Joy of Appreciating And Making Cider
If best journey of quality grape is wine than definitely for apple it is hard cider. Fresh and effervescent, tart nut sweet, boozy yet sophisticated, hard cider is the perfect refreshment for body and soul in any season.
People in India are not much aware about this elixir, despite the facts that Kashmir, Himachal, Kumaun areas have plenty apple crop. But English, French and Spanish people love it as these countries are traditionally epicenter of cider production. In USA also, their is a own distinct cider culture, especially in Vermont, Oregon, New England and Washington.
Interestingly, making cider is not a rocket science, it can be made at home easily. In fact apples practically want to ferment into cider ! You are just assisting in the natural course of events, guiding them towards the best and the tastiest outcome. Consider it a favor to the apples every where. Take simple steps to make it possible at home :
People in India are not much aware about this elixir, despite the facts that Kashmir, Himachal, Kumaun areas have plenty apple crop. But English, French and Spanish people love it as these countries are traditionally epicenter of cider production. In USA also, their is a own distinct cider culture, especially in Vermont, Oregon, New England and Washington.
Interestingly, making cider is not a rocket science, it can be made at home easily. In fact apples practically want to ferment into cider ! You are just assisting in the natural course of events, guiding them towards the best and the tastiest outcome. Consider it a favor to the apples every where. Take simple steps to make it possible at home :
Choose Your Juice.
The best hard cider is made from sweet apple cider fresh from the cider press . But in case you want to use ready made sweet cider procured from market, start by checking the label to be sure the cider doesn’t contain chemical preservatives, because these will kill your yeast and your cider will not ferment. Normally the sweet cider available in the market is chemically preserved, you will find mention of sodium benzoate or potassium sorbate on the label. Your best bet for preservative-free cider is to buy it in season from a orchard. In a pinch, you can also make hard cider with grocery store apple juice, as long as it doesn’t have preservatives.
Also, be aware that most commercial cider makers are required to pasteurize their cider, and the process they use will affect the flavor. Preferably, your sweet cider should be “cold pasteurized,” which kills microorganisms with ultraviolet light. The usual method of pasteurization kills microorganisms with heat, which affects the flavor of the juice. If you’re not sure which method a cider mill uses, it doesn’t hurt to ask.
Choose Your Yeast.
A variety of dry and liquid brewing yeasts will do the trick, and you can find them online . Although you can buy specialized liquid yeast packs for fermenting cider, dry wine yeasts do an excellent job and are much cheaper.
Make a Hard Cider Starter.
The day before you brew your cider, make a starter. This step is optional, but it ensures that your yeast is proofed (i.e., alive) and will start fermenting your cider right away. To make a starter, open the bottle of preservative-free apple juice and pour out a few ounces. Pour the contents of one yeast packet into the bottle, reseal it and shake for a few seconds. Within five or six hours, you should see a bit of bubbling within the bottle. Once you do, release the pressure within the bottle, reseal it and put it in the refrigerator. Get it out a couple of hours before you brew.
Start Brewing Your Hard Cider
On brewing day, pour your cider into the brewpot, duly cleaned stainless steel bhagona with thick bottom will also do. Simmer it over medium heat for about 45 minutes. This will kill most of the wild yeasts and bacteria in the cider. Bolder cider makers will forgo this step by pouring the sweet cider directly into a plastic bucket and then pitching in the yeast. If you follow this strategy, wild strains of yeast will still be in the sweet cider when it begins fermenting. This will alter the flavor of the cider. It may or may not improve it. Please note that you have to heat the cider not to boil it. Boiling causes pectins to set, which creates a permanently hazy beverage. While simmering the cider, you can add the optional 2 pounds of brown sugar or honey. This will boost the fermentable sugar content in your cider and up the alcohol content.
