So you want to homebrew some hard cider....
You love drinking hard cider, and that love of hard cider means you want to take your relationship to the next level. Home brewing your own hard cider can be as easy or as hard as you want to make it. Below I’ll be covering the basics of making your own, small batch, craft hard cider at home.
The basic function of making hard cider is having yeast eat the sugar in the cider. When this happens, the yeast reproduce, making more yeast cells, while producing carbon dioxide (CO2) and alcohol as by-products. The CO2 off gasses from the liquid while the alcohol stays behind creating a glorious alcoholic cider, or hard cider.
The easy way to make hard cider at home...
- Buy Cider with no additives in it
- Put an airlock on it to control the release of the CO2
- Place it in a cool dark closet or basement for a few weeks to months.
If you are skeptical if this will work, it will. Apples have numerous strains of yeast and bacteria on them that when left alone will naturally start to ferment the cider. The key is making sure that you select a cider that has no additives in it, such as potassium sorbate or potassium metabisulfate. These and others are preservatives used to prevent the juice from fermenting, giving it a longer shelf life in a supermarket or your home refrigerator. Getting a cider from a local orchard is a good way to ensure this, plus you can talk with the orchard staff to see what apples they used. If you are not near an orchard I have heard that you can get some cider from places like Whole Foods that will not have additives.
Hard cider made this way may be good, or it may be not so good. The reason being is that you are at the mercy of the yeast and bacteria that are naturally in the cider from the orchard and the processing process. This also makes this style of cider hard to reproduce and you well tend to get lots of unique ciders.
If you’re looking for something a little more advanced follow the link below.