Making apple cider at home. Homemade apple cider - a step-by-step photo recipe for making at home

How to make cider at home? This question interests almost everyone who has tried this aromatic drink at least once. Yes, the modern chemical industry is so developed that you can achieve any taste with the help of flavors. But that doesn't work for us. A drink made by yourself has completely different qualities.

It is especially useful to be able to make this drink if you have a dacha (garden, kitchen garden) and an excess of apples. Therefore, below we will tell you how to make cider at home.

The history of cider dates back to the Middle Ages. This drink was especially popular in Britain and France. However, due to the fact that apples are inexpensive raw materials, cider has long been considered a drink of the lower strata of the population in Europe. Indeed, the common people were very fond of cider. The fact is that a properly prepared drink does not cause a hangover, it has a pleasant taste and aroma.

So how do you make cider at home? We will give a recipe for an apple drink, although sometimes there is a pear and quince variant. Cider - one of the types of truth, it is less strong - a maximum of 4-7 degrees.

Answering the question about whether at home, it should be noted that it is very important to choose the right raw materials. In our case, these are apples. So, contrary to popular belief, green fruits are not suitable for cider at all. It is best to find something in between under-ripe and over-ripe apples. There is something else to remember. Before you start working with products, carefully review the apples. Rot should not be categorically. If you miss a barrel that has rotted somewhere, then the drink will taste and smell very similar to meat broth that has not yet been cooked. Agree, this is not the most refined drink. What to do next? Now the apples must be cut into several pieces and twisted through a meat grinder. Please note that here you also need to know the measure, because instead of cake it will turn out just with juice. The resulting mass can be laid out in vessels.

Choose a container like this: if you have 2 kg of raw materials, then take a container with a volume of 3 liters. Accordingly, for 8 kg of cake, a vessel with a capacity of 10 liters is suitable. Now you can add sugar. The proportion is 1:10, that is, for 1 kg of apples, you need to put 100 grams of sugar (150 if you are a fan of sweet drinks). Here's another plus if you know how to make homemade cider, since you can have complete control over the taste of the drink, rather than picking up a pig in a poke from the store. After all that has been done, close the vessels with gauze and place in a warm place.

So, the first stage is completed. After a couple of days, the drink can be filtered. At the same time, the degree of readiness of cider is determined by the volume of cake separated from the juice. After straining it, you can add sugar again. The proportion remains the same - 1:10, but now we take into account the resulting juice. Having done this, you can close the drink and leave it for 2-3 weeks to ferment.

Now there are little things left, since the cider can already be poured. But the faster you cork the bottles, the tastier the drink will turn out. Here is the answer to the question of how to make cider at home. If everything was done correctly, then the drink will turn out golden, with a characteristic apple flavor that cannot be confused with anything. Now you know how to do

Here we will talk about how to make cider at home - a delicious apple juice, only carbonated and alcoholic. Is there a better use for apples? Is it possible to make birdhouses for pigeons from them!

Where did cider come from

Spain, France and England are arguing about which of them is the true homeland of the apple drink. They didn't even bother to come up with a lot of legends. For example, about Charlemagne, who sat down on a bag of rotten apples and thus squeezed out the first cider. Or about seafarers who took apple juice instead of water on long journeys, which fermented in the middle of the journey and brought many, many joys to the crews of ships. In fact, cider is several millennia old. The first mention of the drink is attributed to Pliny, who in his writings noted that fermented apple juice was not disdained in the 15th-13th centuries BC. e. inhabitants of the Nile River valley. Gradually, grapes began to displace apples from the southern lands to far away, that is, to the north, and by the 8th-9th centuries A.D. e. there were so many fruit trees in Europe that they began to make cider there. Even the monks collected part of the tithe with apples, from which they prepared alcoholic juice. At this moment, the drink acquires a generally accepted production scheme, which has survived to this day. Real cider is still made from special apples, no yeast added, and no pasteurization. The changes affected only the equipment: electric crushers replaced mechanical ones, metal vats (it is easier to maintain the desired temperature in them) replaced wooden barrels, and so on. Therefore, the classic cider is considered to be European, and not ancient Egyptian.

