—Anonymous verse, Devon, England
Hard cider has always suffered from an identity crisis of sorts, stuck in the alcoholic no-man’s-land between beer and wine. Even today, when interest in cider is high and sales of major commercial brands are soaring, many people don’t quite know what to make of hard cider—what it should taste like, when to serve or drink it. Americans, especially, are still in the process of reinventing a “cider culture,” gradually rediscovering the refreshing and distinctive drink that has played such a prominent role in our historical and folk traditions. And although cider will probably never regain the stature it had in colonial days, when the average person quaffed 35 gallons in a year’s time, the current proliferation of choices and products in the marketplace bodes well for cider’s future.
The continued popularity of homebrewing, and the explosion in the number of microbrewed beers since the 1980s, is evidence of a strong demand for high-quality, craft-brewed beverages with a regional or connoisseur appeal. And cider is a natural extension of this trend: For one thing, hard cider is much easier to make than beer, and is ready for drinking much sooner than homemade wine, which typically needs to mature anywhere from six months to a year in the bottle. It’s also cheap to produce: In a recent fall season, the wholesale price of fresh local cider stood at $6.25 for a 5-gallon carboy, filled right at the orchard. Even if you have to pay the full retail price ($6 a gallon or more), sweet cider is still very affordable, particularly when you are turning it into a “value-added” hard cider for your own consumption. As cider author and consultant Paul Correnty likes to say, “It’s the cheapest buzz you can get in a bottle.”
Redfield apples on the tree. A modern American apple developed at Geneva, New York, in the 1930s and “discovered” and popularized by the late, great dean of American cidermakers, Terry Maloney, Redfield makes a distinctive coppery-rose hard cider.
If everyone knew how simple and inexpensive it was to make wonderful hard cider at home, millions of people would be doing it. You don’t need a degree in chemistry or microbiology; you don’t need to buy specialized brewing equipment like a wort chiller or a lauter tun; you don’t even need to sacrifice half of your garage to the operation. The main ingredients that go into creating a traditional, all-natural hard cider are nothing but good unpasteurized juice and a bit of patience. Books that explain cidermaking may intimidate first-timers, because of the sheer number of variables and details that can be involved in the process. Fear not. Whenever I get confused or frustrated, I always think back to the ancient Celts. After all, they were making cider more than two thousand years ago—are we really any less intelligent or capable than they were?
This chapter offers a basic introduction to home cidermaking, providing all the information you need to make a successful first batch of still (uncarbonated) or sparkling hard cider in the traditional English or “farmhouse” style. First, I’ll outline the general steps involved in the cidermaking process, then go on to discuss in much more depth the equipment, ingredients, and other relevant topics. Once you have produced your first batch of cider and gained some experience, you may be inspired to try your hand at making different styles of cider or apple wine (see chapter 5), or to consult other sources and read up on more advanced techniques (see chapter 10). For now, though, it’s enough to understand in general terms what is going on throughout the entire process, from the unfermented juice stage to that moment of truth when the bottle is opened and you decant the golden fluid—impressing your family, your friends, and maybe even yourself.
About ten days after pressing, sweet cider starts to “turn” and gets increasingly fizzy, as yeasts and other microflora in the juice begin to convert sugars into ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide. The cidermaker’s job is simply to encourage the kind of microbial activity that will ensure a successful fermentation and produce a good-tasting, stable hard cider, and at the same time to discourage or impede unwelcome organisms, which can spoil fermentation, create off-flavors or aromas, and take the cider beyond the alcohol stage, resulting in acetification—the conversion of alcohol to acetic acid, or vinegar.
Or think of it another way—in terms of gardening or farming. Your role as the “yeast farmer” is to create the conditions in which good cider-making yeasts and other useful organisms will thrive, while at the same time suppressing or eliminating “weed” species, like acetic acid bacteria, that can cause problems. A real, natural hard cider, like a garden plot, plays host to millions of tiny living organisms, many of which continue to work even after the cider is in the bottle and safely ensconced in your cellar—just as the garden ecosystem doesn’t completely shut down after the crops have been harvested, the geese have flown south, and the snows are blanketing the land.
Various factors can influence the taste and quality of the final hard cider. One is the nature of the fresh, unfermented juice you are starting with: how much sugar it contains, as well as the relative amounts of acids, tannins, and other substances that contribute to the finished body, character, and taste of the cider. Another is the kind of yeast you use (wild yeasts or a variety of commercial yeasts) and the temperature at which fermentation takes place: Cooler temperatures generally result in a slower fermentation; higher temperatures, a faster one. I will go into more detail later in this chapter. In the meantime, the following list presents a brief overview of the basic steps involved in turning sweet cider into a natural hard cider:
1. Fill a fermentation vessel (jug or carboy) nine-tenths full of sweet cider. That would mean leaving out half a gallon of juice in a 5-gallon carboy, or a little less than a pint from a gallon jug. Cover the container loosely with plastic wrap and place it in a cool location out of direct sunlight.
2. In a few days, the cider should begin to froth up vigorously and “boil over.” Remove the plastic wrap and let the cider continue to cleanse itself. Wipe off the sides of the container every day to remove any scummy residue.
3. Once this vigorous fermentation subsides (which might take a week or more, depending on the temperature), clean off the sides and neck of the container as much as possible. Fill up the vessel with fresh cider, leaving about a 2-inch headspace at the top. Fit the jug or carboy with a fermentation lock filled with boiled or sanitized water to exclude air.
4. Let the cider continue to ferment slowly for a month or two, until the steady glub-glub of escaping carbon dioxide slows down considerably and the cider begins to clear. There will be a lot of sediment on the bottom of the container.
5. Insert a siphon hose and rack the cider off into another clean container, leaving the lees, or sediment, behind. Place a fermentation lock filled with a new water solution on top. Let the cider continue to age and mellow for another month or two.
6. Approximately four to five months after you’ve started, the cider should be completely fermented to dryness, or nearly so, and ready for bottling. The cider’s flavor will improve if it is aged in the bottle for another month or two before drinking.
And that, in its simplest terms, covers the basic, no-frills cidermaking process, one that will produce a dry, still (uncarbonated), traditional farm-style cider. Because fermentation temperatures and other conditions will vary from house to house, it’s good to use the directions above as a guideline for what you can expect and approximately how long the whole process should take.
However, the process outlined above assumes that you are making cider in the traditional way: that is, without any added sugar or other ingredients; relying on wild rather than cultured yeast strains; and without the use of sulfites, yeast nutrients, or other fermentation aids. All of these ingredients are optional, but in many cases they are used by home cidermakers to achieve more predictable and consistent results. I’ll describe all of these options in the course of this chapter; whether you decide to employ any or all of them is entirely up to you.
On your first attempt at cider, though, I would suggest trying a half-gallon control batch, using no added sugar, cultured yeast, or sulfites, just to see how the all-natural method works for you. You may be supremely underwhelmed by the results when you compare this test batch against other ciders. On the other hand, you might just find that the nothing-added cider has a better taste and aroma than anything else you’ve produced.
The following categories describe the main items you will need to purchase or scrounge before you start making hard cider at home. None of this equipment is prohibitively expensive or hard to find, and some of it (especially bottles and fermentation vessels) can be obtained for free as recycled materials.
