How To Make Cider From Apples
How to make cider from apples you’ve grown at home, picked from a local farm, or even just bought at the regular grocery store. Apple picking is such a fun way to spend fall, and this post shows just what to do with all those fresh, crisp apples.
Today’s post is a guest post from my home brewing (or “homebrew enthusiast” as he calls himself) hubby, Nick MacQuarrie.
This post contains affiliate links, and we may earn from qualifying purchases.
Smash Day: An Origin Story
In our Fantasy Football group there are about six people with birthdays in the last week of October. We make this cider as a way of gathering during the weekend to watch sports, grind apples, and listen to kids running around. We get together in September so the cider will be ready by our birthdays, and just in time for our Halloween party. Our goal is to collectively bring enough apples for a five gallon batch of “Smash Party” cider. The clever name comes from our process, since we smash the apples into juice to brew our cider. As it turns out we need just over one hundred pounds of apples.
What Types Of Apples To Use
I have found that using one variety of apple can make a really decent cider, but when you combine different varieties it can produce a more complex flavor. We had a combination of four apples for this batch. We brought Honeycrisp and Fuji to share from our trees. One friend brought some Gala apples, and another brought an unidentified variety that we are guessing are Granny Smith. We are expecting good results from this combination.
Set Up
We start by getting stations set up to speed up the process. We have a rinsing station, a chopping station, a grinding station, and a pressing station. If you take a turn at each station you get bonus points for being extra cool.
The Process
We rinse the apples first to get rid of any dirt. We just use a garden hose in a clean wheelbarrow. Next we get tubs, buckets, and baskets for people to bring to their chopping station to cut out any yucky spots. These are organic homegrown apples and we don’t want any brown spots, icky stuff, or worms from any apples that go in our cider. This part of the process seems pretty fun because I hear a lot of laughter coming from that side of the kitchen.
This is our second annual Smash Party. One of the biggest takeaways from last year was that we don’t necessarily NEED a grinder but it sure makes things easier and a heck of a lot faster. We wore out a food processor and came up with a few unconventional ways to crush, chop, and mince apples.
In other words, you don’t NEED the grinder—but yes, you do. Get the grinder.
I cobbled together a grinding station out of a couple of saw horses with an apple grinder screwed to a plank of wood. The grinding station seems to be the most exciting spot, and the kids really enjoy helping out in ten second increments.
Pressing Apples
Next we transfer the mashed up apples to the press. The press is set up in a way that the juice goes straight into the fermenting vessel, or in this case, a six gallon sanitized carboy. It works best if you have a couple of people to sub in. Sometimes pressing can be hard work. It takes a few hours, but we end up with close to six gallons of juice. We use five gallons for the hard cider and reward the little ones for their help with a couple glasses of fresh sweet cider and sandwiches.
Sanitizing
The most important step with any brewing or cider making adventure is sanitation. Organic apples will always have wild bacteria and yeast, so we have to do something about that. There are two ways to get rid of these. You can pasteurize the juice (Pasteurize the juice by heating it to 160 F, and hold that temp for ten minutes), or add 1/4 teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite to the fresh pressed juice to speed things up.
Yeast
Next, we pitch the yeast to start the fermentation process. We use Mangrove Jack’s MO2 cider yeast . It should produce excellent flavor depth, and give us a crisp dry cider. It’s been a week since we added the yeast and the airlock is still dancing.
Carbonation
You don’t always need to carbonate the cider you make at home. If you don’t, it would be called a “still” cider. We like cider with a little snap to it so after about ten days of fermenting, I will transfer the cider to a keg where I will start force-carbonating with CO2. After about three days of carbonating the cider is ready to drink, but in this case we will store it in the keg for another month until late October when the Fantasy Football crew gets together. The fall season is always my favorite time of year to talk trash, wish happy birthdays, and sip cider with the people I call friends.
How To Make Hard Cider From Apples
- Get apples. 100 pounds makes about 5 gallons of juice. Get them from your yard, your friend’s farm, or the grocery store.
- Wash apples. Rinse to remove dirt & debris.
- Cut apples. Just get the yucky stuff off. Rotten spots are not good for cider.
- Grind apples. Try to make it look like applesauce. Small chunks are OK.
- Press apples. Turn them into juice. Collect juice in a sanitized glass or plastic carboy.
- Sanitize apple juice. Pasteurize the juice by heating it to 160 F, hold that temp for ten minutes, and let it cool to around 70 F for fermentation. This could take quite a while. You could also use potassium metabisulfite to kill wild bacteria and yeast. Use ¼ teaspoon for five gallons of juice if you go this route.
- Add yeast. If you pasteurized, add yeast when the temperature hits 70 degrees. If you used potassium metabisulfite, add the yeast as soon as you put it in the carboy. Some people use a packet of bread yeast with good results. We used Mangrove Jack’s cider yeast. You’ll need an airlock to prevent germs and bugs from getting in. Ferment apple juice by keeping it still in a dark, room temperature space. It will take around ten days to finish fermentation, and at that point you will have hard cider.
- Carbonate cider. If you want. The easiest way is to force carbonate in a keg. Transfer the cider to a sanitized keg and attach a 5 CO2 tank. Set it to 30 P.S.I. In three days it should be ready to go.
- Drink cider. With people you like. Tell everyone you know that you made hard cider and it was awesome.
Non Alcoholic Cider
You of course don’t need to make your cider hard. If you prefer non alcoholic, you can drink it straight from the press. If you need to store it for any length of time, though, you should still pasteurize it.
Looking for more ideas? Check out these posts.
- How to Grow, Harvest, and Store Potatoes
- Concord Grape Pie (Gluten Free Vegan)
- Make Vegetable Stock for Free
- Blueberry Pancakes (Gluten Free Vegan)
- Raspberry Leaf Tea
New To Urban Homesteading?
Try our exclusive urban homesteading course, Homestead in the City!
About Nick
I want to start this out by saying that I am not a professional brewer by any means. I am more of a homebrew enthusiast with about eight years of experience. I have made about thirty batches of homebrew and cider. No beer or cider has turned out so bad that I needed to dump it and some has turned out so good that I needed to share with friends so I could brag. This shouldn’t be considered a step by step tutorial of how to make cider but more of a story of how a group of friends got from home grown apples in galvanized tubs to a cold, crispy, bubbly, organic hard apple cider.
Homebrew Enthusiast & Urban Homesteader
Just getting started? Grab our free guide, The Beginner’s Guide To Urban Homesteading
I love this piece on cider making! The five common apple trees I planted 25 years ago are starting to produce bushels ( in good years with less June frosts 😉 and I want to begin accruing equipment to chase the cider dream. As soon as I saw it, I fell in love with the carboy. I’ll be sure to come to The Little Green Shoot for all my equipment Amazon links and instructions when I’m fully funded! Thank you.
Yay! That is so exciting. Definitely come back when you’re ready. I tried to make it a one stop shop for everything you need. Your apples sound lovely!