Homemade Apple Cider

Method

1. 1Prepare the juice and the fermenter. Get the equipment together before you start: besides the fermenter you need an airlock, a hydrometer, a siphon tube, a second vessel of 4.5 to 5 litres, bottles made for fizzy drinks and a food-safe sanitiser from a home-brew shop (each is explained in the step where it is used). For 4.5 litres of juice you need roughly 7 to 9 kg of apples and a fruit press or an electric juicer; without either, buy the juice. Wash the apples, cut out any rot and core them, but keep the skins, which carry tannin. For a press, first crush or grate the apples to a coarse pulp, because a press gets very little juice out of whole pieces; a juicer takes them as they are. Then press or juice in batches and strain through cheesecloth. Shop-bought juice should be cloudy and unfiltered; ascorbic acid on the label is fine, but potassium sorbate or sodium benzoate will stop the yeast. Pour the juice into a clean, sanitised fermenter that holds at least 6 litres, so the foam of the first days has room. If the juice is fresh or unpasteurised, crush 1 Campden tablet (the usual dose is 1 tablet per 4.5 litres, a British gallon), stir it in until it dissolves, cover, and leave for 24 hours. The tablet knocks out the wild yeasts and bacteria that come in on the apple skins and would otherwise spoil the cider; the yeast you add would suffer too if it went in sooner. Pasteurised juice needs neither the tablet nor the wait.
2. 2Sweeten and add the yeast. After the 24 hours, stir 225 g of sugar (50 g per litre for 4.5 litres) into the juice until it dissolves; its only job is to raise the final strength. Leave it out and the juice ferments on its own sugar to the usual 5 to 6%. Check the temperature of the juice: 18 to 22°C is ideal. Sprinkle the dry yeast over the surface and add the yeast nutrient in the dose given on its packet, because apple juice is short on the nitrogen yeast needs. Close the fermenter and fit an airlock, a small plastic valve half-filled with water that sits in the lid or bung: it lets the carbon dioxide out and keeps air and fruit flies from getting in. Within 12 to 24 hours at room temperature the airlock should start to bubble.
3. 3Ferment for 1 to 2 weeks. Keep the fermenter at room temperature (18 to 22°C), out of direct sunlight. The vigorous bubbling of the first few days slows to an occasional bubble. A quiet airlock only means fermentation has slowed, not that it has finished. Check with a hydrometer (a cheap glass float from any home-brew shop). To take a reading, draw off enough cider with a sanitised ladle to fill a tall, narrow glass or measuring cylinder, lower the hydrometer in and let it float freely, then read the scale at eye level, at the bottom of the curve the liquid forms around the stem. Don't pour the sample back; drink it or throw it away. Fermentation is over when the reading stays the same for 3 days in a row, usually at 1.000 or slightly below, and the cider starts to clear. Taste it: it should be dry and slightly tart and smell clean, with no hint of vinegar.
4. 4Rack and clear. Siphon the cider off the sediment into a clean, sanitised second vessel: a siphon is simply a food-grade plastic tube that moves the liquid by gravity when the full fermenter stands higher than the empty vessel. This transfer is called racking. Keep the end of the tube above the sediment and let the cider run down the side of the new vessel without splashing. A demijohn of 4.5 to 5 litres is the right size: the fuller it ends up, the less air is left above the cider. Fit the airlock again and leave the cider to clear for another 3 to 5 days. At this point you can already drink it as still cider: dry, tart and tasting plainly of apple.
5. 5Bottle for sparkling cider, but only after the hydrometer reading has held steady for 3 days: if sugar is still fermenting, the priming sugar adds to it and the bottles can build enough pressure to burst. Wash and sanitise the bottles, their caps and the siphon tube first. Put exactly 4 g of sugar (1 level teaspoon) into each empty 500 ml bottle, then siphon the cider in without stirring up the sediment, leaving 2 to 3 cm of space under the cap. The yeast still in the cider eats this sugar inside the sealed bottle and makes the bubbles. Use only bottles made for fizzy drinks: swing-top or crown-cap beer bottles, or plastic soda bottles; never jars or wine bottles. Fill a plastic soda bottle as a tester. Keep all the bottles at room temperature, in a closed box or cupboard in case one does burst, and squeeze the tester every day: it usually takes 5 to 7 days, longer in a cool room, and once the tester is firm and hard to squeeze, move every bottle to the fridge. Chill for at least 3 days before opening, and open the first bottle over the sink. Kept cold, the cider stays good for several months, though it does not improve with long ageing.