Cider is a traditionally southern European drink. In our country, it was grape rather than fruit wines that were much more popular. And the products that appeared in recent years on the shelves, supposedly fermented according to original recipes, do not withstand any criticism. Yes, we don’t have time for this, we take a couple of buckets of apples, and ...
Homemade Apple Cider - General Technological Principles
• Apple cider - a light alcoholic drink that is quite possible to prepare at home, without even using special equipment. It is enough to have a meat grinder or any other kitchen grinder on hand, a large capacity for making wort, and several glass bottles with a water lock installed on them. Also, gauze is useful for filtering.
• The technology for making homemade apple cider consists of the following stages:
1. collection, selection and preparation of fruits suitable for the preparation of the drink;
2. obtaining juice from the starting product;
3. preparation and fermentation of wort;
4. direct fermentation;
5. removal of sediment from the semi-finished drink and its filtration;
6. bottling and infusion of the finished product.
• To prepare a delicious cider, you should take well-ripened fruits. They should not have signs of rot and wormholes, otherwise the drink will be spoiled. It is advisable not to wash the fruits before use, they are wiped with a linen towel so as not to remove the so-called wild yeast from the fruit, which contributes to faster fermentation.
• You can use almost any apple. Combining different varieties, each time they get a new taste, aroma and color of the prepared drink. It is traditionally customary to take one part sour to two parts sweet fruit.
• To obtain juice, the prepared fruits are unpeeled chopped and left until the mashed potatoes are divided into cake and juice, which is decanted.
• Sugar is added to the squeezed juice and left for further fermentation. But there are apple cider recipes at home without the obligatory addition of sugar. The fermentation process in this case is delayed for several days. The cooked wort is put under a water lock for a while. After gas ceases to be emitted from it, the finished cider is filtered and sent for aging to a cool place, corked in a clean container.
• Often, homemade apple cider is made with other fruits, such as pears, spices, lemon zest or honey
The simplest recipe for apple cider at home
So they prepare a hoppy, sweetish drink, the color of honey, with a strength of up to 12%. It is also called “hangover-free”, because it is drunk easily and in reasonable doses does not remind of itself the next morning.
Ingredients:
• 10 kg of fragrant, necessarily ripe apples;
• sugar - 1.5 kg.
Cooking method:
1. Tear off the fruit stalks and wipe well with a linen napkin, cut into slices and, together with the peel and seeds, twist in a meat grinder. If you have a food processor or blender, it is better to use them.
2. Thoroughly wash three-liter glass jars with soda in hot water, scald with boiling water and wipe dry with a towel. Fill the containers with applesauce at least 2/3 of the volume. The approximate mass of apple slurry in the bottle is 2.5 kg.
3. Pour sugar in each jar, counting 100-150 gr. per kilo of fruit puree. Take into account the initial sweetness of the product. The cooked must must taste moderately sweet, but not seem sugary and all the more sour.
4. Stir, tie the necks with 4 layers of gauze. Remove for fermentation out of reach of direct rays, but also not too cool for 4 days. Stir the contents of the cans well daily, trying to mix the top layer of pulp that has fallen from above with apple juice.
5. After 4 days, pour the contents of the cans into a clean container, filtering it through a metal sieve, and then squeeze the apple cake.
6. Install a water seal on the tank and remove it for 36 days to ferment cider into the room, without access of light. The air temperature in it should not exceed 27 degrees and fall below 18 degrees.
7. When the drink stops letting bubbles, it visibly brightens, and sediment settles at the bottom of the container, apple cider will be ready.
8. Filter it through 4-5 layers of gauze, pour into clean containers at the very neck and seal tightly.
9. Let the drink ripen for three months in a cold room or refrigerator, and only then take the first sample.
How to make apple cider without sugar (from juice)
This is a classic West European recipe. According to rumors, just such a drink was served in taverns, the time of the musketeers. It is prepared without the addition of sugar and is considered a pure, natural drink. To prepare, you will need a juicer, since the drink is made from juice.
Ingredients:
• ripe sweet apples
Cooking method:
1. Tear off the tails of the fruit and do not rinse. If you still had to wash, wipe them dry, fold them in a single layer in a drawer and leave to stand for at least three days.
2. Then squeeze the juice from the juicer. Do not peel or cut seeds; they are also necessary. Drain all the juice into a large saucepan and leave for 24 hours at normal room temperature.
3. After this, drain it from the sediment, transfer it to a fermentation tank with a narrow neck and install a water seal. Soak the filtered juice in a dark place at 20-27 degrees for at least five days, until it stops fermenting.
4. Through a tube, so as not to capture the sediment that has settled on the bottom, pour the semi-finished drink into prepared dry bottles or glass jars and seal them tightly. Put the containers in a cool room and let stand for four months. The optimum holding temperature is from 6 to 12 degrees heat.
5. Ready-to-drink beverage, filter and pour again for further storage.
6. The shelf life of cider prepared in this way, when stored in a basement or refrigerator, can last up to three years.
Apple cider recipe at home, sugar free
This technique is quite labor intensive. The fermentation rate slows down due to the lack of sugar, but with the observance of the technology, the result, as they say, is worth the candle.
Ingredients:
• sweet fragrant apples - 2 kg;
Cooking method:
1. Cut the apples, not washed, thoroughly wiped with a cloth, into slices, twist in a meat grinder and transfer to a large stainless steel container. You can use a food processor, but do not use a juicer, because to make a drink you need juice and all the flesh. If there is no other option, and yet the juicer went into action, do not throw away the cake, but mix it with juice immediately after extraction.
