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Vzboltai has previously told you how to make pear and cherry cider at home.
And now it’s time for the classic – apple cider.
Tips before starting
For cider, apples of summer, autumn and winter varieties are taken, mostly sweet and sour, with a small sugar content.
When using high-sugar apples, the juice should be slightly diluted with water.
Apples are always carefully sorted and washed, the places of damage and spoilage are cut out, and when crushed, the stalks and the remains of the sepals are removed.
The French drink cider unfiltered, cloudy and without gas.
Plain apple cider
Ingredients
Ripe apples – 10 kg
Sugar – 1,5 kg
Method of preparation
Wipe unwashed apples (it is better to take them from the summer cottage) with a dry towel, cut off the rotten parts, remove the tails and grind together with the skin and bones using a blender or meat grinder.
We transfer applesauce into a sterile fermentation container, the mass should fill the container no more than 3/4 of the volume.
Then add granulated sugar (at the rate of 150 g per 1 kg of apples) and mix well.
We cover the neck with gauze and leave for 3-4 days in a dark room at room temperature. Every day you need to mix the contents of the container.
As soon as the first signs of fermentation appear (hissing, abundant foam and a sour smell), we filter the wort through cheesecloth and squeeze the cake well.
Pour the resulting liquid into a clean container and install a water seal.
We transfer the container to a dark room with a temperature of 18–27 degrees for 1,5–2 months. After the complete end of fermentation, the drink will brighten, and sediment will appear at the bottom.
Then carefully drain the drink through a straw and pass it through a gauze filter.
Apple cider is poured into glass bottles and left for 3-4 months in a dark, cool room for maturation.
Apple cider without sugar
This recipe is very popular with the French and the British. It contains no other ingredients other than natural freshly squeezed apple juice.
So you can use any amount of juice in the process of making homemade cider without any proportions and restrictions.
Given that in this case no auxiliary ingredients are used to help start the fermentation process, you need to use unwashed sweet apples without any chemicals. And store-bought fruits are definitely not suitable for this recipe, in principle, as well as for others.
And the main pattern is that the sweeter the apples, the stronger the finished product will be.
Method of preparation
Any amount of freshly squeezed apple juice is poured into a sterile container and left for a day in a dark room at room temperature.
Then we install a water seal or a medical glove with a small hole on the finger on the neck.
We transfer the container to a warm place with a temperature of 18–27 degrees for about 1–1,5 months.
After this time, drain the cider from the sediment with a straw and pour it into a clean container.
Now we leave the drink for 4 months in a cool room (preferably a cellar) to stabilize the taste.
Before tasting, again carefully drain the apple cider from the sediment, and then bottle it.
Such a drink is stored for 6-9 months in the refrigerator or cellar.
If you want the cider to become lightly carbonated, at the stage of bottling it, pour literally 10 g of granulated sugar into the bottom of the container and then pour the cider.
Then the drink will begin to ferment again and carbon dioxide is formed.
Important! In this case, the bottle should only be filled with non-carbonated cider to 75% of the total volume.
Cider with wine yeast
For cooking, you need undiluted apple juice and a 3% wine yeast layout.
Method of preparation
To prepare 100 g of wine yeast wiring, a glass of unwashed berries (raspberries, strawberries, rose hips), grind, pour 1/2 cup of boiled warm water and add 1-1,5 tbsp. l. Sahara.
Close the lid and put for 3 days in a dark place at a temperature of +20 degrees. Stir daily.
In apple juice (sterile, boiled), poured into a well-sterilized dish, add yeast distribution, close with a stopper with a water seal and leave for 3-4 days for fermentation.
If desired, the cider can be clarified with milk. To do this, you need to take skimmed milk (reverse): put the milk in the refrigerator for a day, remove the resulting cream, and put the remaining milk into wine processing. For 1 liter of wine take 1 tsp. milk. Mix wine and milk thoroughly. After that, the mixture is kept for several days at a temperature not lower than +15 °C. During this time, the wine will lighten, after 3-5 days it can be filtered.
Cider does not stand for a long time, so you need to drink it quickly.
You can add a little cognac to the cider, which will give the wine a fortress and an unusual taste.
Sour apple cider
Ingredients
Sour apple juice – 4,5 liters of juice
Sugar – 5 cups
Yeast – 25 g
Method of preparation
Cut apples, put in a saucepan, pour water to cover the apples.