How to make cider

We asked blogger Alexander Klimov to teach us how to make cider. He has been making the drink at home for years and sometimes talks about these experiences on his blog. We have chosen the simplest and fastest cider production scheme. There is one more - correct and almost canonical. We wrote about it separately (look for it).

Finely chop apples of different varieties (you can turn them into a pulp using a food processor). Pre-cut and discard the cores - all that, when eaten, would become a stub. Fruits should be without rot and blackout, juicy and of different varieties. You don’t need to memorize the names, just buy green, yellow and red apples from the neighbors in the store or steal from the neighbors.

If the apples are very dirty, rinse them with water. But it is better not to wash them thoroughly: the bacteria involved in fermentation live on the peel. Take three-liter jars or other utensils with a wide neck and pour in the chopped fruit so that they fill the vessel by a third (maybe a little more). If desired, add a handful of raisins and 100 g of sugar there. Yes, it's controversial. But in this way, the cider will ferment faster and more intensively (which means that you will be able to drink the finished drink very soon). If, when biting the fruit (try it), the juice does not splash in all directions, then the apples are not juicy enough. Get out of the situation by pouring a liter of bottled natural water into a jar.

Put a rubber glove on the neck of the bottle. Firstly, it will prevent the flow of oxygen (fermentation will not work with it: the apples will oxidize, become moldy, and rot). Secondly, the glove will be an indicator of the stage of fermentation, but more on that later. And yes, do not close the jar with a lid, otherwise it, unable to withstand the pressure from the resulting carbon dioxide, will fly out.

Do the previous three operations a few more times (one jar will give no more than one and a half liters of cider). Put the blanks in a warm dark place and leave for 5-7 days at a temperature of 22-30 ºC. To do this, you can use an electric heater. To prevent the contents of the jar from overheating, put a thermometer somewhere nearby and control the temperature.

Fermentation can be stopped when the glove is inflated as in our photo (to do this, go one step forward). Oh, and don't mind the fact that the liquid is dark and cloudy: the color of your cider will differ from the factory one, this is completely normal. And further. If the rubber dome doesn't begin to fill with gas even after a week, pour out the stock and try making cider again.

Using cheesecloth, strain the half-cider into a saucepan. Wrap cake (chopped apples) in the same gauze, squeeze thoroughly and discard. Congratulations! You did the dirtiest job, and therefore you can rightly be proud of yourself, tweet about it and start inviting guests for a tasting. You won't try your own culinary masterpiece first, will you?

Pour the liquid into a clean jar and refrigerate for 3-4 days. The drink must not be shaken so that sediment is concentrated at the bottom of the dish. Find a hose and pump the top of the cider into the bottle, leaving sediment at the bottom of the can. Fill the vessel to capacity (otherwise the remaining air will provoke oxidation and the drink will go bad) and tighten the cork. Ready! You can store this cider in the refrigerator for about a year.

Drinking rules

Cider is a drink without sniffing, color assessments, hourly savoring and other nuances. But, despite all the male arrogance of this drink, there are still rules for drinking it.

Cider is often referred to as a foamy drink. However, if you fill the glass in the usual way, it does not give foam. “Take the bottle and raise it one meter above the glass,” advises Vsevolod Datsevich, CEO of the company that produces St. Anton, that is, "Apple Spas". - You need to pour the cider in such a way that the jet breaks against the walls of the glass and splashes in all directions. The drink will begin to foam, at this time you need to drink it. During the flight, the longed-for moisture languishing in the bottle is filled with oxygen, which allows you to release the accumulated carbon dioxide and reveal the taste to the maximum.

Since the foam disappears in the blink of an eye, you need to drink apple alcohol quickly, almost in one gulp.

Based on the previous paragraph, we conclude that it is not worth pouring more than 1/4 - 1/3 of a mug at a time (beer glassware is suitable for cider). Moreover, in some regions of Spain and France, the tradition of pouring one bottle of drink into six glasses at once has been preserved. True, for this venture you will have to make friends again, and five at once.

