Many of my friends ask me how I make my cider. Here is my step by step method:
Step 1: Harvest ingredients
I guess if you wanted you could buy all the ingredients but I like having a garden so I went out and picked the rhubarb required. And I picked an arm full! The strawberries I used were some that I had previously frozen. For this batch I took 5 of my ziplock bags of frozen strawberries.
Step 2: Make Juice
I used 2 pots in this step for boiling because of the size of the pots I own and how much juice I needed. In the end I hope to fill a 5 gallon carboy so I used a 4 gallon pot and a 2 gallon pot. I chopped the rhubarb onto large chunks and added the frozen strawberries, then filled the pot with water up to the height of the fruit. Bring the whole pot to a boil. This usually ends up happening for me in the evening so I just turn it off and leave it till the morning at this point, as I don’t like burning myself with hot juice and you need it to be room temperature to add the yeast in the next step.
Step 3: Fill Carboy
I wash the carboy out with sanitizing solution as any foreign bacteria could spoil the batch. Then with a measuring cup I scoop the juice into the carboy. I don’t want all the pulp, but the juice doesn’t need to be clear.
I use a sieve to help separate the juice from the pulp.
Side note:
After I get all the juice in the carboy I let the pulp sit in the sieve for a few more hours over the pot to let any more juice drain out. This juice is delicious to drink fresh with or without gin or vodka 😉
Back to the carboy, now I add sugar. I added 32 cups of sugar to this batch.
This may be a little excess, but sugar turns to alcohol. So you can decide how much you want to add. 😉
I typically add enough sugar to make it be a sweet tasting juice that I would enjoy drinking.
Next I add some more water, more so to wash any sugar that’s stuck to the funnel into the carboy. My juice is quite syrupy so it can use the water. If your juice is thin I would not add water.
Don’t forget to stir it! After stirring
I pour some into a cup to taste and to check the sugar content.
For this juice the cider content at the moment is 1.125.
Later on when I bottle this I will check the sugar again and do the following calculation to get the alcohol content.
Original sugar a.k.a original gravity – new sugar a.k.a final gravity * 131.25 = % alcohol
Step 4: Add Yeast and Air-lock
This step is pretty simple and self-explanatory. Pour 1 packet of yeast in and cap the bottle with an air-lock. Remember to add water into the air-lock so gasses can escape but unwanted bacteria can’t enter.
I use champagne yeast as it is readily available at my local beer and wine supply store. Soon I will experiment with other yeasts, but for now this is the one I’m using.
Step 5: Let it Ferment
The key things to remember when making cider is that you are working with a yeast, yeast likes sugar to grow and body temperature to survive.
I store my carboy in a closet that also has my gas hot water tank, that gives it a nice temperature to make it happy.
It will have to sit for about a month before I can bottle it. But after a couple of days you should see the fermentation happening.
And after a month there should be sediment on the bottom.
Other things to think about, always leave room in your jug/carboy for any bubbling that may take place during fermentation. If you are less then 2/3 full find a smaller container to ferment in.
When I use a 1 gallon jug size, I use 1/4 – 1/2 of the packet of yeast.
Happy cider making all 😊
Amity and Me 