Ideally, cider should come from apples that are considered “cider-type,” such as Arkansas Black, Cortland, or Cox Orange Pippen. Or, head to your local orchard to buy a few gallons of fresh, unpasteurized* cider for not much more than the price of organic milk. Today, you can easily make your own hard apple cider at home, using a mix of farmhouse and commercial methods. Drink responsibly! Farmhouse Meets Modern Cider Otherwise, though, the process is much the same. Sugar content in juice is measured and adjusted to ensure the desired volume of alcohol results. Better temperature control and cultured yeast also ensure complete fermentation. We also use airtight, stainless steel vats or glass carboys with airlocks for optimal fermentation. We now use engines to operate our grinders and more sophisticated presses to extract every drop of liquid. Our modern cider-making methods aren’t that different from yesteryear’s. Storing the cider in a cool location (50-55☏ or 10-13☌) was necessary to prevent the cider from accidentally turning to vinegar during the fermentation process.Īfter roughly 4 months of slow fermentation, the cider was ready to consume. Once the crust formed, natural yeasts converted the sugars to alcohol slowly over time. This crust created the nearly anaerobic conditions necessary for good fermentation. The fresh cider was put in open containers in a cool, dark location (e.g., a root cellar) and allowed to sit for months.Ī kind of crust, from the floating apple particles, would form on the top of the open container. Once the juice was extracted, making the cider was easy. If you want to make your own cider apple press at home, check out this PDF guide from The New Cider Maker’s Handbook author Claude Jolicoeur. Then, the juice was put into cloth bags, inside a slatted basket, and pressed using a solid lid with a crank. When gears gained in popularity, people started using hand crank apple mills at home. ![]() In large operations, a stone mill might have been used to crush the apples and extract the juice. Then, gravity and time would draw the juice from the apples. Also, crushed apples were sometimes layered in straw, over a collection trough, to create a natural sieve. “Zone-Pushing Tips for Growing Ginger and Turmeric in Cold Climates”Īfter initial crushing, even harder pressing would be done using weights like rocks. “How to Make Your Own Tinctures, Salves, and Essential Oils” Wooden bats would have been used to mash the apples over a hard, curved surface. Then, you have to press the juice out of the crushed apples.Įarly apple pressing basically looked like a large mortar and pestle. Making the juice is essentially a 2-step process. Yet, on the whole, putting up apples ranked on the easy side of self-sufficiency for our not-so-modern homesteading ancestors. On early farms, it took some work to press the juice for cider. It wasn’t until the last 50 to 100 years that factories began usurping the role of cider-making. Once upon a time, every farmhouse in England and most of the U.S. So fresh eating and extracting the juice to make alcohol became the norm. Without regulated refrigeration, it was impossible to store these early apple varieties for long. Let us do the prep work for you! Check out our DIY Fire Cider Kits in the TGN Store! “How to Peel 20 Cloves of Garlic in 8 Seconds” “DIY Fire Cider Recipe-Simple & Powerful” Our ancestors understood the value of alcohol both economically and from a preservation perspective. Now when I say “cider,” I mean the hard kind. Cider apples-a sweeter, more juicy version of the wild crab apple-were their first successes. ![]() Our ancient ancestors started cultivating crab apples thousands of years ago. Historically, though, apples weren’t grown for their health benefits but for their high sugar content. Many of us know the old adage that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” or its precursor, “to eat an apple on going to bed, keeps the doctor from earning his bread.” This probably had some influence on the generally accepted utility of apples in a healthy diet. Whether they grow their own or get them by the bushel (about 42 pounds worth) from orchards, apples are a mainstay of our food culture. ![]() In my region of rural North Carolina, just about everyone “puts up” apples each year. from Pixabay How to Make Hard Apple Cider in 5 Easy Steps
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