Cider Making By David Cope

Cider Making

Gary and I started making cider for a couple of reasons, mainly because of Gary’s frustration and ire at seeing so many apples left to rot every autumn, but also because I had a lot of beer making equipment that had been sitting idle for a while. In addition, it seemed like it would be a whole lot of fun, and having drunk some truly dreadful scrumpy at various beer festivals, I felt sure we could make a better one. Making cider is in fact incredibly easy, far easier than brewing beer, although rather more labour intensive. However, the final product is well worth the effort. To make a batch of cider you will need the following:

i) A room that can be cleaned easily and that you don’t mind getting covered in sticky apple juice, as will invariably happen. We typically use a kitchen with an easily moppable floor, although a conservatory/garage would do (but it does help to have an electrical wall socket).

ii) At least one friend, possibly two, to help out. I would suggest a minimum of 3 people to share the labour and to keep each other entertained. If you have no friends, it will take you ages.

iii) A spare weekend, although we have managed to make good scrumpy when the only spare time we had were several consecutive nights after work. All in all, for a single batch of 40 pints, it will take 8-9 hours solid work.

iv) A cider press which should be cleaned with hot, soapy water.

v) A 5 gallon (40 pint) fermenting bin that will need to be sterilised.

vi) An airtight storage barrel (also 40 pints) that will also need to be sterilised.

vii) Tubing for siphoning

viii) Loads and loads of apples.

A brewing session usually begins a week in advance with Gary sending an e-mail round at work asking if anyone wants to be relieved of their troublesome apples. We then spend a couple of evenings after work going round to various peoples houses collecting said apples. Professional cider makes bang on about getting the correct mix of different apples in order to get your cider just-so, but this doesn’t bother us. Truth be told, we tend to get a fairly wide range of apples anyway, from large eating apples to small crab apples, because not everyone has the same type of apple tree in their garden. In any case, to get enough juice for 40 pints of scrumpy, you will need 3 or 4 large (and I do mean large) boxes of apples, as the juice extraction process isn’t particularly efficient (or at least ours isn’t).

On the earmarked day, start chopping the apples into fairly small pieces, say about 2cm3. The idea here is to reduce them in size to aid the mashing of the pieces into a good pulp. Obviously the size of the apple dictates how many times it needs to be chopped, some of the smaller ones can be halved, the larger ones will take much longer. Don’t be too fussy about the quality of the apples. Rotten ones should be thrown away, and maggots should be excluded, but small bits of wildlife only enhance the flavour. Expect to spend at least half the day chopping, and to cut yourself at some point. The next stage is to mash the apples into a pulp ready for pressing. The mashing breaks up the cell membranes which releases the sugars that will be turned into alcohol. For our first attempt at pulping we used a commercially available apple masher which consisted of a fairly blunt rotating blade that could be attached to a drill. To be frank it was rubbish, and after several attempts we abandoned it and ended up using the bottom of a vodka as a hammer to smash the apple pieces. This actually worked quite well, although on later batches we progressed to using Gareth’s food processor which greatly speeded up the procedure. Ideally we need a system whereby the apples go from whole to pulped in one simple move, but we have yet to come up with one. I’m convinced that using a big (meat) mincer is the answer to our prayers, but finding a cheap, industrial sized mincer (spotlessly clean, of course) is another matter. For those who want to make barrels and barrels of cider, mashers are available that can sit on top of the press. You then simply tip the apples in the top, turn the handle that macerates the apples, and the pulp falls into the press. No such attachment is available for our small press, however.

