How to make Hard Cider
It's All About the Blend
If you are lucky enough to be able to pick up this years juice hard cider blend at our store, you simply must pre-order our fresh juice. These are perfectly balanced with early and late harvest apples specifically for great hard cider. Unfortunately, it can't be shipped!
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Order our Special Cider Blend!The only way to make great cider is to use a blend of apples crafted specifically for hard cider. Only $6.25!
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History of Cider
The first references to cider date back to Roman times. In 55BC, Julius Caeser began his conquest of Britain, where his soldiers found the Celtic inhabitants fermenting the juice of the native crab apples. The Romans brought with them their horticultural knowledge, and introduced orcharding techniques like grafting and pruning, which they in turn had picked up from the Greeks and the Syrians. By the second and third centuries, Roman authorities reported that various European peoples were making a number of more or less cider-like drinks, created from different types of fruit. In the fourth century, Palladius wrote that the Romans themselves were making perry, or pear wine, and Columella wrote of the use of twenty four varieties of apples. Around the same time, Saint Jerome used the term 'sicera' to describe fermented apple juice, from which we derive the word cider.
Cider in America
The first cultivated apple trees in America were planted in Boston as early as 1623 by William Blackstone, a dissident Church of England clergyman and minister of the settlers at Plymouth. To the settlers of this new country, the apple represented the most crucial role in American's rural economy, as pressing and fermenting the fresh juice of the apple was the easiest way for the farmers to preserve the enormous harvest that came from even a modest orchard. By 1775, one our of every ten farms in New England owned and operated its own cider mill.
Making Good Cider
With so many varieties in cultivation – more than 7,500 – how do we come up with a great quality cider? The trick is the right blend from selected types. Understanding sugar type and taste is important and it is strongly recommended that you pick up a quality blended-juice that has been crafted by experts for fermenting homemade cider. Time is also a big factor, like a wine it becomes better with a little age on it. Try sampling at 3 months, 6 months, and one year to understand how it improves!
Local New England Customers
If you are lucky enough to be able to pick up this years juice hard cider blend at our store, you simply must pre-order our fresh juice. These are perfectly balanced with early and late harvest apples specifically for great hard cider. Unfortunately, it can't be shipped!
Great Reading to Improve Your Cider
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Cider – Hard and Sweet (2nd Edition)by Ben Watson |
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Cider – Making, using & Enjoying sweet and hard cider (3rd Edition)by Annie Proulx & Lew Nichols |
Our Fresh Juice Hard Cider Recipe
- 5 Gallons Fresh Apple Juice (Special Cider Blend Recommended)
- Sugar, if necessary, to adjust specific gravity to 1.060
- 1 tablespoons of Acid Blend
- 1 1/4 teaspoons of Tannin
- Pectic enzyme
- 1 ¼ teaspoons Yeast Energizer
- 2 ½ teaspoons Ascorbic Acid (Anti-oxidant powder)
- English Cider yeast
Suggested starting specific gravity is 1.060 to yeald 6.5% abv.
Mix juice or cider in primary fermenter with acid blend, pectic enzyme, tannin, and yeast energizer. Gently pour re-hydrated yeast or liquid yeast on top juice. Cover with plastic sheet. When fermentation is apparent (usually within 24 hours) stir daily and ferment for 3-4 days or until specific gravity is 1.020. Rack to secondary fermenter and attach fermentation lock. Rack again in three weeks, or when specific gravity is 1.000. Add ½ teaspoon Anti-oxident powder per gallon.
Bottling:
When cider is clear and stable, siphon into primary fermenter or bottling bucket, and gently stir in 2 oz sugar per gallon. Bottle in champagne bottles (using champagne corks and wires or crown capes) or beer bottles with crown caps. Let age 3 or more months. Sediment will be formed on the bottom of bottle, so decant carefully.