Next step : pour the cider into a sanitized fermentation bucket — an unsanitized bucket may spoil the cider. To sanitize, pour a capful of bleach into your bucket, fill it with water, let it sit for a half an hour, then dump out and rinse with cold water. Let the cider cool to nearly room temperature, then add your yeast — or starter, if you chose to make one. Stir the mixture for a minute or two with a clean stainless steel or plastic spoon to aerate, then seal the lid and affix the airlock. Place the bucket in a room with air conditioner maintain the temperature is 60 to 75 degrees — the closer to 60 degrees, the better. Stay within this range if you can.
At lower temperatures the cider won’t ferment, while higher temperatures will speed up fermentation, but may also change the flavor.
Let the Cider Ferment. Within a day or two you should see the airlock start to bubble. The gas it’s releasing is carbon dioxide, a byproduct of the fermentation process. Congratulations, your soft cider is on its way to becoming a delicious, inebriating elixir of the gods! This bubbling should subside within two weeks, signifying an end to the primary fermentation. After that, let the cider sit another week to allow the yeast to settle out.
Bottling The Hard Cider
There are a couple of different ways you can go at this point:
Bottle the Cider Now. If you want to bottle the cider immediately, affix the rinsed food-grade tubing to the spigot on your fermentation bucket and pour the cider off into sanitized jugs or bottles. Be gentle when moving the bucket full of cider. Sloshing can disturb the yeast sediment at the bottom of the bucket and cloud up your cider.Seal the jugs or bottles. Let the bottled hard cider sit for another two weeks and then it will be ready to drink. Your cider will probably be “still” (i.e., not fizzy) unless you let it age for several months. Hard cider is more like wine than beer, and the flavor will improve as it ages.
The other way is to let Your Cider Clarify. If you only use one fermenter, your cider will taste fine, but may not be perfectly clear because it will probably still have some suspended yeast. To reduce cloudiness, siphon your cider into a secondary fermenter ,another food-grade bucket. Sanitize this bucket before filling it with cider. Once you’ve siphoned your cider into the secondary fermenter, put a sanitized lid and airlock on it and place it back in a dark and, preferably, cool location. A month should be ample time for the cider to clarify. After it’s aged for as long as you can stand, bottle it as above. This cider will most definitely be “still,” with no bubbles.
If Want To Make Sparkling Cider.
Regardless of whether you decide to bottle immediately or let it clarify in a secondary fermenter, if you want your cider “sparkling” , you’ll have to add a couple steps at bottling time. First, boil 1 cup water with three-fourths cup honey or brown sugar. Pour this mixture into a sanitized bottling bucket i.e., another fermentation bucket with a spigot at the bottom. Then, siphon your cider over from your fermentation bucket to the bottling bucket. The honey or brown sugar syrup and cider should mix together naturally, but stir slowly with a sanitized spoon if you feel it is necessary. Then, bottle as you would normally. You’ll have to let this sit a bit longer than the still cider, so the residual yeast will have time to ferment the sugar you added and carbonate the cider inside the bottle.
When ready to bottle, taste the cider, if needed, add acid blend for more acidity or tannin for more astringency. Taste again a few days later, and continue adjusting and tasting until you feel good. Once you feel good, check the final gravity and calculate the Alcohol By Volume (ABV)
Your Brewing Equipment
• One-gallon food-grade plastic bucket with spigot, lid and airlock
• 3 to 6 feet of 5/16-inch food-grade plastic tubing
• Stainless steel or plastic spoon
• Enough half-gallon glass “growler” jugs or other bottles (including caps or corks) to store the finished cider
• Optional: Stainless steel or enameled pot
• Optional: a second one-gallon food-grade plastic bucket with spigot, or a glass carboy
Hard Cider Ingredients
• one gallon of preservative-free, sweet apple cider, preferably unpasteurized
• Two packets of wine yeast, Lalvin 71B or Red Star Cote des Blancs are good choices
• Optional for higher alcohol content: half a pound of brown sugar or honey
• Optional for creating a starter: one 4-ounce bottle of preservative-free, pasteurized apple juice
• Optional for sparkling cider: 1/4 cup honey or brown sugar
Is Making Cider Safe ?