Only utensils and containers that have been thoroughly cleansed and sanitized should come in contact with your cider, and then only ones that are made of plastic, glass, wood (mainly barrels or casks for fermenting), or stainless steel. Other metals, including copper, iron, and lead, will react with the acids in cider, and can irreparably spoil an otherwise good batch.
These can either be glass or plastic carboys (available from homebrewing and winemaking supply stores, usually ranging in size from 3 to 6.5 gallons) or recycled 1-gallon glass wine jugs. In terms of carboys, glass is preferable to plastic because it is transparent and allows you to keep a closer eye on fermentation and clarity.
Another option is to purchase a food-grade plastic fermentation pail, along with a lid that fits tightly and has a hole drilled into the top with a rubber grommet that will accept a fermentation airlock. These are useful for the first vigorous stage of fermentation, after which you can transfer the cider to a carboy or jug to continue the process.
For your first attempt at cidermaking, I recommend using the 1-gallon (4-liter) glass wine jugs. They cost nothing, as they’re usually easy to find in the recycling bins at your town’s transfer station or bottle redemption center. They are also available from many restaurant kitchens, or you can save your own if you buy cheap jug wine for cooking, for sangria making, or even (heaven forbid) for drinking.
The 1-gallon size is useful if you have limited space or if you decide to press and ferment single varieties of apples separately, either to blend the juices later or to bottle them individually after fermentation. For a first-timer, the gallon jug also means that if a particular batch of cider goes bad for some reason, you’re out only the cost of a single gallon of sweet cider.
Another useful size of container to have around the house is the half-gallon “growler,” which is commonly used by brewpubs and micro-breweries for take-out retail sales. These growlers come in handy for making small control or experimental batches of cider, or for bottling off a larger “party-sized” amount of finished hard cider.
Finally, a stainless steel or plastic funnel is essential for pouring and straining cider or other liquids into carboys and jugs.
Probably the most crucial piece of equipment for cidermaking is the fermentation lock (also called a water lock or airlock). These locks are small plastic gadgets that come in a variety of shapes—some cylindrical or globelike, others multichambered—and they are designed to be filled with sanitized water, which keeps both air and aerobic organisms away from the fermenting cider but allows carbon dioxide gas from the feeding yeasts to escape.
Some fermentation locks are designed to be screwed onto the top of a gallon or half-gallon container by means of a threaded circular adapter at their base. Others can be inserted into a bored rubber cork or stopper that fits snugly into the mouth of the fermentation vessel. Bring an empty gallon fermentation jug to the brewing supply store and check stopper sizes before you buy them. Depending on the mouth size of your jug or carboy, you will generally need a size 5½ to 6½ stopper; use the one that seems to fit best. Both the stoppers and the fermentation locks are inexpensive (usually less than a dollar apiece), but it’s frustrating to get home only to find that you should have purchased a larger or smaller cork, or that your airlock doesn’t fit easily yet snugly into the stopper’s bored hole.
The two most important measuring tools for the beginning cidermaker are a hydrometer and a thermometer.
The hydrometer is a blown-glass tube, weighted at the bottom with lead shot, that contains a piece of paper inside with three scales printed on it. This tool is used to check the fresh juice and, later, the fermenting or finished cider to determine its specific gravity, sugar content, and potential alcohol (see page 80). You can buy a decent triple-scale hydrometer for less than ten dollars from a beer or winemaking supply store or catalog, and for a few bucks more a glass or plastic tube that is used to hold the cider sample. The hydrometer is inserted into the cider and bobs up in the sample tube, allowing you to take a reading. The accuracy of these inexpensive hydrometers is not great, but it’s certainly good enough when you’re starting out. If and when you really get serious about your cider you probably will want to shop around for a better model from an online laboratory-supply store.
Fermentation lock
Hydrometer and sample jar
The thermometer is handy for monitoring the temperature of your fermentation room. One with a long sensor that can be inserted into a jug or bottle is useful for checking cider temperatures, or if you are making pasteurized apple juice (see chapter 3). Beer or winemaking supply stores also carry floating thermometers, which are quite handy as well. Another useful item is a long plastic wine thief, which enables you to draw a sample from the carboy or other fermenter for testing.
Along with these tools, a set or two of stainless-steel measuring spoons, a nested set of measuring cups, and a two-cup Pyrex measuring cup are essential. Odds are you will already have these items in your kitchen cupboard.
Racking, or drawing off cider from one fermentation vessel into another, is easily accomplished with a length of clear plastic vinyl tubing, available from most hardware stores. Get a couple of sizes and try siphoning with them to see how fast they draw off the liquid and how easily you can manage the flow. Experiment with tubing that has an inside diameter measuring ¼, 
, or ⅜ inch to see which size works best for you. Usually a four-foot length of tubing is sufficient, and it will cost between one and two dollars. An optional but useful item is a bottle filler, a rigid plastic wand that fits onto the end of the siphon tube, filling when the tip touches the bottom of the jug or bottle and stopping the flow when it’s lifted.
A quick note here about racking hygiene. Many home cidermakers, myself included, start the siphon by simply sucking on one end of the plastic tubing and closing the end off with their thumb until the tube has been inserted in the sanitized and rinsed receiving vessel (jug, carboy, or bottle). Other, more fastidious, people consider this a most unsanitary practice, and so they use small siphon pumps to start the suction. Either method is fine, but just know that the organisms that generally inhabit the human mouth will not survive in cider to breed and infect it, or us. Beyond that, it’s a question of your own comfort level. My suggestion, if you’re squeamish, yet frugal, is to rinse your mouth out with vodka before racking, if it affords you peace of mind.
There’s no reason in the world to go out and buy bottles when they probably go begging at your town’s recycling center every weekend. It makes very little sense to pay maybe a quarter for the cider and other ingredients that you put in the bottle and then spend a dollar for the bottle itself. Save your own bottles throughout the year and scrounge around at the dump or a restaurant or bar for the others.
Still ciders (those that are noncarbonated and either fully fermented to dryness or stabilized to prevent further yeast activity) can go into just about any kind of wine or other bottle. Sparkling ciders (those with added pressure from natural or forced carbonation) require stronger beer or champagne bottles to avoid accidental and violent bursting. American champagne bottles generally have a smaller mouth (26 mm) and will accept a crimped (or crown) bottle cap as well as a cork; French champagne bottles have a slightly larger mouth (29 mm), and usually won’t take a regular crown cap (though you can find caps with the “long skirt” to fit the European bottles). Confirm this fact before you start to bottle, though; I once spent an hour or so cleaning and sanitizing about a dozen American champagne bottles and laboriously scrubbing off labels, only to find that I then couldn’t fit them with the regular crown caps I had on hand.
Other bottling equipment includes crown caps (not the twist-off kind), corks, and plastic champagne stoppers; wire cages for the champagne stoppers; and a hand corker or capper. A good two-handled lever corker currently costs less than forty dollars, and a two-handled bottle capper runs maybe half that much. Both are fine if you’re just getting started or not doing lots of bottling. However, if you continue making cider, wine, or beer, consider investing in a somewhat more expensive “one-handed” model of capper or corker, which sits on a base and will last a long time, plus make bottling much easier. Some models of cappers will require a larger “bell” fitting to work with the European-style champagne bottles.
