I can only assume that this was a wild, top-fermenting yeast strain, as it seems to have done nothing awful to the cider so far!Ĭlean and sterilise your equipment (demijohns, syphon, stoppers & airlocks) carefully this time, following the directions on your steriliser. When I opened the bucket, I found rather an alarming-looking layer of yeast floating on the surface of the cider. Now it’s time to ‘rack’ the cider into demijohns for bulk conditioning. Once fermentation seems to have stopped (I gave mine a generous month), you’ll have a nice thick layer of debris on the bottom of the bucket with cider above it. In general, the cider will not clear completely, but it will be brighter than it was before. During fermentation, the dead yeast and quite a bit of the solids from the apple juice will settle out in the bottom of the bucket, and the colour of the juice changes from brown to a yellow-orange. You’ll be able to tell fermentation has started when you see bubbles through your airlock, or when a nice loose foam starts to form on top of your apple juice (because you’re not peeping, right?). Mine went by the fire in the living room for the first few days, as we were having a bit of a cold-snap. If it doesn’t, just fit the lid loosely so that the gas produced during fermentation will be able to escape without blowing the lid off! Put your bucket in a nice warm place and try to avoid peeping. If your bucket does have an airlock, after adding the yeast and nutrient close the lid tightly and set up the airlock. My experience from beer brewing is that the CO2 produced during fermentation will give a good blanket over the brewing liquor, being heavier than air, and oxidation shouldn’t be a problem at this stage as long as you don’t disturb the fermenting juice. I didn’t have an airlock capable bucket available so just kept the lid loosely on.

There is lots of advice that you should ferment your cider under lock. Invest in a glass hydrometer (they’re cheap, easy to use with a bit of practice, and ever such pretty bits of old-fashioned looking laboratory glassware), you won’t regret it! I didn’t test my juice (do as I say not as I do, right?), but it tasted nice and sweet so I think it’s likely my cider is about the 6% mark. You’re aiming for a minimum of about 3.5% ABV, real ciders can easily get up to about 8%. This is relevant both for keeping your driving licence, and for making sure your cider contains enough sugar, and therefore after fermentation, enough alcohol, to keep well.

You should probably take the specific gravity of your apple juice before you start fermenting, as this will tell you something quite important – with a bit of arithmetic (or there are online SG to ABV calculators out there you could avail yourself of) you should be able to work out how alcoholic your cider ends up. I decided to go a third route, didn’t use any campden, but did add wine yeast and yeast nutrient to give the process a ‘kick-start’ and make sure that an appropriate culture was at least in there with a fighting chance! There is an alternative approach which involves using campden (sulphite) tablets to kill off the wild yeasts and then adding some wine or cider yeast of your own, which with any luck should guaranteed a ‘clean’ culture of your chosen yeast strain. Traditional ‘real cider’ makers would do nothing with it at this stage, and wait for the natural yeasts which you hope are already present on the apples to do their job and get fermenting. Now, time to turn your wonderful juice into cider (for any Americans who might be reading, we mean hard cider – the traditional alcoholic sort). For recommendations of UK homebewing equipment suppliers, see the suppliers list. All my demijohns have come from Freecycle, so it’s worth keeping your eyes open. Enough demijohns (plus stoppers and airlocks) to contain the volume of apple juice you’ve collected.A nice warm location at about 18 – 21 degrees celsius.Wine or cider yeast, and yeast nutrient.Your apple juice (which is already in a fermenting bucket with any luck – you’ll need the lid, if it’s one with a hole for an airlock, so much the better – if so, you’ll also need an airlock).On a lovely bright November weekend, I pressed a load of apples for cider-making.įor the next part of the process, you need to put together the following bits and bobs:

Apple juice glass bottle name