2. After mixing well, cover the top of the container with gauze in several layers and fix it well. Keep the apple mass warm for at least a week, until a dense hat from the risen cake is formed on the surface. Then well strain everything on the sieve and squeeze the cake well to extract the remaining juice. It will be a little, but it is needed.
3. Pour the filtered liquid into a clean three-liter jar, install a water seal on the neck and leave it in a warm place without light for up to 2 months.
4. When the fermentation process has completely stopped, filter the apple cider by gently draining the drink from the precipitate, and pack it in clean bottles or jars. Seal tightly and store in a fairly cool place.
Apple cider recipe at home with honey
If you want to treat yourself to an unusual honey cider, then set the goal to prepare a sparkling, apple-honey drink. This method is even more troublesome, and you will have to perform many additional steps, but the result will be a completely original, incomparable cider with an apple-honey aroma.
Ingredients:
• 1.5 kg of light viscous honey;
• six liters of spring or simply well purified water;
• 8 kg of selected sweet apples.
Cooking method:
1. Cut clean, not washed, towel-wrapped apples into small slices. Take the cheesecloth, fold it in several layers and sew a suitable sized bag into which to fold the apple slices. Tie the loose edges of the linen container tightly and place it in a large enameled, earthenware, or wooden container.
2. From above, set up a wooden circle with drilled 3-cm holes and place a load - a 10-liter bucket filled with water.
3. Boil the prepared drinking water and cool. Then, dilute the honey in it well and pour the cooked honey syrup into a pan with apples, cover with gauze and put it for fermentation for 35 days in a cool place, eliminating light.
4. After that, carefully pour the liquid into a clean dish and leave, and pour the pulp remaining in the bag with the same honey syrup, quantitatively equal to the drained liquid and leave it again for 35 days.
5. Drain the cider again, but into another clean container, leave it as well. Pour the same freshly prepared syrup into the pan again and hold it for the same time, under the same conditions, drain.
6. Mix the freshly expressed cider with a previously double-drained drink, mix and place to stand. Be patient, it must be kept cool for at least nine months.
7. Finally, fermented home-made cider from apples, drain from the sediment and leave it in the cold for another four weeks, tightly corking in a clean container.
How to make apple and pear cider with spices
No sugar is used in the recipe. In order not to slow down the fermentation of the product, take well ripened sweet pears and sour varieties of apples.
Ingredients:
• sweet ripe pears - 5 kg;
• 7 kg of any fragrant apples, ripe;
• coriander seeds;
• elderberry flowers.
Cooking method:
1. Peel the fruit from the peel, cut them into small slices and pass through a meat grinder, using the smallest grate. Transfer the fruit puree to an enamelled, large volume, pan, cover with gauze and put in heat for 2 days. Be sure to mix the fruit puree well every five hours so that the product is fermented evenly. Then place a wooden circle on the fruit mass and place a load on top.
2. Pour the stand-out juice into a glass or any other container and measure its quantity. Mix it with the same volume of boiled water and leave to ferment for a week by installing a water seal on the neck of the tank.
3. Tie up the spices in a gauze bag, dip it in a cider that has not yet finished wandering and leave it under a water lock until fermentation stops. Then strain, cork in suitable containers and leave it cool for another month.
A quick recipe for apple cider at home
The accelerated method of obtaining homemade apple cider is significantly different from the established technology, but the drink is no less tasty and can be consumed in a week.
Ingredients:
• 10 liters of filtered water;
• 2 kg of sugar;
• ripe selected small apples - 8 kg;
• two large lemons.
Cooking method:
1. Halve the apples, cut the core from the fruit and put them in a suitable container.
2. Pour the halves of the fruit with water, and add the lemon peel scraped with a fine grater. Tie a pan of gauze folded in 4-5 layers and place closer to heat for a week. Do not forget to mix the contents at least once a day.
3. Strain the aged drink several times, pour into liter, or more voluminous bottles and cool. You can drink cider right after that.
How to make apple cider for a children's holiday (non-alcoholic)
Ingredients:
• two tablespoons of honey;
• one large orange;
• cinnamon sticks - 2 pcs.;
• five clove umbrellas;
• 1.2 kg of ripe, sweet and sour apples.
Cooking method:
1. From completely washed apples, squeeze the juice in any available way and pour it into the pan.
2. Add spices and bring to a boil. Then cool slightly, add honey and mix until it is completely dissolved.
3. Put the container on the fire again, without boiling, boil the non-alcoholic cider for another 10 minutes. Then cool and strain cold.
4. Serve well chilled, decorate cups or glasses with orange rings.
Apple cider recipe at home (from home drying)
Ingredients:
• one kilogram of apple home dried fruit;
• 10 liters of clean drinking water;
• a small handful of dark raisins.
Cooking method:
1. Wash apple, light, drying with cold water, but do not rinse thoroughly. Transfer to a container of sufficient volume and pour boiled cold water.
2. Tighten the top of the container with gauze and place for six days in a cool room until the fermentation process begins.
3. Strain the wort that has started, pour into a glass container, add raisins, install a water seal and leave it in the same room for another month, until the wort stops fermenting.
4. Filter the finished drink 3-4 times and only then pour into a clean container with tight-fitting lids. Store in a refrigerator or basement.
Homemade Apple Cider - Cooking Tips and Useful Tips
• Making homemade cider according to these recipes involves obtaining a "still" still drink. To make the cider carbonated, the drink removed from the precipitate is poured into clean plastic or glass containers with lids, shortening to the neck 6 cm. Previously, sugar is poured into an empty container, at the rate of 10 g. per liter of volume. Filled containers are tightly corked and put in a dark place for 12-15 days, be sure to check the gas pressure once a day.