It’s extremely important to keep fermentation vessels and all cidermaking equipment clean and sanitary, to protect cider from coming into contact with unwanted bacteria and other microorganisms that can spoil it. Regular household chlorine bleach is inexpensive and fine to use on glass and stainless steel. You don’t need much; add a quarter- to a half-cup of bleach to a glass fermentation vessel and fill it with water. Set aside for an hour or so, then scrub with a nylon bottle brush or carboy scrubber to get rid of any residues. Rinse out thoroughly with hot water, then cold, to get rid of any traces of bleach before adding fresh cider. Make up a bleach solution in a large bucket to soak the rest of your cidermaking equipment (measuring spoons, fermentation locks, hydrometer, plastic tubing, and so on) after every use.
Other sanitizing products include a chemical cleanser, sodium percarbonate, which is sold under the brand name B-Brite, as well as similar substances, available from all homebrewing supply stores. B-Brite costs more than chlorine bleach, but it has an advantage in that it sanitizes on contact (no waiting or soaking the equipment) and can then be rinsed off immediately.
Campden tablets (sodium or potassium metabisulfite) are often used in home-scale cider-and winemaking to release sulfur dioxide gas into the juice, where it kills or suppresses harmful bacteria and wild yeasts before the start of primary fermentation (see page 84). They are also sometimes added to cider at racking and bottling time to prevent oxidation and microbial activity. Regardless of whether you use them to sanitize juice, though, Campden tablets make a good sanitizing solution for rinsing equipment that will come in contact with cider and for filling plastic fermentation locks.
To make a sanitizing stock solution, crush a few Campden tablets in a mortar and pestle to make 2 teaspoons (or you can buy already pulverized sodium or potassium metabisulfite). Add this amount to 1 quart of water and dissolve along with 1 teaspoon of malic, citric, or tartaric acid, or a commercial acid blend. This addition is necessary because molecular sulfur dioxide (SO2) is only liberated and thus effective in the presence of acid (which is present in your juice, but not in plain water). You can then pour the solution into the airlocks. Changing the solution in the airlocks every few weeks during fermentation isn’t a bad idea, either.
A large standing freezer or a deep chest-type freezer is a handy appliance for home cidermakers to have—not because it’s needed for fermentation, but because you can store a few gallons of fresh sweet cider in it for later use when topping up fermentation containers. Many smaller orchards operate only seasonally, closing around Christmas or even earlier, so it’s wise to purchase extra sweet cider in the late fall when it is widely available and of a high quality and freeze it for winter and spring use. (Better yet, press some of your own sweet cider and freeze a supply of that.) When cider freezes, it forms “slip ice,” which expands but doesn’t shatter containers like water and other liquids do. So, when you are freezing a jug of cider, be sure to leave about 3 inches of head space to allow the frozen juice to expand without blowing its lid and seeping out.
Other items for the well-stocked cider operation include packaged aids for fermentation, such as cultured yeast strains, yeast nutrient, tannin powder, and malic acid. Whether you use any of these substances, or other additives, depends on both the style of cider you are making and the composition and balance of your unfermented juice. I’ll describe them on a case-by-case basis later. All of them are available, though, from a well-stocked homebrewing supply store.
Good hard cider starts with the fresh-pressed, unfermented juice of the apple (also known as the must), which comes straight from the plastic jug or cider press. And while it is possible to ferment an antiseptic kind of hard cider using pasteurized juice or juice concentrate, this is not the way to produce a natural, traditional cider at home. For one thing, natural enzymes in the juice are destroyed by heat pasteurization, so the resulting cider will remain cloudy instead of clearing during fermentation, unless you add a commercial pectic enzyme to the juice. And while the “cooked” taste of a heat-pasteurized juice will eventually disappear, much of the fresh, fruity flavor and delightful bouquet of a natural hard cider will be absent. In other words, it’s best to use only natural, unpasteurized, preservative-free sweet cider for making hard cider. Concerns about E. coli seem irrelevant in this case; to date there have been no reported cases of illness that have resulted from drinking fermented hard cider.
One exception to this rule is UV-treated cider. Although I still prefer using raw, natural cider as the basis for making the best hard cider, it is possible to find well-made UV-treated juice (often referred to as “UV-pasteurized” or “cold-pasteurized,” though it involves irradiation with ultraviolet light, not heat pasteurization). When done effectively, this process kills bacteria, including E. coli 0157:H7, while leaving the natural yeasts in the juice unaffected. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the UV treatment can slow down the start of natural fermentation, but not by very much. As mentioned earlier, though, avoid buying any juice for hard cidermaking that has been treated with a preservative to extend its shelf life, typically sodium benzoate or potassium sorbate.
Before you pour the sweet cider into your fermentation vessels, it’s important to test the specific gravity of the juice, using the hydrometer described above. The specific gravity (SG) measures the sugars and other soluble solids in the juice, on a scale where 1.000 is the equivalent of distilled water. For an accurate reading, measure the juice at the temperature to which your hydrometer is calibrated; typically this temperature is either 60°F (15.6°C) or 20°C (68°F); check your instructions or the printed scale inside the instrument. Insert the hydrometer into a sample jar filled about half full with cider. Then direct your eye to the bottom of the curve in the liquid (called the meniscus) and take your reading on the printed scale inside the instrument. Again, refer to the instructions that come with your hydrometer: If your juice isn’t at the nominal temperature, you can often find a conversion chart that allows you to adjust the observed reading (or see the temperature conversion chart in the Appendix).
Most American fresh ciders are pressed from a blend of dessert apples and will typically have a specific gravity between 1.040 and 1.050. If you allow a sweet cider with a 1.050 SG to ferment fully to dryness, it will result in a hard cider with around a 6.9 percent potential alcohol content. This is easy to see if you look at the corresponding columns on the hydrometer’s printed scales. Another measurement of sugar content in the juice is the Brix or Balling scale, which is also printed on most hydrometers. This measures the number of grams of sugar per 100 grams of solution; in the example above, a juice with an SG of 1.050 and a 6.9 percent potential alcohol content would measure roughly 13 degrees Brix.
The reason it’s important to measure the potential alcohol of a juice before fermentation is that low-alcohol ciders tend to be less stable than higher-alcohol ciders in storage, and they may permit unwanted microorganisms to continue working in the bottle, ones that would be inactive at a higher level of alcohol. If your juice has a specific gravity of less than 1.045 (less than about 6 percent potential alcohol), it is wise to add sugar to the juice to bring it up to at least that minimum SG reading. Also, if you are making a higher-alcohol product like New England–style cider, apple wine, or cyser (see chapter 5), you will want to add some form of sugar or other sweetener at this point. (For a table showing the equivalent values for degrees Brix, specific gravity, and potential alcohol, see the Appendix.)
Just how much sugar you add will depend on the natural sweetness of the juice and how much you intend to raise its specific gravity. The basic rule states that 2.25 ounces of sugar (or 3 ounces of honey) will raise the specific gravity of 1 gallon of juice by five points—for example, from 1.045 to 1.050 SG. To raise the SG by twenty points, from 1.045 to 1.065, you would add 2.25 ounces times 4, or about 9 ounces total (roughly equivalent to a rounded cupful of sugar per gallon). Sugar can either be added as is to the carboy or other fermentation vessel, or gently heated and dissolved in an equal amount of water, then cooled and poured into the juice.
