In autumn, gardens and forests are brimming with fruit and berries. That's when it's time to make your own. Let's get started!
Store-bought cider or real fruit cider?
Some might think of cider as what you find in the grocery store, which is often very sweet with artificial flavors. The cider we are talking about here is usually well fermented and has little residual sweetness. There are various options for back-sweetening it, but traditionally, a true cider should be dry.
How to brew cider
Before we elaborate on ingredients, equipment, and additives, let's briefly review the brewing process itself:
- Clean the fruit and separate the juice from the pulp. If you're brewing very small quantities, a good juicer can suffice. If you're aiming for a slightly larger volume, you'll do yourself a great favor by investing in a dedicated fruit mill and fruit press. Optionally, add ascorbic acid during the process to reduce oxidation.
- Pasteurize the juice with heat treatment at 80-85ºC, or add Campden and Sorbistat to remove wild yeast. Alternatively, skip this step if you want to use the wild yeast already on the fruit.
- Pour the fruit juice into a sanitized fermentation bucket. Add yeast and yeast nutrient, then seal with a lid and airlock.
- Let the fermenter sit for at least six weeks, and preferably eight weeks or longer. To ensure the fermentation process is complete, you can take a sugar reading with a hydrometer (SG measurement) over several days. If it doesn't change, the fermentation process is finished. To reduce off-flavors like fusel alcohols and sulfur, it can be beneficial to keep the temperature relatively low. 10 to 15 degrees Celsius is good. The most important thing is to maintain a consistent temperature throughout, without large fluctuations.
- A few days before bottling, you can optionally add fining agents if desired. For good fining results, we recommend cold crashing your cider when adding the fining agent.
- Bottle (or keg) your cider and add carbonation sugar: Either in the form of carbonation drops or sugar syrup. The amount varies depending on how much carbonation you want in your cider. Cider often benefits from strong carbonation: 7 to 8 grams of sugar per liter is generally a good amount.
- Cap the bottles and let them mature at cellar temperature. After a couple of weeks, your cider will be carbonated.
Remember that good cider needs a long maturation period. The cider you brew this spring is often best next year.
What equipment do you need?
To turn fresh fruit into cider, you need suitable cider brewing equipment:
- Fermentation vessel with airlock
- Hydrometer or similar for measuring sugar content
- Cleaning agents: Detergent and sanitizer
- Mill and fruit press (recommended)
- Bottling or kegging equipment
Depending on the type of fruit you choose, you must first separate the juice from the rest of the fruit. If you're making very small quantities, a good juicer can suffice, but if you're aiming for a slightly larger volume, a fruit mill and a fruit press are recommended. The mill cuts the fruit into small pieces, while the fruit press extracts the liquid from the fruit.
Which fruits and berries can you make cider from?
It is, of course, possible to make cider from most fruits and berries, and here the brewer is free to try whatever they wish. Although you can use everything from redcurrants and plums to rhubarb and blueberries, apples remain the simplest and most common choice. It's also important to consider the types of apples used. Often, Norwegian apples can be very acidic, while other types can be a bit "dry." Feel free to taste before making larger quantities. Also, remember that fruits and berries often contain a lot of sugar. They are therefore most flavorful towards the end of the season.
Fruits and berries naturally contain a lot of sugar and will ferment quite thoroughly. Extra sugar will increase the alcohol content, but you risk a "boozy" taste (fusel alcohols) in the finished cider. Therefore, we generally recommend not adding sugar to the cider before fermentation, although some choose to do so.
Other additives
Although these are not absolutely crucial for a good cider, it can be sensible to use these substances:
- Pectinase is an enzyme that helps break down starches in fruit into sugars that the yeast can utilize. In other words, it yields a better outcome and can make your cider drier if desired.
- Ascorbic acid (also known as Vitamin C) can be added during the juicing process to prevent oxidation. Some fruit types, such as apples, turn brown almost immediately upon contact with air. Ascorbic acid can help with this.
