Craft Hard Cider: Recipes, Tips, and Ideas for Making & Enjoying Hard Cider
Have you wondered what rootstock you should use? If you are like me, the name of the rootstock is confusing enough. Also, there are so many different ones and I couldn’t find a simple reference the summarized them. I’m sure the table is missing some, but I tried to include every reference I could find … Continue reading Orchards: Apple Rootstock
Types of Cider Drinks Just like wine, you can distill cider into a spirit. Please recognize that this process is illegal in many countries without a specific license. This is because it can be dangerous. One reason is because of the method, heating a flammable liquid, often over an open flame, and the other is … Continue reading Cider Words: Pommeau
I broke down the equipment used to make hard cider into the following three basic process steps. Fermentation Equipment Aging Equipment Bottling Equipment The final step and equipment list is for bottling. I have placed the PDF files for all steps on The Shop page. I have created these from the perspective of the home … Continue reading Cider Equipment: Bottling
You may have come across a recipe for making cider that calls for the addition of sugar or maybe you add sugar to your cider. The answer to the question of should you add sugar, varies. Fundamentally, you should never need to add sugar to make cider. In fact, in many countries, the addition of … Continue reading Cider Question: Should I add sugar?
Fining agents are more than just compounds added to help clarify your cider. They can also remove other compounds, usually with the goal of improving stability. However, these agents can impact color and aroma. As defined by R. Marchal and E.J. Waters in the book Managing Wine Quality(1), fining is the addition of a substance … Continue reading Cider Fining 101
Should juice be clear or cloudy, or does it really matter? If you are like me, you might think that cloudy juice will provide more flavor. But, as I have learned and demonstrated with some experiments, clearer juice actually creates more fruity aromas. Juice with high turbidity (cloudy) or colloidal compounds means it has higher … Continue reading Cider Question: Should my juice be clear or cloudy?
I broke down the equipment used to make hard cider into the following three basic process steps. Fermentation Equipment Aging Equipment Bottling Equipment In this post, I’ll cover the Aging step. You can find PDF files of each step in The Shop. As I did with my other posts, I am taking the view of … Continue reading Cider Equipment: Aging
Systems Biology: Interactomics Yeast were first identified by Pasteur around 1860 and the isolation and propagation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae soon followed. However, for over a hundred years, yeast were mostly isolated from wild fermentations and propagated based on their fermentative and organoleptic properties. Not until the 1990’s did we really start breeding or mutating yeasts … Continue reading Cider Words: Interactomics
Cider can be found anywhere. Yes, you have to look harder in Portugal than you do in France or the United Kingdom, but it’s there. Part of all my cider adventures includes planning, and I actually enjoy it. Just like vacation, we usually like to have a rough plan or outline of what we want … Continue reading Cider Adventures: Porto, Portugal
Is there an ideal amount of time to age cider? Ultimately, there is no one single right answer to the question of how long you should age cider. That is because it depends on the cider and the conditions under which it will age. The maturation or aging of cider, like wine, will allow it … Continue reading Cider Question: How long should you age cider?
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