What type of sugar you add depends on your personal preference and the recipe for the style of cider you are making. Cyser is the term for a cider that has been sweetened with honey, and all kinds of other sugars—from granulated cane sugar to light and even dark brown sugar—may be added. The cheapest option, and the one that you should start with when making basic cider, is plain old granulated sugar (sucrose). Sweet cider naturally contains some sucrose (around 15 percent of its sugar content, along with 74 percent fructose and 11 percent glucose), and the cane sugar becomes indistinguishable from the fruit sugars produced in nature once it comes in contact with the organic acids in the solution of apple juice. In other words, once it is in the juice, the sucrose can never be removed and reconstituted as cane sugar.
The two other major flavor components of fresh apple juice are acids and tannins, and, as with sugar, it’s good to know before fermentation whether you need to adjust the levels of either one. This is especially important if you are buying fresh sweet juice from an orchard or cider mill: You may not be able to find out exactly which varieties of apples were pressed, and in exactly what proportions. When you are pressing your own cider, you have much more control over the process and can make sure to blend in varieties of apples that will provide sufficient acids and tannins to the juice (see chapter 2 for a description of apple types and varieties).
Malic acid, the primary acid in apple cider, contributes a sharp taste to the fresh juice and a refreshing character to the fermented hard cider. Low-acid ciders taste flat and insipid; those with a high total acidity (above 0.7 or 0.8 percent) can be excessively sharp and harsh-tasting. An ideal level of total acidity in a juice is 0.3 to 0.5 percent. Acidity also helps guard against discoloration and discourages certain unwanted bacteria, thus helping to establish a dominant fermentation of the beneficial yeast strains and protecting the cider in storage.
Most American dessert apples contain a good, balanced amount of acidity, with Red Delicious being one notable exception (it makes a very fragrant but low-acid juice). Home acid-testers are available from most brewing supply stores and may be useful to experienced cidermakers, but they’re rather expensive and not really necessary when you’re just starting out. The best way to test for acidity is to taste the unfermented juice: Try to ignore the sweetness and the astringent tannins, and focus instead on the amount of “tang” that you can sense in the cider. If it tastes flat or insipid, you might want to blend in some juice from tart apples or crab apples, or add a measured amount of malic acid, which you can buy in powdered form at a homebrewing supply store. Add about 20 grams (2 rounded tablespoons) to a 5-gallon batch and taste it again, or follow the directions on the acid-tester you’re using. This amount of malic acid will raise the total acidity of the juice by about 0.1 percent. If, on the other hand, the juice that you’re starting with is extremely acidic, you can try neutralizing it by adding a small amount of calcium carbonate (precipitated chalk), at the rate of about 1 teaspoon to a 5-gallon batch, until you reach the desired level of acidity. But this should be your last resort, and it’s rarely necessary. If you use a mix of dessert and culinary apples (see chapter 2), you should be able to press a cider with a good sugar/acid balance, and of course any cider you buy from a cider mill or orchard will, if anything, be lacking in sharpness. Unless you’re pressing cider dominated with wild or crab apples, or a highly acidic variety like Bramley’s Seedling, your fresh cider should be fine for fermentation purposes.
Another measure of acidity is the familiar pH scale. A good acidity reading for juice is somewhere between 3.0 and 3.8 pH. At a higher pH, the juice won’t be acidic enough to discourage microbial infection, which can cause problems with spoilage and flavor. European bittersweet apples generally contain little acid and are typically blended with more acidic varieties (sharps or bittersharps), either before or after pressing. Most winemaking supply outlets sell narrow-range pH strips, which give a pretty good estimate within a range of 0.5 to 1.0 pH. For more accurate testing, you’ll need to use a pH meter (see chapter 10).
A cider that is highly acidic and very sharp immediately following fermentation will often mellow as it ages into a quite acceptable, even delicious, beverage. This is because half or more of the malic acid may be converted into lactic acid in a process known as malolactic (ML) fermentation. The resulting cider becomes much smoother and nuttier-tasting because of the efforts of the lactic acid bacteria, which occasionally start working at the same time as active fermentation is taking place, but usually wait until after the cider has completed its primary and secondary fermentation phases and has been racked into a new container to mature and mellow.
Some commercial cidermakers (and winemakers) encourage ML fermentation; others try to prevent it at any cost, which is fairly easy if you add sulfites to the juice after fermentation and racking. If you do want to reduce the sharpness of your cider and don’t want to leave things to chance, you can purchase an ML culture from winemaking supply sources, or direct from companies that sell liquid yeast strains (see Resources section). ML bacteria don’t work in temperatures cooler than 60°F, which is why this malolactic fermentation tends to occur in the spring or early summer, as temperatures begin to rise.
However, if a cider becomes more acidic during the fermentation process, it usually means that acetobacter (aerobic organisms that produce acetic acid) have been at work. A certain amount of acetic acid is always present in cider, but when the vinegary taste becomes too pronounced, the cider can become unpleasantly harsh or even undrinkable. At this point, it’s best to remove it from the cider room and turn it into vinegar (see chapter 8).
Tannins are the chemical flavor compounds that make red wines different from white wines. As with wines, tannins give a hard cider body and a dry finish, as well as having an antiseptic effect on various bacteria that can cause problems in fermentation or storage. In addition, tannins in the juice help to clarify, or fine, the cider, making it less hazy and more brilliant.
Apple tannin is colorless in the fruit cells, but that quickly changes, as anyone knows who has cut open an apple and let it sit around for a while. The tannins soon oxidize in the presence of air, and the apple slices become progressively darker in color. Cider experts classify the taste of tannins in an apple or cider as either “hard” (very bitter-tasting) or “soft” (more astringent or drying in the mouth than bitter).
It is unlikely that your juice will contain too much tannin unless you are using an especially high percentage of crab apples or European cider-apple varieties. If you are using mainly North American dessert apples in your blend, you can add tannin to the juice before fermentation in a couple of different ways. The easiest method is to purchase powdered grape tannin at a homebrewing supply store. Add about 1 teaspoon to a 5-gallon carboy of juice, or a scant ¼ teaspoon to a 1-gallon jug. Another way to increase the tannins in a cider is to make a specialty cider by blending in some juice from another high-tannin fruit like elderberries, cranberries, or blueberries (see chapter 5). Raisins, used in making traditional New England–style cider, will also contribute some tannin.
Some cidermakers add other substances to the juice before fermentation, either to give the yeast a boost or to ensure that the finished cider will be brilliantly clear.