Most of the concerns about cider safety are from un-pasteurized, un-fermented raw apple juice. Once fermented, the risk for food borne illness is very small-the low pH along alcohol content in fermented cider is capable to kill E.coli, Salmonella and all other common illness causing bacteria. Even so, it is always a smart idea to practice good sanitation and basic food safety guidelines. if you have difficulty to procure sweet cider with out preservatives from market, press fresh apple juice at home, make sure to wash apples and cut away blemishes before pressing. Take extra care to sanitize all equipment that come into contact with the cider in every stage in the process, including jugs, bottles and caps. Use your own judgement if you think your batch of cider picked up an infection somewhere along the way. You can easily know from the spoiled smell and slimy look or the mold on the surface. An infected batch of cider will not make you seriously ill but it is always better to be safe than sorry-and who wants to drink bad cider anyway. Life is too short for that.
Its The Time To Enjoy Hard Cider!
At this point, it’s time to start drinking your cider with friends and relatives.It is always served chilled.
Feeling good, think about brewing your next batch. With time and experience, your skills will grow and your recipes will become more complex. Soon, you’ll be making cider that delights your friends and terrifies your enemies.
Taste Best With What Kind of Food
Pairing Flavors. The most common pairing, and one I consider most useful, is to match similar flavors. For example, by pairing a cider with fruity, berry flavors and a summer salad full of strawberries, the food will help amplify the cider's flavor profile while the drink helps highlight the salad's star ingredient.
Pairing Intensity. Another common way to find good matches is to choose food and drink that have the same level of assertiveness. This is often demonstrated by pairing big, bold ingredients with bold beverages, but the same effect can be achieved with subtleties. The nuanced flavors of a light fish preparation, for example, are highlighted by the salinity and minerals of a dry, structured cider. By keeping both plate and pairing subdued, we can add intrigue to both dishes.
Contrasting Flavors. This is a difficult pairing to achieve but, done right, it is the most impressive. Instead of aligning the flavors of a dish and drink, a contrasting pairing pushes the your palate an opposing directions. We do this all the time in cooking to create balance—cutting rich dishes with acidity is a classic example—and the same concept applies for contrast pairings.
While there are a wide range of flavors in a cider, most exhibit some level of fruitiness and this can work as your secret weapon. The simplest way to go about pairing food with cider is to think of dishes and ingredients that you'd cook with apples. Pork chops? Check. Soft Cheese? Yup. Butternut squash anything....you betcha. Roasted vegetables, sage risotto, crisp-skinned poultry: it all works. If you have the choice, choose richer, fruitier ciders with classic fall dishes, and more floral ones in the spring to complement lighter flavors.
The best hard cider is made from sweet apple cider fresh from the cider press . But in case you want to use ready made sweet cider procured from market, start by checking the label to be sure the cider doesn’t contain chemical preservatives, because these will kill your yeast and your cider will not ferment. Normally the sweet cider available in the market is chemically preserved, you will find mention of sodium benzoate or potassium sorbate on the label. Your best bet for preservative-free cider is to buy it in season from a orchard. In a pinch, you can also make hard cider with grocery store apple juice, as long as it doesn’t have preservatives.
Also, be aware that most commercial cider makers are required to pasteurize their cider, and the process they use will affect the flavor. Preferably, your sweet cider should be “cold pasteurized,” which kills microorganisms with ultraviolet light. The usual method of pasteurization kills microorganisms with heat, which affects the flavor of the juice. If you’re not sure which method a cider mill uses, it doesn’t hurt to ask.
Choose Your Yeast.
A variety of dry and liquid brewing yeasts will do the trick, and you can find them online . Although you can buy specialized liquid yeast packs for fermenting cider, dry wine yeasts do an excellent job and are much cheaper.
Make a Hard Cider Starter.
