Making your own Hard Cider
About a two weekends ago my friend and I were sitting around with no beer on a Friday night in a college town. It was too late to go buy some and we were running short on beer money. So we decided to do some heavy research into the matter of making our own hard cider. At first we were looking all over YouTube on how to brew our own beer but it seemed too complicated so we started to look into vodka but we have no way to distill it. So before giving up I had the idea of making our own cider. We quickly researched how and it was so simple we thought it was a joke. My friend and I started to get pumped about making our own hard cider and the next day we went out to the store to get supplies.
The supplies needed to brew your own hard cider is...
- A Gallon of Fresh Apple Cider or 64oz Cheap Apple Juice with no preservatives in either or
- A Cup of Sugar
- A Packet of Bread Yeast
Yes that is all you need I'm not kidding!
Directions: - You will need to activate the yeast to make sure the fermentation will take place.
4a. Boil 1/4 of a cup of water to 108 - 115 degrees Fahrenheit, this is right above an average person's pain threshold so it should hurt slightly if you don't have a thermometer.
4b. Pour yeast and two table spoons of sugar into a cup with the just boiled water and let it set for 15 minutes. After the 15 minutes there should be a large amount of foam and the smell of bread. - Now time for the mixing of sugar with the apple drink of your choice.
5a. Open up the apple juice grab a small glass and drink some. Yes, I'm Serious! You'll need to make room inside the bottle for the sugar.
5b. Next measure out a cup of sugar no need for packing it. Pour the apple drink of your choice on top of it and mix and dissolve the sugar.
5c. Pour the well mixed apple sugar concoction back into the bottle. - Now the only thing left is to take all that foamy yeast that has been foaming at your side the whole time and carefully spoon and slowly dump it back into the bottle.
- Now time for the shoulder exercise, set a timer on your phone for 15 minutes and throw the cap back on the bottle. Shake violently!
- After shaking for 15 minutes, store in a dark place with an average of room temperature. Loosen the cap slightly to let the CO2 out but not let air in. If you don't loosen the cap prepare for the bottle to explode randomly or opening it and the contents exploding in your face.
- Finally let the juice ferment for a week then taste test it to see if the alcohol level is to your liking. Pro Tip: The longer you wait the more alcohol is made until all the yeast dies out after about 6 months. DO NOT DRINK THE YEAST AT THE BOTTOM FILTER IT OUT.
You can see the dead yeast at the bottom DO NOT DRINK THAT IT IS NASTY!
If you get lost here is the most basic DIY way to make hard cider:
If you want to invest and move to serious production of producing hard cider watch all three episodes of this channel on cider:
Cheers!
Well done! How does it taste?
I must say I was surprised when I saw the temperature of the water you rehydrated the yeast with. I thought such a high temp would be damaging to the yeast. But obviously it worked!
I'm into homebrewing as well and you should try brewing beer as well, it really isnt difficult at all. All you need is a bucket, heh.
The longer you let it ferment the more alcoholic taste it develops. Really all I need is a bucket?
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I had no idea it could ferment that quickly. many years ago, While serving time for a D.U.I....my cellie collected everyone's orange juice into a trash bag...the threw in some bread for yeast, and tied it into a knot. He "burped' it once and strained it through a pillowcase 2 days later. It was nasty...but, it was booze.