Yeasts require a food source, of course, and this consists of the natural sugars in the sweet cider, as well as any extra sugar that you may add to the juice before fermentation begins. However, yeast cells also need some soluble nitrogen in the juice to produce the proteins and amino acids that are necessary for their growth. A cider with a low nitrogen content (such as one pressed from apples that come from wild or unfertilized trees) will ferment more slowly than will one with a higher nitrogen content. The most common cause of a “stuck” (stalled or incomplete) fermentation is either a lack of free amino nitrogen, which inhibits yeast growth, or a lack of thiamine (vitamin B1), and in the worst cases can result in the cider having a “rotten egg” smell from hydrogen sulfide (H2S). For that reason, some cidermakers add either some form of ammonium sulfate or thiamine to their juice before and during fermentation (especially if they also are adding sugar), to ensure a quick and complete conversion of sugar to alcohol. Old-time cidermakers used to hang a piece of beef or mutton in the fermentation vat to accomplish the same thing. Both thiamine and ammonium sulfate are known as yeast nutrients, and are available from homebrewing supply stores.
For small-batch cidermaking, only tiny amounts of either kind of yeast nutrient are necessary to get things going. (Think of it as sprinkling pixie dust.) I have rarely found it necessary to use yeast nutrients in my own cider, but you might want to consider using them if you are adding a lot of sugar to your fresh-pressed juice, or if your fermentation seems to “get stuck” or stop in mid-process. General recommendations are to add half of the recommended dosage of DAP (diammonium phosphate) before fermentation begins, and the other half once it starts up. Fermax is another commonly available brand of yeast nutrient. The recommended dosage is about 1 teaspoon per gallon, and the recommendation here is to add a third of the total needed prefermentation, the second third once fermentation starts, and the final third when it is well underway, when a sample hydrometer reading of the cider measures between 8 and 12 degrees Brix.
Pectic enzymes help break down the pectins in the juice. Pectins are a kind of natural adhesive that binds together the cells in an apple. In the finished cider, the pectins contribute a viscous quality, or oiliness, which sounds terrible, but actually means that the cider is softer and more pleasant to drink. Although pectins are soluble in water, they are often precipitated by alcohol, which can lead to a persistent “pectin haze” after fermentation—something very common with homemade or traditional farmhouse ciders. This haziness doesn’t affect the quality of the cider, just the appearance, but many people prefer a cider that has brilliant clarity. To achieve this, they add a pectic enzyme at some point in the process, either sprinkling it onto the milled apple pulp before pressing, or adding it to the pressed juice before or after primary fermentation.
For your first few batches of homemade cider, I would avoid complicating things and leave out the pectic enzyme. See how clear a cider you can produce without it. Then, if you like, experiment with it later to make an aesthetically pleasing cider that will sparkle in the glass and delight the judges at any cider tasting. Dosage rates are normally indicated by the manufacturer, or you can inquire when you buy the enzyme at a homebrewing supply store.
The other reason for adding a pectic enzyme would be if you are trying to create a cider that naturally stops fermenting before it reaches complete dryness. This is an advanced procedure that’s traditionally used in making sweeter French-style ciders, and in English it’s called “keeving” (for more on this, see chapter 10). It involves the intentional stripping of nutrients out of the fresh juice—but since that is diametrically opposed to what we just discussed under yeast nutrients, let’s ignore it for the time being.
Since ancient times, sulfur dioxide (SO2) has been used in winemaking to sterilize fermentation vessels, usually by burning sulfur candles or strips inside a wooden cask or barrel. Sulfites are still used to make both wine and cider, either to sterilize the juice before adding a cultured yeast strain or to suppress microbial activity, prevent oxidation or infection, and protect a cider during racking or bottling.
Today, instead of sulfur candles, most amateur cidermakers use Campden tablets (sodium or potassium metabisulfite), which are available from all homebrewing supply outlets. Adding sulfites before fermentation either kills off or greatly suppresses all of the wild yeasts and bacteria in the sweet cider. How much you’ll want to use depends chiefly on the acidity of the juice, as measured by pH (see the table above for a simple overview). Campden tablets used to be standardized to provide the equivalent of 50 parts per million (ppm) of free SO2 when dissolved in 1 gallon of liquid. In recent years, I’ve purchased Campden tablets that say on the label that they provide anywhere from 30 to a whopping 120 ppm of SO2. Clearly, if you use them, you will need to check the label carefully and adjust your dosage accordingly.
| Juice pH | SO2 needed in parts per million (ppm) | Campden tablets (50 ppm) needed per gallon |
| Above 3.8 (insipid) | Lower pH to 3.8 with addition of malic acid | |
| 3.8–3.5 | 150 | 3 |
| 3.5–3.3 (balanced) | 100 | 2 |
| 3.3–3.0 | 50 | 1 |
| Below 3.0 (sharp) | None | Note |
Adapted from Andrew Lea’s Wittenham Hill Cider Portal (www.cider.org.uk). Used with permission.
Note: If a pH meter or narrow-range pH strips are not available, use the taste of the juice as your guide. Campden tablets are typically formulated to give the equivalent of 50 ppm SO2 when dissolved in 1 gallon of liquid. Check the specific rating/yield that’s listed on tablets you buy commercially and adjust quantities if needed.
The other option (and the one some amateur and nearly all commercial cidermakers employ) is to buy metabisulfite powder and make up their own 5 percent stock solution of sulfur dioxide. To do this, dissolve 10 grams (about 0.35 ounce or 2 teaspoons) sodium or potassium metabisulfite in 100 milliliters (about ⅜ cup or 3 fluid ounces) water. Adding 1 teaspoon of this solution to a 5-gallon carboy of cider will correspond to around 50 ppm SO2.
As we can see from the table above, adding 100 parts per million of sulfur dioxide is more than enough to knock out all undesirable microbes in the juice in a typically sugar/acid-balanced American sweet cider. Some cidermakers prefer to use less than this, around 50 to 75 ppm per gallon. Very acidic juice (lower than 3.0 pH) doesn’t really need sulfites, as the acids provide sufficient protection against spoilage organisms, including acetobacter. On the other hand, very low-acid ciders (which are unusual, unless you are fermenting a single-variety English bittersweet variety or a low-acid juice from mostly Red Delicious apples) may require more sulfur dioxide. I once sampled a barrel of a still-fermenting Foxwhelp cider: The flavor and body were indeed musky and interesting, but the high level of sulfites that the cidermaker had to use to protect this low-acid, single-variety juice lent the immature cider all the aftertaste and insouciant charm of a wet matchbook.
After adding the sulfite, you will need to let the cider sit for a full day (twenty-four hours) before adding, or “pitching,” the commercial yeast culture you are using into the juice. Most beer and wine yeasts are somewhat sulfur-tolerant, and they should begin to work within a few days of pitching them. Adding the sulfite to the juice eliminates the competition for the commercial yeast strain and lets it establish itself immediately as the dominant fermentation agent in the cider.
Of course, if you want to make use of wild yeasts and other microorganisms, you won’t want to add any sulfite before fermentation. My advice for the beginning cidermaker is to add sulfite before fermentation if you plan on using a cultured yeast strain. If nothing else, it will ensure that the qualities you detect in the finished cider are due to the commercial yeast you’re using and are not a result of some unknown interloper. However, you can also pitch a commercial yeast culture into a natural, unsulfited cider, and in most cases this is enough to ensure that the culture you want to encourage will eventually dominate the fermentation process. It doesn’t guarantee against possible infections or other problems, but I’ve made good cider both with and without sulfite.
