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Apple Cider 2025

It's been a while since my last fermentation experiment, about 15 years. I sold my homebrewing equipment when I moved out of the US a decade ago, and stopped thinking about it. However, my apple trees were very productive this year. You can only fill your belly with so much apple sauce, so I started contemplating different ways to use them. That's when I remembered the fizz wizards: yeast. And this is how I jumped back on the fermentation bandwagon.

I bought most of my equipment from Brouwland in Belgium. Their delivery was fast, the items were well packaged, and everything was as advertised. I will continue to be a customer. As far as know-how is concerned, I spent quite a few hours on YouTube watching people making cider. There isn't much to it, it's simpler than beer: make juice, ferment juice.

Ingredients and equipment

Here are all the things that ended up being helpful on this project, in case you plan on fermenting random juices yourself:

• Apple juice, obviously, if you have apples, you need a way to turn them into juice. I used a Nama J2, but I recommended a proper fruit press.
• A 15 liter carboy, I picked one made of glass; I don't like what I eat to be exposed to plastic.
• A bubbler that fits on your carboy. You could get away with a few layers of t-shirt fabric attached with an elastic. The bubbler allows you to have a clearer sense of when the yeast is done.
• A 30 liter fermenting bucket, you could do without, but it makes mixing things easier.
• A big spatula/spoon, you'll need to lightly mix things at one point or another. Most people have big kitchen spoons or laddles.
• Fermentis SafCider AB-1 yeast, this was my first pick, just because it was mentioned in one youtube video, not a lot of thought went into this.
• Star San, you'll need something to sanitize all your things. Since I used Star San when I brewed beer, I assumed it would work again. "Don't Fear the Foam!"
• Bottles, caps and bottle capper, make sure you pick the right cap diameter. I did not, and had to scramble at the last minute to figure out how to bottle everything.
• Siphon tube, you'll want to filter out the dead yeast and whatever deposit is sitting at the bottom of your carboy.
• A 0.1g precision scale, I didn't use one for this cider, and ended up eye-balling my yeast. It's usually best not to eye-ball your ingredients unless you're experimenting.
• Beer hydrometer, not strictly necessary, but will allow you to estimate the alcohol content by measuring before and after fermentation gravity.

Step by step

There is nothing much to it, I strongly recommend people try fermenting fruits and make their own alcohol, it's quite fun. Here are the rough steps:

• Sanitize everything (a few minutes exposure to dilluted Star San)
• Pour the juice in the carboy, sprinkle the yeast on top (I eyeballed ~3g of SafCider AB-1)
• Put the bubbler with clean water or vodka inside
• Store at the yeast's recommended temperature (16 degree Celcius in my case) for a couple of weeks
• Filter out the top and the bottom sediments with the siphon (basically remove what seems solid-ish)
• Mix some sugar into the mix based on sugar content to carbonate
• Bottle and cap everything
• Wait a couple more weeks
• Drink responsibly!

Result

This is a blurry dry cider. I assume it was blurry because I used a juicer instead of a press and a lot of solids were left into the juice. But overall, I enjoy drinking it quite a bit, once chilled. Since I never measured the gravity before fermenting, I can't know for sure how much alcohol it has, but it feels quite strong for a cider, I would even say north of 5%. The cider is fizzy, but not bubbly, probably due to not enough sugar while bottling.

If I were to make another batch at some point, I would change the following things:

• Measure gravity before fermentation so I can calculate alcohol content
• Actually weigh the yeast instead of eyeballing it
• Experiment with another yeast, perhaps something that would leave more sugar
• Add more sugar at bottling, or at least measure sugar content and aim for sweeter cider, with more gaz
• Press the apples instead of juicing them