Easy Hard Apple Cider Recipes

HOMEMADE HARD APPLE CIDER

Steps:

• In large stock pot, combine apple cider with the sugar. Heat to almost boiling, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Continue to heat for about 45 minutes - never allowing it to come to a boil. Remove from heat, cover with sanitized pot lid. (If you don't have a 7-10 gallon stock pot or turkey fryer, you can do this in batches.)
• Once mixture has cooled to room temperature, use a sanitized funnel to transfer cooled mixture to a sanitized 6.5-7.5 gallon fermenter. Using clean hands and sanitized utensils, add any flavoring ingredients you'll be using to the fermenter. Go easy on the flavorings - you can always add more later, but cannot take it away if you overdo it!.
• Using sanitized equipment, take a gravity reading. Keep track of the number! (This is an optional step, but will allow you to calculate your final ABV %)
• Sprinkle yeast into fermenter, cover with sanitized air lock. Let sit, undisturbed, overnight.
• Within 48 hours, you should notice fermentation activity - bubbles in the airlock, carbonation and /or swirling in the cider must. This means you're good to go! Put the carboy somewhere cool (not cold!), and leave it alone for a month or so.
• Using sanitized equipment, rack the clarified cider off the sediment, into a clean, freshly sanitized 6.5 gallon carboy. Cap with sanitized airlock, leave it alone for another 2-3 months.
• When you've let it clarify as much as you have patience for - with no more sediment being produced - you can move on to bottling:
• For uncarbonated cider:
• Using sanitized equipment, take a final gravity reading, then rack the cider into clean, sanitized beer bottles, and cap them. Allow to age for a month or so before drinking. (Like wine, the flavor improves with age!)
• For naturally carbonated cider:
• In a small pot, mix together 1 cup of water with 1 cup of sugar or brown sugar. Use a sanitized funnel to pour this into a sanitized large carboy. Rack the cider over into this carboy, swirling it as you go. Bottle cider as described in the previous step. Allow to age at least a month or two - residual yeast will ferment the added sugar, carbonating the cider.
• Alternatively, you can rack the cider (without the added sugar syrup!) into a keg and force carbonate it, if you have the set up for that. That's what we did with our last batch, and blew through it pretty quick during the tornado clean up! Chilled hard apple cider is just what's needed for that sort of thing, LOL!
• Enjoy.. and start planning for next year's batch(es)!

EASY APPLE CIDER

Steps:

• In a slow cooker, combine apple cider and cinnamon sticks. Wrap allspice and cloves in a small piece of cheesecloth, and add to pot. Stir in brown sugar. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat, and keep warm.

HOW TO MAKE HARD CIDER IN 5 EASY STEPS

Steps:

• The hardest part of making cider is getting the juice out of those apples, and for that you need a cider press. To make it affordable, we co-bought this high quality cider press. My video shows the apples being ground to a pulp, the cider being pressed, and then us pouring the cider into a carboy.
• We pour the cider right from the press directly into the carboy though a strainer and funnel, as you can see in the video above. When almost full, we pop the airlock on and stow it out of the way in a cool spot in the house out of direct sunlight (we place it in our homestead root cellar).
• Then ... just do nothing. Organic or unsprayed apples, like grapes and other fruits, grow with naturally occurring yeast right on their skins, so your fresh cider will start fermenting almost immediately. (Which means those microscopic yeast cells will start "eating" the sugars in the juice and "excreting" alcohol and carbon dioxide gas).
• The initial fermenting process will create bubbles and foam caused by the release of carbon dioxide, which can come up through the airlock and sometimes clog it, (especially if you haven't strained out larger apple chunks), so monitor this during the first few days, and clean the foam out of the airlocks.
• Alternately, you could use a large diameter hose the size of your carboy jar opening (sometimes called a blow-off tube) fitted snugly into the opening with the far end curved down into another smaller jar of water, that allows the foam to bubble out safely without clogging for the first few days, and then you can install the air locks.
• And that's it! Hard cider is on the way. Now all you need to do is wait for the bubbling to slow and stop, signifying that most or all of the sugar left in the juice has been digested by the yeast, and converted into alcohol (and CO2). This could take several weeks or up to several months, depending on a variety of factors including temperature, initial sugar in the apples, yeast vigor, etc.

HOMEMADE APPLE CIDER

Steps:

• Place apples in a large stockpot and add enough water cover by at least 2 inches. Stir in sugar, cinnamon, and allspice. Bring to a boil. Boil, uncovered, for 1 hour. Cover pot, reduce heat, and simmer for 2 hours.
• Strain apple mixture though a fine mesh sieve. Discard solids. Drain cider again though a cheesecloth lined sieve. Refrigerate until cold.