Finally, some people (asthmatics and others) are highly sensitive to sulfites in wines and ciders. This usually isn’t a problem if you add sulfite at the beginning of the process; it will bind to other chemicals during fermentation, greatly reducing the amount of free SO2 in the cider. However, sulfur is more noticeable if it is added later on, before bottling, so use it with discretion and only when you are making a low-alcohol cider that is meant to be sweet or semidry, or after sweetening a dry cider before bottling. Again, one or two crushed Campden tablets per gallon (50 to 100 ppm) is the generally recommended dosage, but generally speaking the overall amount of sulfite added to a cider (prefermentation through bottling total) should never exceed 200 ppm.
The process of fermentation, in which yeasts and other microorganisms convert sugar into alcohol, can be likened to gardening or farming, with your role as the cidermaker to provide the appropriate growing conditions that will favor a good “crop” of yeast and discourage unwanted yeasts and bacteria from taking hold. I am indebted to my farmer/writer friend Gene Logsdon for introducing this simple, but not necessarily obvious, conceit to me in his excellent book Good Spirits:
A number of possible problems can make a good cider turn bad. Usually these are the result of unwanted microorganisms working away in the cider and producing undesirable tastes or smells. Fortunately, most of these conditions are 100 percent preventable, and are relatively rare if you follow good sanitary practices and limit the cider’s exposure to air during fermentation and storage.
Acetification is caused by various organisms (collectively known as acetobacter), which are aerobic (operating in the presence of oxygen). They oxidize the cider, thus forming acetic acid—in other words, vinegar. Acetobacter are present in all cider, and they can even survive sulfiting and the high-alcohol conditions of a fully fermented cider. Eventually they will form a wispy gray film on the surface of the cider, which turns into the gelatinous culture known as mother of vinegar. A little acetic acid in a finished farmhouse-style cider may not completely ruin its taste (in fact, it’s characteristic of most Spanish sidra natural), but once acetification is underway in earnest, you might as well make vinegar instead of cider (see chapter 8). The best strategy, though, is to keep the acetobacter from reproducing in the first place, by not exposing the cider to air: Top up all fermentation jugs and bottles with fresh cider, water, or sugar solution so as not to leave a large airspace.
Film yeasts also operate in aerobic conditions and produce something known as “flower,” a greasy or powdery film on the surface of the cider. A cider affected with flower will smell like solvent (from the acetates these yeasts produce) and will taste moldy or musty. If you notice it in time, the cider can be treated with 100 parts per million of sulfur dioxide (typically equivalent to two crushed Campden tablets per gallon). Take special care in sterilizing containers where film yeasts have been working before you use them again for cider.
Cider sickness is most common in ciders that are low in acid and naturally sweet, like traditional French cider. North American apples generally have enough acidity to avoid this condition, which is caused by Zymomonas bacteria. These bacteria ferment sugars and produce acetaldehydes, which give the affected cider the odor of rotten lemons or banana skins. (To the French nose, this fruity aroma smells like raspberries, so they also call this disorder framboise.) It is often accompanied by the smell of rotten eggs (hydrogen sulfide), and the cider sometimes has a dense, milky-white turbidity or haze. If you catch it early on, you can add malic acid or blend in juice from acidic apples to lower the pH to below 3.7.
Ropiness or oiliness sometimes occurs in low-acid ciders after bottling or in bulk storage. It is caused by certain lactic acid bacteria that produce a gel-like substance. When the cider is poured, it will have the slimy texture of light oil or a raw egg white. The flavor is not affected. This condition does not occur in ciders that have been treated with sulfur dioxide before fermentation. To treat it later on, pour the cider into another container and stir it vigorously to break up the clumps. Then add 100 ppm of SO2 (two crushed Campden tablets) per gallon, and rack into new bottles or jugs.
Mousiness is also caused by certain lactic acid bacteria as well as certain strains of yeast. It creates an unpleasant “mouse droppings” aroma and a taste that lingers at the back of the throat and that has been compared to fresh-baked bread, beer, or popcorn. Some people are more sensitive to the off-flavor than others; for instance, I tend to be relatively insensitive to its presence. It occurs slowly over time in stored ciders, and nothing really can be done to prevent it, although it seems to be less common in ciders that have been treated with sulfur dioxide. If you detect a “toasty” or “oaty” taste in your cider, then that may be a precursor that indicates mousiness. The best way to tell for sure is to swish around a bit of baking soda dissolved in water in your mouth, then taste the cider again. It may take a while for the mousy quality to come through, but when it does, you’ll immediately recognize it.
Black or green breakage is a discoloration caused by the reaction of cider with metals. Often the color doesn’t develop until you open the bottle and the cider comes in contact with air. Contact with iron can cause a black or greenish-black color; copper gives cider a greenish hue. The flavor will be harsh, metallic, and unpleasant. There is nothing you can do after the fact to remedy this condition. Keep your cider away from iron, copper, and other metals in equipment and utensils, except for stainless steel.
Oxidation is caused by cider coming in contact with air during storage, or containing high levels of dissolved oxygen. The cider may be dark and discolored, appearing orange, coppery, or dark golden brown; the taste is variously described as stale, leathery, or sherry-like. The solution is, first, to keep stored cider from contact with air (especially important with wooden casks or barrels, which “breathe”), and, second, using sulfites when racking or bottling as needed.
Growing yeasts and harnessing their energy is the fundamental agriculture. Until Pasteur looked into the matter, the role of yeasts was not understood (although good drinking alcohol and sourdough bread were made for centuries before him—a point not to forget). Most scientists thought the change from sugar to alcohol was a chemical one, and that was true in the sense that everything is chemical in the final analysis. But the role yeasts play in the conversion of sugar into alcohol is fundamentally a biological process. To make alcohol by feeding sugar to yeasts is at least metaphorically like feeding cows hay to produce milk… . Managing yeasts is really a kind of farm and garden work, not a test tube maneuver.1
My simplified overview of the cidermaking process as described so far relies on the activity of wild yeasts and bacteria—which are naturally present in the fresh cider—to ferment the sugars into alcohol. This is the traditional way to make hard cider, and it still works well today. However, there are many other cultured strains of yeast that can be used to ferment cider, and lots of home-brewers depend on these commercial yeasts to ensure more consistent and reproducible results, or to create certain flavors or styles of cider.
The most important yeasts involved in the fermentation of alcohol are those belonging to the genus Saccharomyces. However, most of the yeasts that are found growing wild on the skins and even in the flesh of ripe apples (fewer than 500 cells per gram by some accounts, up to 45,000 cells by others) are weaker-fermenting types like Kloeckera and Candida, which will get fermentation going but then die off once the cider reaches 1 or 2 percent alcohol. Saccharomyces and other alcohol-tolerant yeasts will then take over and help ferment the cider to completeness; these yeasts can build up over time on the press cloths, equipment, and walls and floor of the cider house itself, and thus get into the fresh-pressed juice. And just as real sourdough bread will taste slightly different depending on whether it was made in San Francisco or in Savannah, so traditional farmhouse ciders made with wild yeasts have unique and distinctive tastes that vary with each individual producer.
