You flip on the TV and there it is: another commercial for a new brand of hard cider. You go to your favorite bar and before you know it you realize that there are now three completely different hard ciders on the menu.
Hard cider has been gaining popularity quickly in the last few years, so why not make it at home? We sat down with Nick Bruening from the Beer Hut and Dry Dock Brewing Company to figure out how to make that delicious apple into an even better alcoholic beverage.
First, we have to choose our path. Do we want quick and easy, or do we want more of a gourmet approach?
Quick and Easy: Using store-bought juice.
Step 1: Grab your juice.
The quick and easy version is just that, quick and easy. Start by picking up juice from your local grocery store, but don’t just choose any old juice. “Store-bought juice is really easy,” Bruening said. “It’s just knowing what preservatives are in the apple juice and usually what I tell people is, if you can’t say the name, you probably shouldn’t buy that brand for fermenting. Some preservatives will kill the yeast, but citric acid and some other acids are good preservatives that will not kill off the yeast as you are trying to ferment.”
Step 2: Add your yeast.
This is as simple as it sounds. Choose a yeast, but know that different yeasts will give different flavors. “You can use any type of yeast you’d like, but you should be mindful of what you’re picking and what you want to accomplish,” Bruening advised. “Seventy-five percent of the flavor comes from the yeast and the difference is pretty drastic.”
From here all you need to do is attach an airlock and …
Step 3: Wait.
As Tom Petty said, “waiting is the hardest part,” but in cider fermentation, it’s not that bad.
“It ferments out in probably about a week. Put the regular cap back on, put it in the fridge, and drink it throughout the week. That’s a quick way to do it,” Bruening said. You want to let it ferment in a cool (mid-60s), dry place and in no time you have a tasty beverage.
Longer but still Pretty Easy Way: Using real fruit.
Step 1: Select your apples.
Choose apples from a grocery store, farmers market, or your own tree — or a neighbor’s if they aren’t particularly observant. Organic apples are the best way to go as that way you can avoid most preservatives.
Step 2: Crush your apples.
You can do this with a rented crusher or the old-fashioned way by hand, but either way you want to pound those attractive round orbs into a pulverized pulp called pomace.
Step 3: Strain the pomace.
Much like crushing, there are many ways to strain the juice out. “I like to throw it into one of these nylon mesh bags big enough to hold all the pomace and with a collection tub underneath it, so you’re getting all the juice,” Bruening advises. “I (also) like to press it, undo everything, kind of mix everything around again in the bag, and then press again so you make sure you get all the juice you can.”
Step 4: Kill the wild yeast and bacteria.
There’s two ways to do this. You can either put the juice on the stove and warm it to a level just below boiling — pasteurize it — or you can add some pepsin enzymes and Campden tablets. Pepsin enzymes help break down the cell walls of the apples and will limit haze while the Campden tablets (sodium metabisulfite) will both kill bacteria and limit the growth of wild yeasts. If you choose the chemical route, make sure that you let the juice sit for at least 24 hours so the chemicals can evaporate out.
How do you choose? Bruening had some thoughts: “(pasteurizing) would do the same thing as the Camden tablets, and it is a little easier, but the one thing you might lose by pasteurizing is that it releases a lot of aroma and that flavor could be going into the cider.”
Step 5: Add your yeast.
This is important. Yeast is where the alcohol comes from! But, again, how do you choose? “You can use champagne yeast, a lot of people like English ale beer yeast, white lab cider yeast, and some people are doing experiments using Belgian ale yeast,” Bruening said. “One of the reasons people like the beer yeast, especially the English ale yeast, is because its attenuation isn’t as high as the champagne yeast. Attenuation is how much sugar yeast can eat. Essentially the English Ale yeast can leave some of that sugar behind, so you have a tastier, more sweet cider.”
Step 6: Wait.
Again with the waiting, but it’ll be worth it. Let the juice ferment for around a week in a cool, dry place. Make sure that your bottle has an airlock on it while it ferments so it can puff out any excess carbon dioxide.
Step 7: Syphon the juice off the yeast cake and bottle.
Some fruits give off sulfur when they ferment, so we need to get that cider off the yeast cake, which is where all the sulfur collects. Make sure that you syphon into bottles with similar volumes and don’t leave too much oxygen in the headspace of each bottle: “If it (oxygen) sits there too long, cider will absorb that taste and then you’ll end up with a flavor that you don’t want in the end. It will kind of taste papery or cardboardy,” Bruening said.
At the bottling stage you can add more yeast and some sugar to increase the alcohol content or even some spices to tweak the taste to your specific liking. Remember, however, that increasing the alcohol content will drastically change the taste of the cider and may require more sitting time in order to mellow the alcohol tones.
Step 8: Wait.
Wait one more time for roughly four days, longer if you increased the alcohol content, and it’s time to drink. Your new bouncing batch should be around 4.5 to 5 percent alcohol by volume naturally, so tip it back and enjoy the fruits of your labor.