Cider

[Lizzy]

I fancy having a go as well. I have read a good mixture of apples, very sweet and sour, to provide tannin, acid and sugar.

I will dig out my wine book and see if there is any advice and let you all know.

Liz

[Brewer-again]

cider advice

You always get some good advice on this site !!
I agree that you should either press or juice the apples and pour the juice into a container that can be kept air free/under airlock. As you cannot be sure of the type of yeast that is on the apples, especialy if you source them from different gardens and store them to soften. It would be best to add a cambden tablet to the juice to kill of wild yeasts. then introduce a white wine yeast by making up a starter then adding portions of the apple juice to it untill it all starts fermenting.

I am going to advertise 'wanted apples' at work so that I can build up a stock.

This is also a very good stock white wine to have If you add sugar. You can use it to add to other wines. You can improve pea pod, broad bean and lighten blackberry.

[redadmiral]

I haven't tried this, but I just found a recipe for cider on the self sufficientish website that doesn't involve use of a press. Might be worth a try for all of us without presses or juicers?

Here's the link: Home Brew

[Capsid]

I'm going to have a go and make this simple press.

The Rose Hill Cider Press

[Nelly]

I made my first gallon of cider last year and the result is (gaggingly), err, sharp! My boyfriend thinks it still has potential (behind the cheek sucking "tang" is a good apple flavour) so we're leaving it a bit longer in the bottles. I used a cider yeast after rinsing the apples (mixture of eaters and crab) in a light campden solution.

Warning for those using a juicer: the quantity of apples needed for a gallon of cider is not what domestic juicers were designed to cope with in one session! Mine managed but it got very hot and I got very worried that it was on the point of exploding. I will try again this year with maybe a bit more sugar (or different apple proportions or something - another method perhaps?). The cider was an amazing pinky colour at one point; I was quite disappointed when it cleared to a normal golden cider colour...

[wildone_uk]

hi,everyone
for very simple cider making try Downsizer: for a sustainable & ethical future
worked well for me
laurie

[Hilary B]

For classic scrumpy you need a fair bit of tannin, a few crab apples in the mix will help ('proper' cider apples are pretty sweet, but also rich in tannin). True afficionados (such as my husband) like the 'paint-stripper' flavour, condemning anything gentler as 'too sweet', so Nelly, don't rely on your brew 'maturing' into anything softer (unless you get a flukey malo-lactic ferment).

[finefencer]

Cider

1, Hello all,
I have made cider for years, the scratting, and pressing is the hard part, the rest I will say to you is just like making wine, only you don't add water.
I have made 45 gallon at a time and the way I work is to put your juice into the barrel, or what ever you are using, fit an airlock, and let it go. When the fermentation has slowed right down, taste it.

2, I have had friends who have just waited untill this time, and when they have come to try it, have found that it was so sharp, they could not drink it.

3, So now you have tasted it, and it is to sharp, draw some of the cider to be off, put it into a pan to warm up and add some sugar. When the sugar has disolved and the liquid as coold down, pour it back into your barrel, and you will see the fermentation start up again. This is called feeding, but you can only go as far as the yeast will allow you to go. When you feed like this the strength ow the cider increases. I have made cider to 10%....not to be taken liteley......
4, Bramleys are not a good apple to make cider from alone, cox works well with them. So what you are looking for is a sweet apple, and a sharp apple, but like I say if you taste it when it slowes down, you can ajust the flavour, like any good cook will tell you.......I hope this helps.....

[Capsid]

Thanks for the advice finefencer. I've read conflicting views on using cooking apples. I think I have Bramley apples and have picked around 40 big ones to soften up over the next few weeks. I can eat them raw and have a reasonable sweetness, they aren't sharp/sour at all, so I'm hopeful they may make a reasonable cider. I can always use the feeding trick.

[janeyo]

Hi, we juiced enough for 2 demi-johns full, waited a couple of days till it had all settled, then decanted it to clean demi-johns. Added wine yeast, poped it in the airing cupboard and fermentation took 5 days. We were astonished that it was so quick. The apples were pink sweet ones from the garden so nothing lost really if it fails. We measured the gravity before and after and reckon it will be about 6 1/2%. It's palatable now, def tastes like cider but a bit tangy (i've had worse lol) but we will rack it again and then bottle it and leave for a few months.

It's our first go so we shall see, but so far so good!

janeyo

[KellsSimon]

First cider i mad was very labour intensive as i had no press.
I ended up blending the apples in a processor, the wrings the pulp through some cheese cloth by hand.
That was one LONG evening.
The apples i had were all local windfall eaters and cooker of very mixed type, but the end result wa good, if a bit too potent, it wasn't the alcohol i minded, Hic, but the fact it was so dry.
If i was doing it again this year i think i would back sweeten with a non fermentable sweetner (candrell or whatever) when the brewing had finished.
I've done this with turbo cider since and found it to be quite effective, but watch out for how much you use as those tiny tablets are very sweet, and can have a nasty aftertaste if you use too much.
good luck

[liejay]

if you dont like the taste of artificial sweetner, i use a little bit of pure apple juice in the glass and top up with your cider, i have also primed my bottled cider using pure juice :-)

[Capsid]

has anyone tried adding a bit of lemonade? Does that work?

[littlemark]

Might be worth giving Splenda a try. A few folk on the ukcider forum have tried this with good results, without the vile aftertaste of Sacharine, Aspartme etc.

Adding lemonade is a very traditional sweetener in West Country pubs....

Mark

[SarzWix]

This might be some help to those of you without access to a press http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...ress_6770.html

It's worked for us for 2 years, and will have to again this year as we still haven't managed to save enough for a press (bloody kids keep on growing out of stuff )

We usually chop up the apples, then put them through the mincer, then into a muslin bag, then press. You can squeeze the bags by hand too and get a reasonable amount of juice.
We tried using the juicer, but it just can't cope with the quantity - it overheats, needs emtying too often, etc.

If you have pears, you can add them too, or do them sperately for perry (known in fashionable terms as 'pear cider' which is a contradiction ). Better if you don't use really ripe, sweet ones, but they do make a nice addition to cider.

This is a good book recommended to us by another Grape (was it you littlemark?) if you want to get into cider-making; Amazon.co.uk: Real Cider Making on a Small Scale: Michael J. Pooley, John Lomax: Books