Wild yeasts are anathema to most commercial cidermakers, who want a product that will taste the same, or nearly so, batch after batch. Home-and farm-scale cidermakers, though, can frequently produce delicious, aromatic, and complex ciders by using wild yeasts. However, be prepared to throw consistency to the winds. In order to ensure success and avoid disappointment the first time out, make only a half-gallon or gallon batch of cider using wild yeasts. For the bulk of your run, try making cider with one of the many cultured yeast strains that are available from homebrewing supply stores.
The complex bouquet of a hard cider is partly due to the aromatic varieties of apples used in the blend, but partly due as well to the fragrant compounds produced as a result of yeast fermentation. Louis Pasteur first noted that fruit juices fermented with wine yeasts acquire a vinous (winey) aroma, and the same holds true for beer. This means that the type of cultured yeast you use in cidermaking will have a profound effect on the character of your finished cider. Although many large cideries have developed their own strains of yeast specifically for cider, there are currently only a few specific cider yeasts that are commercially available for home cidermakers. This means that you’ll be faced with a choice as to which yeast you’d like to use. (It should go without saying, I suppose, but in no instance do I recommend using baker’s yeast, as some old cidermaking books advise.) Once you’ve made your first successful batch of cider, it’s definitely worth experimenting with some of the thousands of strains of commercially available yeast to see which one produces a cider with the aroma and taste you like best. For starters, though, try and keep things simple and base your choices on the temperature of the room or space where you will be fermenting your hard cider.
Slow fermentation at cooler temperatures (40° to 55°F) is recommended by most cider experts, as this creates the best conditions for making a fine-tasting hard cider that retains as many of the complex or fruity esters as possible. Because the best cider is generally made from late-harvested apple varieties, the ambient air temperatures found in your garage, barn, or cellar at this time of year (late fall and early winter) might be perfect for cool fermentation. I use a walk-in closet located on an outside wall of my house, where throughout the year the temperature rarely climbs above 60°F or dips below 45°F. Terry Bradshaw, a serious amateur cidermaker in Calais, Vermont, has partitioned off a portion of his basement, with much the same effect. A small window helps to regulate the temperature of his fermentation room, keeping it in the range of ideal temperatures for a long, slow ferment, or warming up a bit in spring and summer, when the cider is done fermenting and might perhaps benefit from a bit of malolactic fermentation, which requires a higher temperature to get started.
In this kind of environment, you might want to use a champagne, white wine, or lager yeast, all readily available from most homebrewing supply outlets. Each one leaves its own distinctive fingerprint on the finished cider. For a beginner, I recommend using Pasteur champagne yeast for making at least one batch: It produces a dry, clear, golden cider and is relatively foolproof, although it does take a little longer than other yeasts to begin working. Another good choice is Côte des Blancs (Epernay 2) wine yeast, which will ferment at a lower temperature and produce more aromatic estery byproducts than will a typical champagne yeast.
If you are fermenting your cider at a temperature higher than 55°F, try using a variety of ale yeast (Saccharomyces cerevesiae) instead of a wine or lager yeast. Ales are meant to be fermented at a cool room temperature of 55° to 65°F, so this kind of yeast will be most successful in making a fruity, refreshing cider with a nice “draft ale” quality to it. At these warmer temperatures, the fermentation will proceed quickly and should be quite vigorous. (See the sidebar on page 92.)
Yeast comes in two basic forms, either dried and sold in small foil packets like baker’s yeast, or as a liquid culture packaged in foil “smack packs” by laboratories. Both types are usually available at homebrewing supply stores. Dried yeasts are convenient: One 5-gram packet contains enough granules to pitch into a 5-gallon carboy. However, there is often a large percentage of dead yeast cells in a dried yeast. Lab yeasts offer more variety, but they are more expensive (six dollars or more, versus a buck or so for most dried yeast packets). The foil smack packs are convenient, though; you place the foil envelope on a flat surface and whack it firmly to release the yeast culture into the nutritive medium. In short order, the yeast starts working and the packet puffs up like a blowfish. At this point, you can simply sanitize the outside of the packet and cut it open, pitching it into your must. Still in all, for beginners, the easiest and cheapest option is probably dry yeast.
When using dried yeast, it’s a good idea to grow a starter culture for anywhere from a few hours to a day or so; this process will multiply the number of active yeast cells and give them a good start before you pitch them into the primary fermenter (food-grade plastic bucket or glass carboy or jug) that contains the fresh cider. To make a starter culture, first sterilize a pint- or quart-size canning jar by placing it in a boiling-water bath for ten minutes or so. Pour the packet of yeast into a bowl containing ¼ cup of warm water (95° to 105°F). Then funnel about ¾ cup pasteurized cider or apple juice at room temperature into the sterilized and cooled beer bottle. If you can’t find pasteurized cider or juice without preservatives, simply heat some raw, unpasteurized cider to 170°F on the stovetop for a few minutes, then let it cool to room temperature.
Funnel the liquefied yeast slurry into the jar, give it a swirl to aerate the yeast, and cover loosely with a piece of plastic wrap secured with a rubber band, to prevent any airborne contamination. Set the jar aside at room temperature for a day or so, then pitch the yeasty contents into your primary fermenter (pail, carboy, or jug) filled with cider. Gently stir with a sanitized spoon to incorporate the yeast culture, then cover the fermenter loosely with plastic wrap and wait for the yeast to start working vigorously. The most efficient strategy is to start your yeast culture at the same time you add the crushed Campden tablets to the fermentation vessel—you will have to wait for at least a day in any case before you can pitch the yeast into the sulfited cider.
The yeast that you have cultured has now been pitched into the carboy or fermentation jug, and within a few days the vigorous primary fermentation will have started. At this point, the carbon dioxide gas that is being expelled should protect the cider, even though the top of the fermentation vessel has been left open. However, when using wild, champagne, or other slow-starting yeasts, or when fermenting in especially cool conditions, I often feel more comfortable using an alternative to the open-mouth method—one that makes it even more unlikely that any acetobacter, fruit flies, or other unwanted visitors will drop into my cider.
An active fermentation in process. Note the use of the “blow-by” tubes that extend into the jug full of water. This allows for the escape of carbon dioxide and other purged solids while protecting the fermenting cider from outside air, microbes, and other interlopers.
Fit the top of the carboy or jug with a bored rubber stopper. Then push the end of a length of plastic tubing through the hole in the cork, leaving it above the level of the cider, in the empty space that winemakers call the ullage. Place the other end of the tubing in a pail or jar half-filled with water and set next to, and a little lower than, the fermentation vessel (see the photo above). This arrangement is known as a blow-by fermentation lock, and it is routinely used by folks who make cider in wooden barrels. In the inimitable words of my late cidermaking friend Farish Jenkins: “This will allow the enthusiastic fermentate, which is the product of the yeasts all arising from a Brünnhilde-like slumber kissed by the warm sucrosed lips of the cider and at once plunging into the sexual frenzy of reproduction, to blow off. The fermentate is not pretty, and I would not attempt to explain it to your friends.”
After pitching your yeast culture, there is an initial lag phase as the yeast population surges and converts the sugars in the apple juice or must into alcohol. This lag phase might last anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on the type and strength of yeast used, the temperature in the fermentation room, and other factors. Once the yeast really gets going, though, it will start belching out carbon dioxide and you will notice a foamy white head in the empty space you’ve left at the top of the fermentation vessel. This foam eventually turns brown, and it may persist for as much as a week or two.