The day before you brew your cider, make a starter. This step is optional, but it ensures that your yeast is proofed (i.e., alive) and will start fermenting your cider right away. To make a starter, open the bottle of preservative-free apple juice and pour out a few ounces. Pour the contents of one yeast packet into the bottle, reseal it and shake for a few seconds. Within five or six hours, you should see a bit of bubbling within the bottle. Once you do, release the pressure within the bottle, reseal it and put it in the refrigerator. Get it out a couple of hours before you brew.
Start Brewing Your Hard Cider
On brewing day, pour your cider into the brewpot, duly cleaned stainless steel bhagona with thick bottom will also do. Simmer it over medium heat for about 45 minutes. This will kill most of the wild yeasts and bacteria in the cider. Bolder cider makers will forgo this step by pouring the sweet cider directly into a plastic bucket and then pitching in the yeast. If you follow this strategy, wild strains of yeast will still be in the sweet cider when it begins fermenting. This will alter the flavor of the cider. It may or may not improve it. Please note that you have to heat the cider not to boil it. Boiling causes pectins to set, which creates a permanently hazy beverage. While simmering the cider, you can add the optional 2 pounds of brown sugar or honey. This will boost the fermentable sugar content in your cider and up the alcohol content.
Next step : pour the cider into a sanitized fermentation bucket — an unsanitized bucket may spoil the cider. To sanitize, pour a capful of bleach into your bucket, fill it with water, let it sit for a half an hour, then dump out and rinse with cold water. Let the cider cool to nearly room temperature, then add your yeast — or starter, if you chose to make one. Stir the mixture for a minute or two with a clean stainless steel or plastic spoon to aerate, then seal the lid and affix the airlock. Place the bucket in a room with air conditioner maintain the temperature is 60 to 75 degrees — the closer to 60 degrees, the better. Stay within this range if you can.
At lower temperatures the cider won’t ferment, while higher temperatures will speed up fermentation, but may also change the flavor.
Let the Cider Ferment. Within a day or two you should see the airlock start to bubble. The gas it’s releasing is carbon dioxide, a byproduct of the fermentation process. Congratulations, your soft cider is on its way to becoming a delicious, inebriating elixir of the gods! This bubbling should subside within two weeks, signifying an end to the primary fermentation. After that, let the cider sit another week to allow the yeast to settle out.
Bottling The Hard Cider
There are a couple of different ways you can go at this point:
Bottle the Cider Now. If you want to bottle the cider immediately, affix the rinsed food-grade tubing to the spigot on your fermentation bucket and pour the cider off into sanitized jugs or bottles. Be gentle when moving the bucket full of cider. Sloshing can disturb the yeast sediment at the bottom of the bucket and cloud up your cider.Seal the jugs or bottles. Let the bottled hard cider sit for another two weeks and then it will be ready to drink. Your cider will probably be “still” (i.e., not fizzy) unless you let it age for several months. Hard cider is more like wine than beer, and the flavor will improve as it ages.
The other way is to let Your Cider Clarify. If you only use one fermenter, your cider will taste fine, but may not be perfectly clear because it will probably still have some suspended yeast. To reduce cloudiness, siphon your cider into a secondary fermenter ,another food-grade bucket. Sanitize this bucket before filling it with cider. Once you’ve siphoned your cider into the secondary fermenter, put a sanitized lid and airlock on it and place it back in a dark and, preferably, cool location. A month should be ample time for the cider to clarify. After it’s aged for as long as you can stand, bottle it as above. This cider will most definitely be “still,” with no bubbles.
If Want To Make Sparkling Cider.
Regardless of whether you decide to bottle immediately or let it clarify in a secondary fermenter, if you want your cider “sparkling” , you’ll have to add a couple steps at bottling time. First, boil 1 cup water with three-fourths cup honey or brown sugar. Pour this mixture into a sanitized bottling bucket i.e., another fermentation bucket with a spigot at the bottom. Then, siphon your cider over from your fermentation bucket to the bottling bucket. The honey or brown sugar syrup and cider should mix together naturally, but stir slowly with a sanitized spoon if you feel it is necessary. Then, bottle as you would normally. You’ll have to let this sit a bit longer than the still cider, so the residual yeast will have time to ferment the sugar you added and carbonate the cider inside the bottle.
