If you have a decent sized juicer that can cope with quite a big job, feel free to try it out. So the only other thing you would need would be bottles, a small amount of sugar for carbonation when you bottle and, of course, apple juice.) (If you have no equipment at all and want to get going, we have put together a Basic Cider Kit which includes a plastic PET demijohn with bored cap, airlock, syphon, yeast, campden tablets and steriliser. You'll also need a syphon and bottles later, but you don't need them in the beginning.įor your first time we would recommend Campden Tablets and a sachet of Cider Yeast too, but if you 'go wild' you won't even need those (more about that later). a clean demijohn (more about sourcing glass demijohns here).a fence post/potato masher/way of smashing the apples up.What will I need to make cider from scratch? This guide assumes you have just about no equipment at all. Once we realised we loved making cider and we loved the cider we'd made, we stopped paying someone else to press the apples and invested in a press. It was a bit pricey because you were paying for someone's time, but it was cheaper than buying a press in that first year. In our first year making cider we paid to have our apples pressed. Or you might be able to borrow/hire a press from someone else. You don't extract as much juice that way as using a press or juicer, but it does a job. Or you could bash the apples within an inch of their lives and then strain the juice. You might have a juicer kicking around in a kitchen cabinet, or someone else might, which will cope with the volume. But before you've charged out and invested in an apple or fruit press, read on to see if you could perhaps do without one this first year. Available on Amazon, they work extremely well. Preparing apples for making cider is slightly different to preparing fruit for making most wines, because you need to extract the juice from the apples.Ībove you'll see an example of a fruit press. And as well as being lovely to drink in the summer, it's great for mulled cider and casseroles in the winter. It really is such a simple thing to make. Once you've done it and tasted your own cider, you'll want to make it again and again. Rather than letting them go to waste, thoughts turn to making cider at home. At some point in they year they find themselves overwhelmed with apples and have run out of ways to use them up. The reason customers tell us they started making cider is because either they, or a relative, have an apple tree in their garden. So why make it complicated when it doesn't need to be? Why make your own cider at home? I would mention that this is quite a 'quick and dirty' process compared with some other, more elaborate methods out there. The following guide will give you an idea of what's involved if you fancy making your own cider from scratch this year and have never done it before. However the principles are generally the same. The instructions will differ slightly, depending on the recipe. As I looked at them this morning, I realised I haven't talked about making cider very much even though it's our favourite thing to make!Īs always if you search the internet, you will find many recipes for making cider from apples. To really get the full benefit of an apple's antioxidants and other healthy components like fiber and minerals, eating real apples, and not just drinking their juice, is the way to go.It's winter now and we have some demijohns of cider we made in the summer which need bottling. You could switch to cloudy apple juice from now on, or you could eat more actual apples with the skin. It's these solids that contain the antioxidants. This solid material is composed of small apple particles that are strained out in clear juice. Cloudy apple juice appears as such, because of apple solids present in the liquid. When clear apple juice is produced, an enzyme is introduced that essentially strips the juice of its natural antioxidants.Ĭloudy juice doesn't use this enzyme, so it packs a better antioxidant punch. The clear juice certainly looks more refreshing, but the cloudy juice is actually better for you.Īccording to a study done in Poland, cloudy apple juice has more antioxidants, or chemicals that help control free radical molecules that can damage cells and cause disease, than the clear stuff. What kind of apple juice would you like better, cloudy or clear?
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