Once this messy (and rather naughty) phase of fermentation is over, you can remove the stopper and the tube if you’ve used them, clean up the top and sides of the jug or carboy if any cider foam has pushed its way out of the mouth of the fermenter, and fill the vessel up with fresh sweet cider, leaving about a 2-inch headspace at the top. Then fit it with a regular plastic fermentation lock filled with a sulfite and acid sanitizing solution (see page 79). I try to replace the sanitized water in the airlock every month or so.
How can you tell when fermentation is complete? Eventually, usually after one or two months, the cider will look clear or only slightly hazy, and you will no longer see or hear carbon dioxide bubbles glubbing up in the fermentation lock. There will also be a thick sediment of yeast and other precipitates on the bottom of the container, and you will probably still notice bubbles rising gently to the top of the cider.
At this point, it’s a good idea to sample the cider again and check its specific gravity with the hydrometer. The cider has fermented to dryness, or close to it, when it registers an SG of 1.005 or less. The basic rule of thumb is that when fermentation is going well, the cider’s specific gravity drops about one point a day. If the cider stops fermenting at an SG much higher than 1.005, you may have a “stuck” fermentation on your hands. If this happens, add a yeast nutrient and stir the cider vigorously for about twenty minutes to aerate the yeast and get it working again.
Once the cider has reached this stage, fermenting close to dryness, you can either rack it off into a new sanitized container using a plastic siphon hose or let it stay in the same vessel and sit on its lees for a while. When racking off, try to pick a fair day when the barometric pressure is high: These weather conditions help keep suspended yeasts to a minimum, while retaining the dissolved carbon dioxide in the cider.
Incidentally, my friend Claude Jolicoeur, who is a skillful and passionate cidermaker in Quebec, doesn’t just throw out his old lees after racking. Instead he uses them to create rich, thick sauces or as a braising liquid for meat. Sandor Katz, author of the fascinating books Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation, likewise uses his wine and cider lees, which are rich in B vitamins, in soups and salad dressings. Waste not, want not, I say.
Before you rack the cider, draw off a small sample and taste it. The cider won’t be anywhere near ready to drink at this point, but you should be able to gauge the level of malic acid. Ciders that taste excessively sharp and acidic should be left standing on their lees for a while; this seems to encourage a malolactic fermentation, which converts some of the malic acid into smoother lactic acid. Ciders that are low in acid, however, should be racked off into a clean container at this point and not left standing on their lees. And in no case is it good to leave a fully fermented cider standing on its sediment for more than a month or so; otherwise the dead yeast cells can “autolyze” and create off-flavors.
Unlike wines, most ciders do not require long-term aging before they are ready to drink. A month or two after you have racked the cider off its lees into a clean container and fitted it with a new airlock, it should be ready for bottling. Work quickly but carefully as you siphon cider into cleaned and sanitized bottles. Try to avoid excessive splashing and oxidation of the cider, and leave about a half-inch of headspace. It helps to have someone assisting with this operation; you can siphon and fill the bottles while a friend adds any priming sugar you decide to use and caps bottles after they are filled, or tips and holds the carboy steady while you extract all the clear cider you can from above the bottom sediment.
The following is certainly not a comprehensive listing of all the yeast strains that are available, nor does it provide a full description of each yeast’s characteristics. A good place to find an updated list of available yeasts is on The Winemaking Home Page (http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/strains.asp). Other good sources of information are the websites of the commercial yeast manufacturers themselves; many of them sell to home winemakers directly and you can place an order on the Web. Homebrewing and winemaking supply stores do carry yeasts, both dry packet and liquid cultures, from the manufacturers, but they might not have the specific strains you’re looking for.
When choosing a yeast to try, look for information on what kind of flavor notes it is said to bring out. It’s fun over time to experiment with different yeast strains, keeping notes on how they perform in your ciders and your fermentation conditions. However, many cidermakers come back to the basic few types, mainly champagne yeasts (Saccharomyces bayanus), which can do their business even in cool conditions (under 50°F), and rarely stop or “get stuck” until they fully ferment the cider to dryness. Also, these yeasts are rather neutral in terms of taste profile, and tend to express the qualities of the fruit rather than masking or overshadowing them.
Traditional farmhouse or English cider, which I have been describing in this chapter, is dry and still. If you want to have a bit of natural carbonation in your cider, add ½ teaspoon of sugar per pint to the bottles before filling and capping. It’s possible to simply use granulated cane sugar in this way, but I prefer using dextrose or “corn sugar,” which is familiar to anyone who has ever used it for priming (naturally carbonating and bottle-conditioning) home-brewed beer or ale. It gives the remaining yeast cells in the bottle a little something to nosh on, and the carbon dioxide gas that they release creates a lightly sparkling beverage. Once the sugar is all used up, the spent yeasts precipitate and form a light sediment on the bottom of the bottle, which doesn’t affect the quality of the cider and is neither very noticeable or objectionable. The advantage of using dextrose, which is made from hydrolyzed cornstarch, is that it creates finer bubbles in the finished cider than regular granulated sugar.
Please don’t assume that if a little priming sugar is good, then a lot must be better. Adding too much sugar at bottling can have explosive consequences if you don’t watch out. A sturdy beer bottle will typically withstand about three atmospheres (3 atm) of pressure from carbon dioxide building up in the bottle, and a heavy champagne bottle can handle roughly twice that, or 6 atm. But you never want to overcarbonate your cider, whether you’re doing it through secondary bottle fermentation or by force-carbonating with a CO2 tank and counterpressure bottle filler (see chapter 10). Even if you aren’t awakened by the sound of shattering bottles in the cellar, no one wants to have a gusher when they pry open a bottle. For safety’s sake, never bottle an unstabilized cider in a beer bottle if it has a specific gravity of 1.005 or higher; if you’re using champagne bottles, you can go a little higher, up to 1.010 SG. The nicest sort of cider, in my opinion, is what the French call petillant, where the tiny bubbles lazily curl upward in the glass, giving the drink a light effervescence, but certainly not a foaming head of bubbles.
Alternatively, you can sweeten a whole batch of cider with a simple syrup or sugar solution. In a nonreactive saucepan boil ½ to ¾ cup granulated cane sugar in a pint of water with a bit of lemon juice for about five minutes and let it cool, covered, before mixing it into the cider thoroughly (to disperse the solution and introduce a bit of oxygen, which the yeast will need to get restarted). This will prime a 5-gallon batch of cider. By boiling the cane sugar (sucrose), you are transforming it into an invert sugar, which the yeast can more readily work on, without having to produce invertase, an enzyme that can produce a sour taste. After mixing, you’re then ready to bottle.
Store the capped or corked bottles at room temperature for a month or two before drinking; this allows the yeast to carbonate the cider and lets the flavors continue to develop and mature. Then chill a bottle and open it up. Pour the cider carefully into the glass, so as not to stir up the yeast sediment at the bottom of the bottle. Hold your glass up to the light, sniff the bouquet, then take that first, long-awaited sip of your own homemade cider. For pure satisfaction, it doesn’t get much better than this.