The press we have (others are presumably no more than modifications on it’s basic design) consists of a cast iron tripod base with a two foot long threaded rod welded to it, and a detachable cylinder of loosely fitted wooden slats kept in place by a couple of iron bands. The cylinder of slats sits around the rod and the pulped apples are poured in until they reach the top. This cylindrical mass of pulp is now called a called a cake. Two semi-circular pieces of wood fit around the rod and inside the slats. A couple of square, wooden spacers sit on top of these, and finally a nut that threads onto the rod goes on top of the spacers. The nut can then be screwed down the rod, the pulp is compressed and the juice is forced out between the slats. The iron base has a lipped groove that collects the cider and directs it to a mouth in the lip where the juice can be collected and poured into the fermenting bin. Some small bits of apple will also be forced out of the slats, but these can either be skimmed off the juice once it is in the bin, or left in and filtered out once the fermented juice is transferred to the barrel. The cake can be topped up with more pulp as and when, but eventually there will be no more juice forthcoming, the cake will have to be removed, and the process started again. We can get 40 pints of juice from ~5 cakes. Once all the pressing has been finished, remember to wash all parts of the press thoroughly using hot, soapy water. The press needn’t be sterilised like the fermenting bin and the barrel.

Once all the juice is collected, it should be kept in the fermenting bin for about a week. The fermenting bin must be sterilised thoroughly to prevent outside bacterial or yeast infections from spoiling the cider. We use Chempro SPD which is essentially a weak bleach and readily available from all brewing suppliers. Several batches of our cider have been made over several consecutive nights, with juice being gradually added to the fermenting bin, but the quality of these batches was always just as high as those made in a single day. When the juice is in the bin, natural yeasts that are present in the skin of the apples will start fermenting the sugars in the solution, so there is no need to add any extra yeast. The conversion of sugar to alcohol releases a lot of carbon dioxide, so the juice is most likely to ‘bubble’ and be covered with a particularly scummy head. After about a week all the sugar will have been turned to alcohol. This endpoint is recognisible because the juice will finish ‘bubbling’. The ‘cider’ is then ready to be barrelled.

The barrelling is a fairly straight forward manoeuvre, simply siphon the cider from the fermenting bin into a previously sterilised barrel, spilling as little as possible. A good, pressurised, airtight barrel, preferably with a valve to allow built up gas to vent, is what you want, and they are available from all good brewing suppliers. The cider can also be bottled, although I speak from bitter experience when I say sterilising and thoroughly rinsing 40+ bottles is not a job I wish to repeat in the near future. Remember to also sterilise any tubing you use to do the siphoning. If the fermenting has been particularly successful, a thick layer of yeast will be left on the bottom of the bin. If you are worried that the cider isn’t alcoholic enough, you can always add some sugar to the barrel before siphoning in the cider. Although the majority of the yeast will remain in the bin, some will be transferred into the barrel during the siphoning and it will work on this sugar converting it into more alcohol and making the cider stronger. Purists no doubt frown on this practise, but we always do it just in case the initial fermentation wasn’t particularly successful. Also, even if there were enough alcohol already, the extra sugar will pep it up a little more. In order to make sure the sugar is sterile, always dissolve it in some boiling water first, and then wait for this hot, sugary solution to cool before adding it to the barrel. Once all the cider is in, put on the cap making sure it is nice and tight.

And there you have it, 40 pints of prime scrumpy ready for quaffing (unless you added some sugar to the barrel in which case it will take another week to ferment). However, as with most things, and if you can bear to leave it alone, the cider will greatly improve over time. I would wait at least a minimum of 6 weeks before trying it. Cider was traditionally made in the autumn to be drunk the next summer, so if you can bear to leave it months rather than weeks you will find the flavour and aesthetic qualities of the brew will improve, so that it no longer looks (or tastes) like a dodgy urine sample. Plus, cider is very much a summer drink. With a hot sun beating down, the thwack of leather on willow, and a lassie called Rosie by your side, the whole experience will be improved immeasurably

With some pride, I have to say our cider has been better than we could have hoped for when we began, and that with every batch we become more competent and recognise facets of the process that can be improved. For those who think Strongbow isn’t possibly as good as it can get, give it a go, and I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

If you’ve had a go at making cider, tell us of your exploits. Or, invite us round to sample some of your scrumpy. We promise not to drink it all.