MAKE YOUR OWN APPLE CIDER!

As a kid we would go out into the apple orchard or pasture and pick apples.  This included the ones in the trees and on the ground.   We would take the boxes into town to a cider mill for pressing.  They would charge us for pressing and bottling the non-pasteurized juice. It was great and very tasty, and you can make it, too!


For years,  we did the same process and were healthy and enjoyed real apple juice.  The above pic is of my own home-made juice.  What was even better was when we'd let some of the juice ferment  into ‘hard’ cider (yeast is naturally present in apples).

These days the ‘apple juice’ you buy is processed, pasteurized, stabilized, fortified and flavored sugar water.  Most store-bought apple juice today is over-hyped, over-watered, over-grown, picked un-ripe,  put in ethylene gas to ship or store, and most have pesticides in the all-important peel.  And don't even get me started on how most of the good enzymes are destroyed by processing (you know how I am about enzymes!).

So, pesticide free, organic apples are the safest to use in making hard apple cider.  Some of the ‘newer’ yeast really works well as long as you have a good fermentation trap on your fermenting jar/crock.  The cider will work well, but must be stopped fermenting or it will turn to apple cider vinegar.  Our family has loved each year’s harvest of apple juice.  And we stay away from the tractor after a glass of the hard stuff!

Fermentation

Apple juice, if left at room temperature, will start fermenting right away.  There is good fermentation and bad fermentation.  Good fermentation requires a good fermenting yeast in a container with a fermentation trap on top to keep out air borne yeast.  Fermentation can also take place in cold storage, such as a refrigerator, but is at a slower pace.  The problem is if you don't stop  the fermentation, you end up with apple cider vinegar or a fungus growing on top.  To stop fermentation, freeze the juice or do what the winery folks do - add disulphide.  A warning, though - a lot of people are allergic to disulphide.  

Hard Cider

Hard cider is alcoholic. Alcohol is yeast piss; therefore, people who drink alcohol are drinking yeast piss.  I know - make it a double piss, please.  Some yeast can produce alcohol up to 12% to 16 % before the alcohol kills them (proving the old adage that it is not good to lay in your own piss).

You pay big money for organic apple cider vinegar. If you have ever been to Watsonville CA you will smell vinegar.  They make a lot of it there.  It is easier to make vinegar than to make alcohol.  I have fermentation traps but I sold all my glass jars to making it.