Cider makers

What sort of apples are they?

We had an epic cider year last year, the hooch was basically joy in a bottle although It left me paralyzed a couple of times. Basic kit from local farm supplies shop, saved up bottles etc. If you can, borrow a scratter and press although it is possible to improve with a car jack.

The juice will be glorious and it's always a worry you might ruin it, but it's worth the risk!

Never made cider but sometimes there are 'community' apple presses that you can rent / borrow. Our local allotment association has one so your local one might be worth a try.

Yes that's a good shout

I think in some circumstances you can exchange apples for cider although that might have been a utopian dream I once had after a vat of scrumpy.

I bought a kit from ebay which included a shredder and a press.

The process is very easy. In simple terms, extract the juice, add sugar, add yeast (not strictly necessary) leave to ferment (demijohns worked best for me), then bottle - add more sugar for sparkling cider.

My results were not that tasty as I just used a mix of eating and cooking apples out of my garden not specific cider apples, it was however very strong!

My top tip is to put your apples through the scratter at least twice to maximize juice. It makes a big difference

Also if you want to save juice and not make cider try adding juice from other fruit such as raspberry or blackberrys. It is flipping lovely. Pasturise in jars or bottles and drink it through the winter,

The flavour depends hugely on the apple quality/variety/ripeness. I would go for making juice - it's a lot easier to make something drinkable.

I used a whole fruit juicer, was enough for a demijohn. I used a wine yeast, then bottled in champagne bottles with a pinch of yeast and sugar to give it some fizz. To my great surpeise, it was very palatable.

If you want to scale up then you'll need a proper press.

High tannin apple make good cider. I.e. cookers and Rab apples. If your tree is an eater go for a walk and grab so e crab apples to thow in The mix. Happy scrumping

Cider maker here.

The hardest bit is scratting the apples, you need to pulp them before you press. For this I use a garden shredder. Then you need to make / buy a press to extract the juice from the pulp.

I know people who have used a juicer. It's a long laborious process for little return.

You've got 2 options when it comes to fermenting. Sterilise with campdens then add a cider yeast. This will reliably give you an ok cider.

Or go traditional, just let the natural yeast start the fermentation. This method usually gives a better product but the cider might not be clear and there is a chance it won't go very well and it tastes not good.

Cider apples (ie high tannin content) give the best cider. Eating apples make an okish cider with little depth. You can buy tannin and add it to give it a bit more ooomph.

If you have cooking apples keep the cooking apple ratio lower than 25% of the total juice or the cider will be too sharp /acidic.

Homemade cider will be dry. If you add sugar it will just start fermenting again.

I "Think" they are granny smiths, my neighbour also has a tree that overhangs my garden slightly, so I plan on borrowing some of hers aswell, I don't know the variety though.

What's the best way to store them when they drop to the ground, I've found I collect 10 or so a day but they have gone rotten before I've really done anything with them

Some good advice up there ^^^about going for juice first. We've just done our second annual pressing and this years did larger batches of both the juice ("must") and cider to save for over winter. The juice is way easier to drink than the cider; that needs back-sweetening if you don't want a tart 5% cider.

On the process, we shredded, then pressed in batches using normal fruit pressing tools. The juice was taken up to 60C in 10L batches and then bottled directly (for must) or into my stainless steel fermenter to cool down to pitching temperature overnight.

For the cider, I made a small starter of 50/50 juice/water with some yeast nutrient and pitched a half packet of MangroveJack cider yeast, leaving that to get on with itself overnight while the juice cooled. After the pitch, it fermented out in about two weeks, going from about 1.045 to 1.003 ish. It's dry.

Both juice and cider are good, but the juice is way more drinkable. There is a note of oxidation/esterisation with both, but given the crushing and pressing involved, that's not unexpected. I did find a wasp in the fermenter when I cleaned it after bottling. It does not seem to have impacted the fermenting process.

And don't forget to add a dead rat to the barrel....

Did my first pressing yesterday on my homemade diy apple press, worked much better than expected, only did a small batch to try it out first.

Chopped up 3kg of apples and smashed them to a pump with a bit of wood in a bucket then squeezed them in the home made press with a scissor jack and got 1.3l of juice!

Very tasty this morning!

Will start collecting more apples over tye next few weeks and then start on a cider brew.