Serve the cider chilled. “The optimum temperature is within plus 12-14 degrees,” says the expert. “This cooling emphasizes the flavor and aroma of the drink.”

mulled wine killer

If you get lost in the forest, you can warm up in the bear's lair. But it is much easier to get a bottle of cider out of the refrigerator, find a microwave and cook a worthy alternative to mulled wine.

Remove the peel from a quarter of an orange. Dice 1/5 medium sized apple. Cut a small slice from the ginger (do not forget to peel it). Pour the mixture into a half liter glass, seasoning it with black pepper, cloves and cinnamon to taste. Pour the resulting semi-finished product with cider and put in the microwave for 5-7 minutes (the liquid should heat up to 80 ºС). To the envy of the guests, drink a warming drink in small sips.

Truth and myths and cider

Cider is apple wine

“Contrary to popular belief, it is incorrect to call cider apple wine, otherwise it would have been called that from the very beginning. They sell, say, plum wine or fruit and berry wine, ”says Vsevolod Datsevich, already familiar to you, and explains that in order to turn into wine, an apple drink needs to ferment longer than allowed. Wine is anything that contains more than 7 degrees of alcohol. In cider, the level of degrees ranges from one and a half to six.

GOST guarantees that the drink is natural

In some other country, perhaps. “According to the Russian standard, producers have the right to write “natural apple cider” on labels, even if it was made from concentrated reconstituted juice, and then sugar was added and artificially carbonated,” the expert explains. That is why it is so important to read the “composition” column on the label.

Cider can be made from any apple

This is allowed at home. Serious producers, on the other hand, develop special technical varieties of apples that are suitable only for the production of cider. There are four types of them: sweet, sour, bittersweet and bittersour. “The taste of such fruits is similar to wild ones: they cannot be eaten because of the sharp, often bitter taste,” says our consultant.

For long-term storage, cider must be pasteurized.

“A properly prepared drink is stored without pasteurization for three years,” Vsevolod Datsevich assures. That is, when you find the inscription “pasteurized” on the bottle, think about whether the contents can really be called cider.

cider and food

We asked our experts to compile a food pairing table. There are two categories of combinations:

Classic

Original

Recognizing low-quality cider by sight

“Start by reading the label,” Vsevolod Datsevich instructs. “Real cider is not made from concentrated wort, it never adds sugar, dyes, flavors, and even more so yeast.” The taste of a proper cider can be described as "fermented apple juice", and only so. Therefore, if you feel a taste unusual for apples, give the poison to someone else to drink. By the way, we include not only chemical additives, but also yeast as extraneous flavors. Since it is not customary to add sugar to cider, it should not be unnaturally sweet. Genuine alcoholic juice quenches thirst, not causes it (a sweetened drink will sooner or later make you ask the waiter for water).

For those who respect the rules, we publish a completely correct scheme for the production of cider in an apartment from Vsevolod Datsevich. Keep in mind, this cider is prepared for about six months.

“The worse the taste of apples, the better for the taste of the future drink,” says the expert. Therefore, bypass the store side and go to the nearest park. Since you will not find special cider apples, limit your search to wild apple trees. Pick up fruits that are still hanging on the branch but are about to fall.

Squeeze out the juice in the juicer. At the same time, discard the pulp immediately, we will no longer need it. Pour the juice into the jar and install a water seal (available at hardware stores) - a device that releases carbon dioxide from the vessel, but does not let air inside. In extreme cases, you can limit yourself to a glove from the last recipe. Leave the container with juice for 3-4 weeks, providing it with a 20-degree temperature regime, darkness and peace. “After a month, it is necessary to decant: use a hose to drain the liquid into a clean container until it settles,” our consultant instructs. Close the jars with lids and put in a dark room (this time the constant temperature should be +10 ºС) for 3-4 months. After this period, pour the cider into bottles (under the neck, as you remember) and put in the refrigerator, where the alcoholic juice can be stored for 3 years.

