Homemade cider

[thrifty++]

I am gearing up for cider production. However as I do research I am finding stuff online relating to risks such as exploding cider bottles as well as death or blindness from home-brew errors.
Does anyone else on here make cider themselves?
How do you go about mitigating the above risks? Particularly in relation to exploding bottles when you go to the second stage of fermenting, the bottling stage where the bottle is sealed. Would love to hear how others get on with avoiding the above risks.
Also can you get away with using general baking yeast from the supermarket rather than needing to spend heaps on specialty wine or cider yeast? I do wonder if the latter is just a fancy marketing ploy.

[sky]

Seleecting the strain of yeast is very important for cider, try to use a yeast that is recommended by cider makers.

Blindness only happens from distillation products. Don't distill, and don't fortify your cider by adding alcohol.

Preventing bottle explosions is done by making sure the fermenting process is complete before bottling, and carefully dosing the priming sugar when bottling.

[jacob]

Specialty yeast is not a ploy. The kind of yeast really influences the taste and you don't really want to use baking yeast (or wild yeast for that matter). The price of yeast is $0.5-$2 per packet and one packet makes 5 gallons.

[Gilberto de Piento]

I've made a few batches with no explosions. Buy the appropriate yeast. I like the instructions at http://howtomakehardcider.com/ though it seems to be down right now.

[bristoldude]

If you're brewing regularly you can use the end of the last batch to start the new one, so you only need to stump up once for the fancy yeast.

You could even go without entirely if you're starting with whole (and organic) apples as they will have yeast living on the outside, this is how it all started.. There are still plenty of places in the SW of England that make cider this way. I tried this a couple of times with mixed success, I now tend to add yeast just for consistency.

My experience is only with scrumpy though, the above may not hold for clear bubbly fancy cider

[ajg01]

Can you not use a one way air lock with cider? Home beer brewers use them and I believe many wine brewers do too.

Edit: oh you mean when you cap it and store for later. Gotcha.

Just some basics to avoid common mistakes

1. Make sure you have no leaks in the first stage.

2. Make sure you allow fermentation to complete.. And if adding sugar, don't add too much.

3. Store bottle in fridge or other cold place to slow any remaining fermentation.

4. Don't bottle the bottom layer of slurp.

Some people drink it immediately and then recap with airlock. Saves on bottles and avoids bombs.

[thrifty++]

Some people drink it immediately and then recap with airlock. Saves on bottles and avoids bombs.

Thanks ajg yes I was thinking of doing that. I am interested to hear from others though whether it works out ok doing it that way. Would save on the messy business of siphoning it into bottles.

Blindness only happens from distillation products. Don't distill, and don't fortify your cider by adding alcohol.

I am not quite sure what you mean by distill. What does that involve?

[sky]

distill means to boil and condense the alcohol, making moonshine. Or to freeze and remove the ice, increasing the alcohol content of the remaining cider. There are methanol alcohols that are unhealthy and they can be concentrated if you don't follow certain procedures, like discarding the first runnings of a distillation process.

Here is a good overview of how to make cider: http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/cider.pdf

[thrifty++]

Thanks Sky

I am going to try bottling in plastic PET soft drink bottles. Seems a cheap and effective solution to continue the fermentation while minimising explosion risk.

[jacob]

@thrifty++ - I've seen comments discouraging that procedure, mostly due to the fact that plastic is permeable to oxygen but also due to the risk of leaching during the long term storage in the secondary. I don't know whether the latter is hippie talk.

[Did]

@jacob @thrifty Coopers PET bottles are great for such things. Unless you plan on storing for more than a couple of years they would be grand. And yes they can cope with a bit of bottle fermentation and are hard to explode.

[toto123]

distill means to boil and condense the alcohol, making moonshine. Or to freeze and remove the ice, increasing the alcohol content of the remaining cider.

Are you sure about the risks of fractional freezing? I've read online that it's not riskier than the original cider since it contains the same amount of alcohol (ethanol, methanol) and is just more concentrated (less to no water). I'm actually making my first applejack from a homemade cider this week...

[sky]

Sorry, I mentioned freezing as an example of distilling, not so much as an unhealthy method of distilling.

I have distilled using a pressure cooker and copper tubing. I don't recommend that because it caused some serious health effects for me. I try to stay away from spirits now.

[thrifty++]

My green apple cider was a grand success. Very tasty, even having used baking yeast. I have proper cider yeast now. Im going to do another batch soon. I am wondering what flavours other people have done well?? I am about to do Guava and Pineapple cider. Is orange cider disgusting or does it work out ok?

[bristoldude]

Blackberries in with apples is pretty good, makes up for apples that don't have enough acid.
On a semi related note I've also had some good results with mead.

[bristoldude]

Blackberries in with apples is pretty good, makes up for apples that don't have enough acid.
On a semi related note I've also had some good results with mead.

[thrifty++]

Blackberries with apples sounds extremely tasty. I will give that a go once the season is right for berries.
Mead is with honey right? Do you just use honey and water or are there other ingredients? Is the finished product still sweet?