any foam, just crushes and releases the juice.
Brad
Like all other ACV available in market, can we use this hard cider for hair as well?
That is a very good question that I do not know the answer to – I’ve always made hard cider for drinking. I just spent some time googling it and didn’t find any more information about using if for hair care. I did recently learn that I can use my kombucha for hair care also.
Let me know if you learn anything more on this! Thanks!