Apple Cider Recipe Wanted

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Jaffa91

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My cooking apple trees have apples falling. I think their Bramley, may be wrong but their certainly cookers.

I'm looking for a working and tried recipe for a lovely apple cider, I'm looking to make a 25L batch, so recipe and guideline would be great

Thanks

J
 
Just add yeast after pressing. That's all you really need, could add a little sugar to pump up the abv'.:thumb:
 
Fermenting any apple juice will give you cider.
Northern Ireland produce lots of Bramleys which are juiced for commercial cider.
Having said that the apples need to be ripe, even bramleys have sugar in them but not at this time of year. They ripen in late October.
As a guide it is said to use 50% sweet (dessert - eating) apples, 35% bitters, which comes from true cider apples. As these are not generally available a 70:30 mix is often suggested.

You will know if your apples are true cookers if you peel and slice them and boil. If the fruit breaks up it is a cooker (the acid causes the flesh to break down) if they hold their shape they are eaters.

So juice your apples, blend with supermarket juice and ferment away.

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I've collected the fallen apples and have around 2 buckets full.

My plan at the moment is to add concentrated juice at 70% and 30% pressed apple juice. Maybe a little warm water to top up if required.
(Should i take a reading of PH Level? and add chalk accordingly?)

I will then add 250g of Sugar and yeast then leave to ferment. What are people's thoughts on this ?
 
Get a variety of apples, cooking and eating. Rinse them in cold water to remove any muck, chop in quarters, put through a scratter, press the scratter apples running the juice into a fermenter, stick an airlock on the fermenter and leave for 6 months. The natural yeasts will ferment the juice and you will have a still dry cider at the end. Depending on how well you scrat and press the apples for every 1 litre of juice you will need at least 2 kg of apples, probably more. If you keep the fermenter in a warm place until the fermentation seems to have stopped and then move it to a cold place (unseated shed or garage - I leave mine outside under a garden chair cover) the cooling down over winter and warming in spring helps convert some of the bitter malic acid into sweeter lactic acid which mellows the sharpness of the raw scrumpy. I made about 150 litres a few years ago using a bought cider yeast and got good results but last year I used the natural wild yeast method and found it produced perfectly good drinkable 7% ABV cider. Unfortunately I broke my press so I'm trying to find time to make a new one before this year's harvest is available as I've been given access to an old established orchard which has previously left most of its apples to rot.

As others have said, the apples that are falling now probably don't have enough sugars in them and are best used in cooking but those that fall from mid September will have ripened nicely
 
Fermenting any apple juice will give you cider.
Northern Ireland produce lots of Bramleys which are juiced for commercial cider.
Having said that the apples need to be ripe, even bramleys have sugar in them but not at this time of year. They ripen in late October.
As a guide it is said to use 50% sweet (dessert - eating) apples, 35% bitters, which comes from true cider apples. As these are not generally available a 70:30 mix is often suggested.

You will know if your apples are true cookers if you peel and slice them and boil. If the fruit breaks up it is a cooker (the acid causes the flesh to break down) if they hold their shape they are eaters.

So juice your apples, blend with supermarket juice and ferment away.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

I've got a cooking apple tree and a pear tree. Do you think the pears would make a reasonable substitute for the sweet apples? To the uninitiated it feels like it makes sense, and then I could do a fully "homegrown" product!
 
Pears certainly have the sweetness. One of the issues of pressing pears for juice is that, when ripe, they puree and you get a sludgy juice. That's fine, just more to rack off and don't forget to add pectolase to help it clear.
If you are up for playing about, could cover the chopped pears in sugar, using the sugar to extract the juice - along the lines of rhubarb wine.


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Pears certainly have the sweetness. One of the issues of pressing pears for juice is that, when ripe, they puree and you get a sludgy juice. That's fine, just more to rack off and don't forget to add pectolase to help it clear.
If you are up for playing about, could cover the chopped pears in sugar, using the sugar to extract the juice - along the lines of rhubarb wine.


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Great advice, thanks. Got a while to think about it before the fruit is ready to pick in any case.


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I've collected the fallen apples and have around 2 buckets full.

My plan at the moment is to add concentrated juice at 70% and 30% pressed apple juice. Maybe a little warm water to top up if required.
(Should i take a reading of PH Level? and add chalk accordingly?)

I will then add 250g of Sugar and yeast then leave to ferment. What are people's thoughts on this ?

Adding water I thought was not the best idea? Info appreciated as I'm about to start pressing apples :lol:
 
Just a little update. I went with a 60:40 mix and batch is now fermenting. Tasted very nice and took a hydrometer reading. Will see how it turns out at the end and if it's worthy I'll type up a full recipe for others to try.
 
I have been wanting to make some apple wine so asked about for apples and I now have 10kg of them (mainly cookers I think). So now I am thinking about cider as I can probably get more apples. Is it really as simple as juicing, adding yeast and fermenting out? That sounds just too simple to be true! I can get myself a barrel (I am thinking of getting into beer at some stage anyway) from Wilko's for this. Just need to look at how to juice apples as I don't have a press at the moment. I will be short on juice so can supermarket juice be used to make up the difference?
 
Just need to look at how to juice apples as I don't have a press at the moment.

This is the potentially expensive bit. You need to pulp / 'scrat' the apples before pressing. Old school is to pulp the apples with a big piece of wood and the apples in a bucket. Slow, hard work. There are guides online on homemade presses and scratters.

I bought a press and use an old garden shredder to pulp the apples.
 
Another option for making a more west/hereford cider from mainly dessert fruit may be add a small percentage of crabs/wildings - you know, the small buggers which grow in hedgerows - try them and you'll see how sharp and bitter (mouth puckering) they are. But depends what you're after - east UK tend to brew more dessert based ciders, compared with the 'proper' stuff over this side.

I've pressed a couple of gallons of crabs as an experiment and doing most of my ferments without any yeast or other additions this year. I doubt the crab cider will be drinkable on its own, but I've heard of people using it as a special note in blends.
(wondering whether maceration of crabs may be good too - scratting then leaving overnight before pressing - so maybe I'll do another gallon or two to compare)
 
Just need to look at how to juice apples as I don't have a press at the moment. I will be short on juice so can supermarket juice be used to make up the difference?

Yes you can use supermarket juice as long as its 100% juice.
If you don't want to get involved with presses then pick up a juicer locally on Ebay/Gumtree. There are thousands of them for sale, just make sure it's min 1000w. There is one near me now, used twice; �£15 or make an offer.

If your apples aren't ripe, but are on the ground pick them up and lay them in the sun, they'll ripen some more. We got some boxes of green windfalls a couple of weeks ago, they're now red.

Everyones taste is different, some people like the proper stuff which is too harsh for me, I use a yeast with sweetener. It makes for an interesting taste, you can sense the sour and dryness, but also the sweetness over the top, it's like a multilayered taste sensation.
 

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