Growing Apples for Homemade Cider

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Making Hard Cider

There was a time when farmers deemed their winter supplies incomplete until several barrels of cider were stored in the cellar. Freezing sweet cider in plastic jugs in the 1700s and 1800s wasn't an option, nor would anyone have given a hoot for pasteurized juice. These were the days when cider had but one connotation—hard cider. Britons never gave up their pints of scrumpy, nor the French their champagne cider, but here in the States popular interest in hard cider is just renewing.

Not that we'll ever return to the voluminous days of colonial consumption. One settlement of 40 families near Boston put away three thousand barrels of cider for the winter of 1721. Cider was as good as cash in the barter economy of the day. One diary from 1805 records trading a half-barrel of cider for a child's schooling. Cider was considered good for one's constitution, and even President John Quincy Adams started his day with a glass or two. Cider's popularity and moderate alcohol content (averaging 6 percent) created a schism in the growing temperance movement in the early nineteenth century—while some groups were out in the countryside attacking cider orchards with hatchets, others were serving cider to aid the discussion on the deleterious effects of rum and other distilled spirits. This societal acceptance of cider carried through the Prohibition years of the 1920s when a farmer's hard cider was one of the few exemptions to the Volstead Act. 75`

Making hard cider is relatively straightforward. Oak barrels are the traditional fermenting vessel, but the first-time cider maker is probably better off using a less-temperamental glass carboy. A used whiskey keg, if you can find one, is a 48-gallon cider commitment, where a five-gallon carboy batch allots more attempts to playing around with different juice blends and sugar ratios.

The carboy, rubber stopper, and plastic air lock should first be sterilized with a Campden tablet solution to kill any unwanted bacteria. You can obtain these brew supplies at any home-brew and wine supply store. A sloshing rinse does the trick. Fill the carboy to the top with freshly pressed cider if making a natural cider—utilizing the natural yeasts and sugars already in the juice—or leave room to add sugar and a champagne yeast before topping off: The potential alcohol of your hard cider is determined by the sugar content of the unfermented juice, or "must:'

Apple sugars generally lead to a 5 to 7 percent alcohol content, depending on the varieties used and the influence of weather and soil. Adding a full cup of sugar per gallon of must pushes the alcohol potential up to 10 or 11 percent, provided the fermentation goes completely to the dry side. A couple of handfuls of organic raisins is an old-time alternative to sugar. A sweeter cider results if the yeast stops working before all the sugar is consumed, which is more likely in a cool room or if too much sugar was added. Using a hydrometer to determine the specific gravity of the must takes the guesswork out of targeting your sugar content.

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