Cider is a light apple wine with a subtle aftertaste. A gentle drink came to us from France. There are several options for making cider: based on apples and with the addition of pears. In most cases, alcoholic food is prepared by fermenting fruit with yeast, subsequently giving it a gaseous state.

How to make apple cider

It is not necessary to give preference to one variety of apples, combine them with each other, experiment. As practice shows, the ideal ratio is calculated, which involves the preparation of cider from two parts of sweet fruits and one part of sour.

apples - 8 kg.
granulated sugar - 1 kg.

Gather the apples, pat dry with a towel and place in a paper bag. Send for 3 days in a warm cabinet. The fruit must not be washed out, as the cider is made from wild yeast that lives on the skin.
After the expiration date, peel the apples from twigs and leaves. Cut into small cubes, mash with a blender, food processor or meat grinder.
Choose a suitable container for infusing the composition, sterilize by boiling water in it. Dry thoroughly, wipe, move the applesauce to the pan. Important! Choose a container so that the apples do not fill it completely (approximately 2/3). You can use ordinary three-liter glass jars. In this case, it is necessary to decompose the puree into several containers and leave room for the formation of gas and foam.
After packaging the puree in jars, add sugar (preferably cane) to each composition. Based on the calculation that per 1 kg. mass accounts for 125 gr. sand. In this case, it is necessary to take into account the original variety of apples: the sweeter they are, the less sugar is added. You should end up with a sweet, not overly sugary wort.
Stir the mixture in each container, pull a gauze cloth or bandage over the neck. Send the composition to infuse in a dark place (pantry, closet), the exposure time is 4-5 days. Avoid places with a sharp temperature difference (cellar, balcony, etc.).
Stir the must every morning and evening with a wooden spoon. The mixture will whip into a dense layer and strengthen on the surface of the composition. You need to constantly "drown" it. After 10-15 hours after the formation of a whipped layer, a characteristic hiss and foam will appear, this will be the result of the start of fermentation.
Now pick up another container, but not for insisting, but for fermenting the wort. Boil it, wipe it dry. Squeeze out all the juice from the apple mixture into a jar, put a rubber glove on the neck. Poke 2 holes in the middle finger with a needle.
Place the composition in a dark, dry place with a temperature regime of 20 to 26 degrees. The duration of fermentation ranges from one to two months. After this period, the glove will fall on one side, a characteristic sediment will appear at the bottom of the jar, the cider will become light. All these signs indicate the end of fermentation. Important! There are cases when fermentation lasts more than two months. Don't wait any longer in the hope that the cider is "about to ripen". Using a silicone tube, pour the composition into another jar, leave to ferment under the same conditions.
After the end of fermentation, carefully drain the cider, try not to raise the sediment. Prepare a filter for straining: fold gauze into 4 layers, place cotton wool between them. Skip the drink, pour it into dark bottles, cork (roll up). Important! If you don't plan to further carbonate the cider, fill the bottles up to the neck. Otherwise, leave extra space.
After clogging the composition, send the cider to ripen in a dark, cool place (recommended temperature is 8-10 degrees, without drops) for 3-3.5 months. After this period, the drink is considered ready.

In the end, you will get a cider of a delicate golden color, with a strength of 8-12%, with a sweet taste and light aroma. When drinking a drink in small quantities, there is no hangover.

The traditional cider recipe includes only apples, but experienced housewives came up with an original variation of the drink with the addition of pears. The end result will please you, the product is moderately sweet, easy to drink, not addictive.

pears - 5 kg.
green apples - 3 kg.
red apples - 2 kg.
granulated cane sugar - 700 gr.
betonite (optional)

Concrete is needed to clarify the cider, it is added at will. In addition to the above ingredients, you will also need an infusion container, a fermentation vessel, a saucepan, dark bottles (glass or plastic).

