Two of my ciders make it to the NHC Final Round!

Two of my ciders that were entered in the National Homebrew Competition (US) have placed 2nd and 3rd in their region, and so will progress to the final round. I’m really pleased!

Making cider with a juicer

I don’t own an apple press, but I do have a juicer.  Some of the juice I’ve got this year has come from big pressing days, using other peoples’ presses, but I’ve also made some using the juicer.  It does work, but the juicer grumbles a little, so it’s best to do it in stages.  I’ve also found that you get quite a lot of foam (think about when you get those posh fresh juices in cafes) on top of the juice from the way the juicer works, which it seems best to strain.  You will also get quite a bit of juice from the pulp left over, which can either be re-juiced or strained into your fermenting vessel.

Not a strategy for any real volume, but doable on single demijohn scale.  There is still hope for those who don’t own a press!

Cidermaking Process

I just bottled my first cider, made from windfalls, and I have more on the go.  It’s a very straightforward process.  I used the wild yeast from the apples, but if this doesn’t get going in three days a cider yeast should be added.  The process is shown well in these diagrams from Real Cidermaking on a Small Scale:

Cidermaking process

Cider

I picked up a load of windfall apples at work today.  I was thinking about making jelly, but decided on cider.  About 20 lb of apples will produce a gallon of juice.  I don’t have a cider press, so I used a juicer to extract the juice and strained the pulp.

It’s really simple, just extract juice and put in a demijohn as I’m hoping the wild yeast will do the fermentation for me (I’ll know because brown foam will come out the top of the demijohn), but if not I’ll add yeast in a couple of days time.

Update: The wild yeast got going and I left the cider for 3 weeks until I fermentation had abated, and I had a cloudy cider.  I then racked the cider bringing through a little yeast and topped the demijohn up to a gallon with a sugar syrup of 200g sugar and warm water with some extra cold water to fill it to the neck.  I started with a juice with an OG of 1.038, and adding the sugar should bring it up to 1.055 giving me a cider that is about 6.5%.  I’ll now leave this until fermentation is finished and bottle it!