Lately, I’ve been getting into brewing; beer, wine, hard apple cider, you name it! In this post, I’ll be talking about hard apple cider, but I may add more posts on other brews later. I’ve now made hard apple cider twice and have definitely enjoyed the results!
For those inexperienced with brewing hard apple cider, its pretty straight forward. Throw 1 tsp of yeast into a gallon of apple juice or apple cider in a sanitized 1-gal fermenter. Shake the mixture to increase the dissolved oxygen which helps build a healthy yeast colony. After a week, transfer (or “rack”) into another sanitized fermenter to allow the brew to clear. For those interested in the terminology, the initial fermentation is “primary fermentation” and upon transferring is “secondary fermentation”. Generally, primary is when most of the alcohol is produced and secondary is when most of the clarity is achieved.
Once the brew is done fermenting (no longer bubbling), it is ready to be bottled. For bottling, “natural” carbonation is typically used (kegging is another article altogether). Natural carbonation is achieved by throwing a certain amount of sugar (usually 1oz per gal of white or brown sugar) into the brew. This restarts the fermentation causing more CO2 to be released. Once the sugar is mixed in, the result is put into bottles and those bottles are capped. You then have dry, carbonated cider ready to enjoy in a little over two weeks. However, aging the brew for a few more weeks produces a better result (some people age for months). Calculating alcohol by volume (ABV) requires the use of a hydrometer; you compare the density of the non-fermented liquid to the fermented liquid and multiply by 131.25. A typical apple juice has a density of 1.060 and typically finishes fermenting at 1.000; (1.060-1.000)*131.25 = 7.88%.
For sweet, non-carbonated apple cider, you can add more sugar before bottling and either add chemicals that prevent further fermentation or pasteurize to kill the yeast (otherwise way too much CO2 will be produced and you’ll potentially shatter your bottles). For sweet and carbonated hard apple cider (my preferred style) it gets more complicated; we’ll have to cover that in another article.