Determine for yourself: how you will ferment the composition. In the case where cultural baker's yeast is used, the fruit must be washed. If you decide to use the wild fermentation method, then pears and apples should be wiped with a dry towel.
Next, you need to extract the juice from the fruit. To do this, remove the branches and leaves, cut the fruit into pieces, pass through a meat grinder, food processor, blender or juicer.
After the composition has turned into porridge, prepare a bag of gauze fabric by folding it in several layers. Then squeeze the liquid into a clean glass jar (previously sterilized).
If you decide to ferment the composition with wild yeast, send it to a dark place with a stable temperature. When fermenting with nutritional yeast, add according to the manufacturer's instructions. Optionally, you can add granulated sugar (50-70 g per 1 liter of the composition), if apples and pears do not have enough taste.
When the mixture is mixed, put a medical glove on the neck, pierce one hole with a needle in the middle or index finger. As a rule, fermentation is completed after 1-2 months.
After this period, betonite can be added to the cider, giving the drink a delicate beige hue. To properly mix the drug, dissolve in a small amount of purified water 40-50 gr. composition based on 10 liters of the future drink. Pour into cider, shake the jar so that the crystals dissolve completely and do not settle. Wait 3 days, then remove from the sediment.
Finish cooking by pouring the composition into plastic bottles. Cork them, put in the refrigerator or cellar for 1 month. After this period, proceed to the tasting, if necessary, re-strain.

Not everyone likes non-carbonated drinks, some prefer to drink composition with bubbles. For these purposes, carbon dioxide saturation was invented, which we will consider in more detail.

At the end of fermentation, be sure to remove the drink from the sediment. A filter of 6 layers of gauze and an oblong piece of cotton between them will help you with this. The mixture must be passed through a kind of sieve several times.
The strained composition must be bottled in plastic or glass bottles. In this case, the containers must be pre-sterilized. Cider is poured only into dry jars, since even a drop of untreated water will spoil the product.
After careful preparation, put sugar (beetroot or cane) on the bottom of the bottles. For 1 liter of the composition there are 12 gr. sand. Sugar will provoke re-fermentation, as a result of which carbon dioxide will begin to be released.
After that, pour the cider into the bottles, step back about 7 cm from the neck to leave room for the foam. Screw on the lids, take them to a dark closet or pantry, leave for 2 weeks. Important! The gas pressure in the tanks must be checked twice a day. At elevated rates, the bottles will explode or swell, so periodically unscrew the corks, releasing gas.
After infusion at room temperature, move the finished cider to the refrigerator, store under such conditions permanently.

An exquisite French drink can be prepared independently without spending a tidy sum. Choose the variety of apples or pears you like, twist the fruits into porridge, squeeze the juice and infuse the must. Add sugar in moderation so that the cider does not turn out cloying.

Video: homemade apple cider recipe

Shot from the movie "Good Year"

There is a legend that King Charlemagne invented cider when he once sat on a bag of overripe apples. We hasten to disappoint you: now it is no longer customary to make apple alcohol in this way.

In the more than a thousand years that have passed since the momentous discovery, the making of cider, we decided to find the simplest recipe suitable for home conditions.

And even if you don’t have “your own, native” apples that you “didn’t water with any muck”, it doesn’t matter - we’ll take purchased ones.

Ingredients:

10 kg apples

1.5 kg sugar

Equipment:

three-liter jars

medical gloves

juicer

medical tubes for a dropper (sold in a pharmacy)

Step 1: Preparing the Apples

Wipe the apples with a dry cloth. They cannot be washed, because wild yeast lives on the surface of the fruit, which is needed for fermentation. Remove leaves and stems.

Step 2: Send the Apples to the Juicer

Before this, you do not need to peel the apples - process them along with the peel and seeds.

Step 3: Pour Sugar into Jars

Don't forget to sterilize the container first. Pour four tablespoons of sugar into each jar.

Step 4: pour juice

Fill jars no more than 2/3 of the volume, free space is needed for foam and carbon dioxide. Don't forget to mix.

Step 5: Place the Shutter on the Can

We put on a glove and a small hole on the neck so that it does not explode.

