Apple cider recipe?

Pep

still long time to go but ...

Where I live there's plenty of apple trees. And of course because the apples are not expensive enough for people to believe they are any good (they are!) they are sadly mostly ignored. I got plenty last year but struggle to use them. Cakes, cakes, cakes.
I'd like to make some cider next season.

Any tried-and-tested recipe for apple cider?
Don't really mind how many onths of fermentation they need or else...

sandyballs

Just google search some of the Ex Pats in Muslim countries come up with good simple recipes but stay away from those that use raw alcohol and some even use toner fluid. Stick with yeast and fermenting types. Have made crude stuff by just mashing up the apples and dried bread yeast with plenty plenty sugar. Vent every day to release pressure and then filter once ready. We had no choice and plenty of time so trial and error was way ahead, hope you find an exact recipe.

capt_slog

As Stanley said, you really need a press to get all the juice out

But it sounds as if you have an excess which you are only going to waste anyway, so you're probably not after a high return?

If you want to improvise....
Get a food processor to chop up the apples and put the resulting mush in a muslin cloth which you can hang up to let the juices drain out. Give it a good squeeze after a day or so to get as much as possible. Put the juice into a demi-john with a trap on it (see wine making sites for details). The apples should have their own yeast on the skins which will start the fermentation, but you can kick start it with brewers yeast or even bread making stuff.

Don't expect a lot for your efforts.

kieranb

or you can make apple jelly, lovely with cheese!

MattC59

Sorry, I don't have a recipe for you, but son't worry about pressing them properly.

A mate of mine used to make his own cloudy cider by just smashing the apples up. It was particularly spiteful stuff !! We used to drink it as a mix of 1/3 cider, 2/3 lemonade. It was perfectly nice to drink neat, but you only needed one pint and you'd be battered.

If you want particularly spiteful stuff, leave the apple pips in whilst it brews. They contain trace amounts of arsenic....... sufficient to eerm...... add to the experience

yer gran

Press is dead easy to make. 2 sheets of ply drilled in corners. 4 lengths of threaded steel in drilled holes. 4 nuts and washers under base sheet of ply. Straw and roughly chopped apples on ply, top sheet of ply lowered over threaded steel to sit on top of apples. 4 more nuts and washers and start tightening. Straw stops the apple escaping. Putting the apples in a hessian sack would be even better. I put my press in a plastic storage box to collect the juice and bottle straight into 5 litre platic containers. You might want to relieve the pressure in these depending how lively your apples are. Have fun.

capt_slog

MattC59 wrote:

Sorry, I don't have a recipe for you, but son't worry about pressing them properly.

A mate of mine used to make his own cloudy cider by just smashing the apples up. It was particularly spiteful stuff !! We used to drink it as a mix of 1/3 cider, 2/3 lemonade. It was perfectly nice to drink neat, but you only needed one pint and you'd be battered.

If you want particularly spiteful stuff, leave the apple pips in whilst it brews. They contain trace amounts of arsenic....... sufficient to eerm...... add to the experience

Sorry, but no they don't. It's cyanide.

You can actually taste it, it's that slight taste of bitter almonds.

rhext

At it's simplest, you can make cider simply by squashing the juice out of a load of sound apples, putting it in a 5-litre container, fitting a fermentation lock and waiting for it to stop bubbling. Natural yeast in the skins of the apples will ferment the sugars into alcohol. You'll end up with something cloudy, probably greenish and bearing absolutely no resemblence to the crystal-clear sparkling stuff you can buy in the supermarket. If you've ever managed to force down more than a mouthful of 'proper' scrumpy it'll be like that. Well, to be fair, it'll probably be a bit like 'proper' scrumpy would taste if you blended it with a dash of petrol (and not in a good way). And you might end up with 5 litres of vinegar.

If you want to make it drinkable, you'll probably need to do some research on t'internet for techniques. If I remember rightly, you might typically start by killing the natural yeast (using sodium metabisulphite solution), adding a wine-making yeast, then fermenting, finally adding an enzyme to break down the pectin which causes the haze. Got a feeling you might need to pay attention to things like temperature control while you're fermenting it too.

Alternatively go with plan A and console yourself with the fact that after you've managed to force the first pint down, scrumpy becomes almost drinkable - although wishing you were dead the next morning somehow takes the shine off it a little.

MattC59

Capt Slog wrote:

MattC59 wrote:

Sorry, I don't have a recipe for you, but son't worry about pressing them properly.

A mate of mine used to make his own cloudy cider by just smashing the apples up. It was particularly spiteful stuff !! We used to drink it as a mix of 1/3 cider, 2/3 lemonade. It was perfectly nice to drink neat, but you only needed one pint and you'd be battered.

If you want particularly spiteful stuff, leave the apple pips in whilst it brews. They contain trace amounts of arsenic....... sufficient to eerm...... add to the experience

Sorry, but no they don't. It's cyanide.

You can actually taste it, it's that slight taste of bitter almonds.

My mistake, I knew it was Cyanide, but had Arsenic stuck in my mind !??!
Either way, Apples pips don't contain Cyanide either, but a sugar compound which when metabolized, degrades into HCN.
So, due to the fact that the pips don't contain HCN, you can't taste it in them! :P

rick_chasey

Cider vinegar is great stuff though.

t4tomo

yer gran wrote:

Press is dead easy to make. 2 sheets of ply drilled in corners. 4 lengths of threaded steel in drilled holes. 4 nuts and washers under base sheet of ply. Straw and roughly chopped apples on ply, top sheet of ply lowered over threaded steel to sit on top of apples. 4 more nuts and washers and start tightening. Straw stops the apple escaping. Putting the apples in a hessian sack would be even better. I put my press in a plastic storage box to collect the juice and bottle straight into 5 litre platic containers. You might want to relieve the pressure in these depending how lively your apples are. Have fun.

Don't worry about straw, a clean pillow case will do the trick if you don't have a muslin sack.

It's a lot of faffing and you need a press so you really are better off just making cakes!

where's the fun in that??

http://www.somersetmade.co.uk/oldscrump/recipec8.php google is your friend.