Craft Hard Cider: Recipes, Tips, and Ideas for Making & Enjoying Hard Cider
A Simple Recipe for Making Hard Cider I’m frequently asked for a simple hard cider recipe. I published “My First Cider” recipe several years ago, which was intended to help guide the first time cider maker. However, I recognize that it may not be considered the simplest or easiest recipe. In fact, it’s less recipe … Continue reading Making Simple Cider
Impact of Pectic Enzyme - Juice Application Pectolyase, pectozyme, and polygalacturonase are three types of pectic emzymes or what are often called pectinases. These are naturally occurring compounds found in plants that breakdown the polysaccharide known as pectin. Pectin gives structure and strength to the plant cells. This structure is what make jelly and jam become … Continue reading Pectic Enzyme: Juice Application
Autolysis: The decomposition of yeast cells. Why does the flavor of cider change when it ages? Part of those changes can come from bacteria or yeast. This micro flora can make malolactic fermentation (MLF) occur or a souring by Brettanomyces yeasts. However, one of the biggest impacts can come from the yeast that fermented your … Continue reading Cider Words: Autolysis
Suspended Solids: How juice clarity impacts hard cider V.K. Joshi and associates assessed the impacts of juice clarity on hard cider. They found that similarly to wine, clarifying juice by filtering and pectic enzyme treatment resulted in higher quality cider(1). Quality was defined by a panel of five trained judges assessing 14 flavor characteristics using … Continue reading Impact of Juice Clarity
As I’ve noted in an earlier article on pressing apples, there are a lot of methods and equipment you can purchase or make to press apples into juice. If you have quite a few full-sized trees in the backyard producing thousands of pounds (500+ kg) of fruit, a larger grinder and press system is probably … Continue reading Making Cider with a Juicer
Easy Cherry Cider Label I didn’t always press my own apples to make cider. Like many people, I started making cider using store bought juice. I also think I made some good cider from store bought juice and you can as well. For this recipe, I thought I would go back to my roots and … Continue reading Making “Easy” Cherry Cider
Aroma apples add complexity to a cider blend. Cider apples are often referenced as Sweets, Bittersweets, Sharps, and Bittersharps. However, this doesn’t highlight a key element that contributes to great hard cider: Aroma. Aroma in hard cider come mostly from esters and alcohols but aldehydes, ketones, and ethers can also contribute. These compounds are created … Continue reading Aroma Apples
Maybe you realized those apple trees you planted a few years ago can actually produce quite a bit of fruit. Or, maybe your neighbor has a tree. Maybe you joined a social media group and have listened to enough people talking about pressing apples that you want to have a go at it yourself. If … Continue reading Hard Cider Tip #30: Pressing apples into cider
I hope you are finding the information you need. Please don’t hesitate to leave me a comment or contact me if you have specific questions. To make the best hard cider, should juice be crystal clear or should it be cloudy? Have you even thought about it much? If you have read some of my … Continue reading Hard Cider Tip #27: Clear or Cloudy Juice
If you are American or grew up in the US, you learned that cider doesn’t mean an alcoholic beverage. Cider meant this cold cloudy drink you would get with doughnuts when visiting an orchard or farm stand. It seem mystical or at least in your memory it is. There must be a special recipe for … Continue reading Making “American Cider” (a.k.a Apple Juice)
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