Infuse for 2 weeks, stirring occasionally.
After 2 weeks, carefully strain and heat the liquid. Add sugar and yeast.
Close and put in a warm place for fermentation.
After the start of fermentation, pour into a barrel, at the end of fermentation, seal the barrel.
Bottled after 6 months.
Alternative Apple Cider Recipe
Ingredients
Apples – 5 kg of apples
Water – 6 L
Honey or sugar – 1,5 kg
Method of preparation
Sour forest or garden apples cut into 4 parts. Put it in a clean canvas or linen bag, tie it up and place it in a clean enameled dish with a lid or a wooden barrel with a false bottom.
Top with a wooden, preferably mesh, circle, press down with a load so that the apples do not rise, and pour syrup from boiled water and honey or sugar.
Cover the dishes with a cloth and leave to ferment in the cellar.
After 4-5 weeks, making sure that the cider is fermented, carefully pour into a clean dish and leave in the cellar.
Pour the pulp with the same syrup in the volume of the drained cider and after 4-5 weeks again drain the fermented cider into a clean dish, and pour the pulp for the third time.
Mix the cider of all the plums and set aside in a cold place until it ferments well (usually 6-9 months).
Fermented, settled, transparent apple cider is bottled, corked and kept for another 3-4 weeks in the cellar.
Forest apple cider
Sort out wild apples collected in August, remove spoiled and damaged fruits and let them mature well.
At the bottom of the prepared barrel with a hole for a sleeve 10-14 cm in diameter, put some dried apples and fill 3/4 of the volume with fresh ones.
Pour apples with cold boiled water, cork the barrel and put in the cellar for 4-5 weeks for fermentation.
After draining the finished cider, pour boiled water over the pulp again and repeat this throughout the winter, spring and even summer, until the apples get wet.
Drained apple cider is stored in the cellar. This cider is stable, but it can be very sour, so you can add sugar or juice and a little baking soda to it before drinking, you get a delicious fizzy drink.
Dried apple cider
Cider is best obtained from peeled fruits before drying (without skin and seed box), cut into slices and dried in the sun.
Method of preparation
Pour dried fruits into a prepared barrel or glass bottle and pour cold boiled water (1 liters per 10 kg).
Close with a cloth and, without clogging, put in a cool room for 2-4 days, and then transfer to the cellar, where it is kept until the drink ferments.
At the beginning of fermentation, clog the barrel with cider with a cork (tongue) and leave it in the cellar for 3-4 weeks. The quality of such cider will increase if it is bottled at the beginning of fermentation, putting a raisin in each.
Place tightly closed bottles in the basement or cellar in the sand in a lying position and store until use.
Apple cider recipe according to Brockhaus and Efron
To obtain a sweet cider intended for immediate consumption, one should take 1 part of tart apples and 2 parts of sweet ones, but if the cider is supposed to be stored for a long time, then, on the contrary, 2 parts of tart apples and 1 part of sweet ones; at the same time, it is necessary to mix such varieties of apples that ripen at the same time.
Method of preparation
Ripe and soft apples and pears should be pressed immediately after picking and crushing.
After rapid fermentation, the wine is poured with yeast (that is, from the thick that has settled to the bottom of the vat) into clean barrels in which there is a quiet fermentation; if it does not start, then add pure beet sugar 800-1200 g per 8 buckets to young cider.
The fruits must be washed and cleaned before crushing; dishes (vats, barrels, tubs, mugs, etc.) must also be impeccably clean. Some dilute the must of apples and pears with water in an amount: in the first case – 5-8%, in the second – 10-15%.
Pressed pulp is poured with water, which after 10-12 hours is pressed again, and the resulting liquid is mixed with the initially separated pure must. If the must is diluted with water, then for every 8 buckets of the latter, 9-11 kg of sugar should be taken, which is mixed with the must before or during fermentation.
Ready cider, before bottling, if it is cloudy, is cleaned either with fresh wine yeast in an amount of 5-10%, or with skimmed milk (4/5 cups for 8 buckets).
They also prepare apples: tinctures and liqueurs, liquor, wine, moonshine, home brew.
Relevance: 03.07.2018
Tags: Beer, Cider, Ale, Cider Recipes