When ready to bottle, taste the cider, if needed, add acid blend for more acidity or tannin for more astringency. Taste again a few days later, and continue adjusting and tasting until you feel good. Once you feel good, check the final gravity and calculate the Alcohol By Volume (ABV)
Your Brewing Equipment
• One-gallon food-grade plastic bucket with spigot, lid and airlock
• 3 to 6 feet of 5/16-inch food-grade plastic tubing
• Stainless steel or plastic spoon
• Enough half-gallon glass “growler” jugs or other bottles (including caps or corks) to store the finished cider
• Optional: Stainless steel or enameled pot
• Optional: a second one-gallon food-grade plastic bucket with spigot, or a glass carboy
Hard Cider Ingredients
• one gallon of preservative-free, sweet apple cider, preferably unpasteurized
• Two packets of wine yeast, Lalvin 71B or Red Star Cote des Blancs are good choices
• Optional for higher alcohol content: half a pound of brown sugar or honey
• Optional for creating a starter: one 4-ounce bottle of preservative-free, pasteurized apple juice
• Optional for sparkling cider: 1/4 cup honey or brown sugar
Is Making Cider Safe ?
Most of the concerns about cider safety are from un-pasteurized, un-fermented raw apple juice. Once fermented, the risk for food borne illness is very small-the low pH along alcohol content in fermented cider is capable to kill E.coli, Salmonella and all other common illness causing bacteria. Even so, it is always a smart idea to practice good sanitation and basic food safety guidelines. if you have difficulty to procure sweet cider with out preservatives from market, press fresh apple juice at home, make sure to wash apples and cut away blemishes before pressing. Take extra care to sanitize all equipment that come into contact with the cider in every stage in the process, including jugs, bottles and caps. Use your own judgement if you think your batch of cider picked up an infection somewhere along the way. You can easily know from the spoiled smell and slimy look or the mold on the surface. An infected batch of cider will not make you seriously ill but it is always better to be safe than sorry-and who wants to drink bad cider anyway. Life is too short for that.
Its The Time To Enjoy Hard Cider!
At this point, it’s time to start drinking your cider with friends and relatives.It is always served chilled.
Feeling good, think about brewing your next batch. With time and experience, your skills will grow and your recipes will become more complex. Soon, you’ll be making cider that delights your friends and terrifies your enemies.
Taste Best With What Kind of Food
Pairing Flavors. The most common pairing, and one I consider most useful, is to match similar flavors. For example, by pairing a cider with fruity, berry flavors and a summer salad full of strawberries, the food will help amplify the cider's flavor profile while the drink helps highlight the salad's star ingredient.
Pairing Intensity. Another common way to find good matches is to choose food and drink that have the same level of assertiveness. This is often demonstrated by pairing big, bold ingredients with bold beverages, but the same effect can be achieved with subtleties. The nuanced flavors of a light fish preparation, for example, are highlighted by the salinity and minerals of a dry, structured cider. By keeping both plate and pairing subdued, we can add intrigue to both dishes.
Contrasting Flavors. This is a difficult pairing to achieve but, done right, it is the most impressive. Instead of aligning the flavors of a dish and drink, a contrasting pairing pushes the your palate an opposing directions. We do this all the time in cooking to create balance—cutting rich dishes with acidity is a classic example—and the same concept applies for contrast pairings.
While there are a wide range of flavors in a cider, most exhibit some level of fruitiness and this can work as your secret weapon. The simplest way to go about pairing food with cider is to think of dishes and ingredients that you'd cook with apples. Pork chops? Check. Soft Cheese? Yup. Butternut squash anything....you betcha. Roasted vegetables, sage risotto, crisp-skinned poultry: it all works. If you have the choice, choose richer, fruitier ciders with classic fall dishes, and more floral ones in the spring to complement lighter flavors.
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