I have made my own craft cider for many years and inspired by the beer thread here are the details.
First of all, what is craft cider? Craft cider is cider produced by fermenting the juice of fresh apples the natural way and to the highest possible quality. By comparison supermarket ciders like Magners or Strongbow are pasteurised concoctions of artificial colour and sweetener synthesised from concentrated apple juice and watered to achieve the final ABV while the farm scrumpy that most people consider to be real cider is a rough and barely palatable drink contaminated and acetic from bacterial infection. A good craft cider is like a good wine, a pleasure to drink and with an individual character that comes from the terroir of the orchard that produced it.
Making a craft cider is pretty simple. Chop, break or crush a big heap of apples into a porridge-like consistency. This is called the pomace. Press the pomace in a cider press to extract the juice. Most cider makers will then add a small quantity of Campden tablets to kill any harmful bacteria at this point. The juice is then fermented, either with its natural yeasts or with a cultured yeast for about 6 months, during which time it has a primary fermentation from the yeast and a secondary fermentation from malolactic bacteria. Then it is bottled and left to mature for another 6 months, at which it is ready to drink. Like the beer, all the kit you use has to be sterilised because the wrong bugs getting in can mess it up. In my case I ferment all the way to use up all the sugar and make a dry cider, however there are techniques to stop fermentation half way through and create a sweet cider naturally.
The character of a cider is determined by its apples. In simple terms apples can be described in terms of three constituents, sugar, acid and tannin. Cider apples tend to have tannin and sugar but not acid, eating apples tend to have sugar and not acid or tannin and cooking apples tend to have acid but not sugar or tannin. Picking the blend of apples allows the cidermaker to dial in the final flavour from a West Country tannic bite to an Eastern counties style slightly acidic cider.
I've just bottled several crates of last year's cider. I'll start drinking it some time towards Christmas. I appreciate waiting a year isn't for everyone but for those who've tasted a craft cider that has a real taste of apples there is no going back.
More information: www.ukcider.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
First of all, what is craft cider? Craft cider is cider produced by fermenting the juice of fresh apples the natural way and to the highest possible quality. By comparison supermarket ciders like Magners or Strongbow are pasteurised concoctions of artificial colour and sweetener synthesised from concentrated apple juice and watered to achieve the final ABV while the farm scrumpy that most people consider to be real cider is a rough and barely palatable drink contaminated and acetic from bacterial infection. A good craft cider is like a good wine, a pleasure to drink and with an individual character that comes from the terroir of the orchard that produced it.
Making a craft cider is pretty simple. Chop, break or crush a big heap of apples into a porridge-like consistency. This is called the pomace. Press the pomace in a cider press to extract the juice. Most cider makers will then add a small quantity of Campden tablets to kill any harmful bacteria at this point. The juice is then fermented, either with its natural yeasts or with a cultured yeast for about 6 months, during which time it has a primary fermentation from the yeast and a secondary fermentation from malolactic bacteria. Then it is bottled and left to mature for another 6 months, at which it is ready to drink. Like the beer, all the kit you use has to be sterilised because the wrong bugs getting in can mess it up. In my case I ferment all the way to use up all the sugar and make a dry cider, however there are techniques to stop fermentation half way through and create a sweet cider naturally.
The character of a cider is determined by its apples. In simple terms apples can be described in terms of three constituents, sugar, acid and tannin. Cider apples tend to have tannin and sugar but not acid, eating apples tend to have sugar and not acid or tannin and cooking apples tend to have acid but not sugar or tannin. Picking the blend of apples allows the cidermaker to dial in the final flavour from a West Country tannic bite to an Eastern counties style slightly acidic cider.
I've just bottled several crates of last year's cider. I'll start drinking it some time towards Christmas. I appreciate waiting a year isn't for everyone but for those who've tasted a craft cider that has a real taste of apples there is no going back.
More information: www.ukcider.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