Step 6: Wait a few days

Let our future cider ferment in a dark and warm place for about a week. You will understand that he stopped doing this because the glove will change position from vertical to horizontal.

Step 7: Strain the sediment

To do this, pour the juice from the jar into the pan through cheesecloth. And then into a clean jar.

Step 8: Repeat steps 4, 5 and 6

This time we wait half as much - four days is enough.

Step 9: Strain the sediment again

But now we do it with the help of tubes. We place one end in the middle of the jar, the other - above the pan. To start the process, suck in air from the free end of the tube, as if you were about to drink your cider. Why can't gauze be used again? Because now we need to act more delicately, without disturbing the harmful sediment at the bottom. The process is slow, but necessary.

Step 10: Final push

Close the jar with a lid, send it to stand for another ten days. Then repeat point 9, and the finish line!

Step 11: Bottle the Cider

Close the bottles with caps. That's all.

How to make cider carbonated

According to the recipe above, we got a “still” apple wine, but if you want gaziki, you can add them if you follow two more simple steps.

At the bottom of each bottle, add sugar (10 grams per 1 liter) and leave 5-6 cm of free space from the neck. Shake it up.

Then transfer the containers for 10-14 days to a dark room at room temperature. Once a day, check the gas pressure so that your bottle does not explode, otherwise it will be a pity for the apples and your efforts.

In France and Spain, cider has long been popular. Cider is refreshing and energizing, promotes a good appetite and uplifts the mood.

Cider is a low-alcohol drink that resembles apple wine, but at the same time the cider sizzles and foams like champagne.

Let's find out today how to make your own cider so that it turns out beautiful and sparkling.

We will prepare cider from apples with the addition of pears, which will give the drink a delicious aroma.

So let's get started!

cider ingredients

To make cider, we need:

1 bucket of red apples;
1 bucket of green apples;
1 bucket pear varieties "lemon".

If there are no pears, you can make cider from apples alone, this will not make it worse, but its aroma will lose its pear notes.

Making cider

1. To make homemade cider, we first need to get juice from apples and pears. To get juice, you can use a juicer, or you can use a regular meat grinder, as shown in the photo:

2. We pass apples and pears through a meat grinder and get juicy pulp:

3. Squeeze the pulp of apples and pears through gauze to get juice:

4. From the total number of processed apples and pears, approximately 8-9 liters of juice will be obtained. Juice needs to be checked for sweetness using a hydrometer:

As you can see in the photo, the sugar content in freshly squeezed juice is approximately 12%. If this juice is fermented, the alcohol content in it will be approximately 5-6%.

5. Apple juice should be poured into 3-liter glass jars and left closed with a water seal so that it ferments:

6. After 5-6 days, the fermentation process is completed. Cider must be filtered through cheesecloth to remove sediment and other impurities:

7. After the apple-pear cider has been strained, it must be tasted for strength.

Usually the fortress after the first fermentation turns out to be very small and it is desirable to increase it a little. To do this, you need to add a little more sugar to the cider and let the cider ferment again.

Sugar is added at the rate of 50 g per 1 liter of cider.

8. After repeated fermentation, the cider must be carefully drained from the sediment and clarified.

The cider is clarified with bentonite clay, which is used in winemaking to clarify and absorb impurities.

The preparation of a mixture of bentonite for clarification of cider is as follows.

Dry bentonite clay is diluted with a small amount of water until a homogeneous slurry is obtained in consistency resembling thick sour cream.

Diluted with water, bentonite should be added to the cider bottle, shaken well and left for several days until the bentonite settles and clarifies the cider.

9. After the bentonite has settled to the bottom in the form of sediment, the cider must be carefully drained with a tube into another container so that the sediment remains in the bottle.

10. After that, the cider must be saturated with carbon dioxide to give it a characteristic sparkle.

To do this, add 1 tablespoon of sugar to disinfected plastic 1.5-liter bottles and pour the cider, leaving a little free space on top (3-5 cm from the neck).