How to make home made Cider
Here is the shortest possible instruction set for turning apples into cider
- Get some apples
- Chop them up really small
- Press your apples
- Put apple juice in a container
- Add yeast
- Let it ferment for a month or so
- Put the cider in clean bottles
- Wait for a couple of months
- Drink the cider
If you follow these instructions you will produce cider, but probably not very nice cider.
With brewing a drink that is both alcoholic and great tasting, the devil is in the detail.
To get a really good tasting cider (and that is actually quite easy to do) you need to be sure about each stage of the brewing process.
To make good quality hard cider you will need more detailed instructions.
Cider Making Instructions
What about the Yeast?
The instructions above ask you to add yeast to make your cider. Rather than buy a packet of yeast you could use the natural yeast spores that are in the environment. Yeast is a single celled form of fungi whose metabolism converts the sugars from the apple juice into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
When you add a packet of yeast to your apple juice you are just speeding things up a bit and guaranteeing that the type of yeast is the one that produces the best flavoured cider.
If you cannot find cider yeast, try wine yeast instead. If you cannot find wine yeast try beer yeast, and if there is none of that available, a teaspoon full off baking yeast will be enough for about a gallon of apple juice.
More information about yeast is available in the following link.
How to Make Cider
(this cider making method works for Perry too)