- Fining agents, such as gelatin or calcium bentonite, will clarify your cider. If you cold crash it well before bottling, this will also aid the clarification process. Long storage times will also work wonders.
- Yeast nutrient to ensure a clean and healthy fermentation process.
Wild yeast, pasteurization, and yeast control
All fruit naturally carries wild yeast. You can choose to use the natural yeast on the fruit for natural fermentation. This will produce a dry and natural cider, often with a bit of funk in the flavor. The risk with this is that you may introduce microorganisms that do not produce equally good flavors. To make it as safe as possible, you can either pasteurize the fruit juice with heat or add sulfite and potassium sorbate.
To pasteurize, you can heat the juice to 85ºC and hold the temperature for 10 to 15 minutes to eliminate wild yeast. Heating the juice can often alter the taste, so alternatively, we can use potassium metabisulfite and potassium sorbate (Campden and Sorbistat) to remove microorganisms instead of heat treatment. Briefly, Campden inhibits the yeast, while Sorbistat kills it.
Add according to the dosage on the package and let it sit for at least 24 hours before adding controlled yeast. We want the sulfur to evaporate. Therefore, you should cover it with a kitchen towel or something similar that breathes, instead of a lid and airlock.
Choosing yeast
The choice of yeast depends on the type of cider you want. We recommend reading a bit about the different yeast types to find out which one suits your cider. Baker's yeast and brewing yeast can ferment your cider, but to bring out the correct and clean flavors, we strongly recommend looking at the types listed below, which are specifically designed for cider and fruit wine.
- SafCider AB-1, AC-4, M02, EC-1118 (Champagne yeast), or WLP775 (fresh yeast) are yeast types that produce a clean and dry cider without any prominent flavor from the fermentation process.
- MA33 is primarily a wine yeast, but it also has the property of reducing malic acid, which can often be positive if you are using Norwegian apples or other sour fruits/berries.
- SafCider AS-2 and TF-6 provide more fruitiness from the fermentation process and can impart more sweetness to your finished cider.
Maturation time
Even if your cider is fully fermented and carbonated, in most cases, it won't be good yet. Cider needs a long storage time before the good flavors emerge. Before it is fully matured, you may experience unpleasant flavors such as sulfur (rotten eggs and flatulence), or fusel alcohol (boozy taste).
The keyword is time. This year's cider can often be at its best by next year's apple season, or perhaps even the year after. Be patient, as it will likely turn out great in the end.
Sweetening cider
Although true cider should be completely dry, some still prefer a sweeter version. The "correct" way to do this is to pasteurize the cider to kill the yeast, and then add extra sweetness.
Campden/Sorbistat is not the safest method to stop the fermentation process, and is generally not recommended. If you still want to try, we highly recommend using kegs, as bottles can, in the worst case, explode if active yeast remains.
The easiest approach for a homebrewer would be to add artificial non-fermentable sweetener: Stevia, Splenda, or Natreen. Take a splash of cider and taste with sweetener before scaling up to the rest of your batch. Sugar-free cordial can successfully be used as a sweetener, so feel free to experiment here. Lactose (milk sugar) can also be used, but you'll often need larger quantities to achieve any effect, and it can result in a taste that doesn't belong in cider. Maltodextrin is also a type of sugar that doesn't ferment out, but it adds very little sweetness and should rather be used to increase body in beer.
Alternatively, you can brew the cider completely dry, "as it should be," and instead add sweetener directly to the glass when serving. This can be anything from apple juice and cordial to sugar syrup and honey, or anything else you might have available. You should not add fermentable sugar for sweetening, as it will ferment and can cause bottle bombs.
Although this article is about brewing cider with fresh fruit, we must also advocate for Mangrove Jack's extract kits. These are of perfectly acceptable quality and contain sweetener in a separate pouch. In other words, you can adjust the sweetness of these as you wish.
