Hard apple ciders are a refreshment like no other, and knowing you can homebrew ciders at home should make you excited.
Hard ciders are simply delicious, fruity, sparky, and glorious booze enjoyed by millions across the globe.
Most popular hard ciders are made from apples, but it’s not unusual to find hard ciders made from pears, or even citrusy fruits and berries.
However, for the purpose of this article, we’ll cover everything you must know about brewing hard apple cider and later you’ll be able to adjust the recipe if you want.
Since discovering I could brew hard apple ciders at home, I brew them every time I have an empty fermenter in the time between brewing beers and meads.
What can you expect?
You’ll be making excellent ciders at home that can not only compare with commercial and popular ciders, but they may taste even better because you’ll control the whole process.
There’s a lot that can be experimented with when brewing hard ciders, so every time you brew a cider you’ll likely be making a better product until you’ll eventually master it.
Some challenges you’ll face are the quality of the apple/fruit juice used which will determine the quality of the cider, filtering of sediment, achieving the right balance of dryness and sweetness, and carbonation.
In this article, I’ll focus on making things as easy as possible so you can brew an excellent hard cider from the first attempt. However, I’ll also mention optional steps you can do and although you don’t have to follow them now, they’ll be of use in the future.
Thus, the cider I’ll show you to make will be a dry, carbonated hard cider, or in other words, you’ll end up with a great-tasting cider that doesn’t contain sugars as the yeast will eat it and transform it into alcohol, and Co2.
These sparky, dry ciders are excellent, but if you want you can also brew sweet, sparky hard ciders. However, to brew a sweet, sparky cider you’ll need to do more work so once again I’ll mention optional steps for it.
Moreover, if you are just interested to brew a sweet, sparky hard cider you should first read my article on how to make a sweet and sparky cider where I explained what must be done to simultaneously carbonate and keep the sugar intact as otherwise, the yeast will eat it and only produce more alcohol and Co2.
Worry not, I’ll now show you how to make your first hard apple cider at home step by step!
What do you need to brew hard cider at home?
To brew your apple hard cider you’ll only need the following:
- Apple juice or other fruit juice good for cider making – (store-bought, preservatives-free), or homemade
- Yeast (ideally special cider yeast such as WLP775, but other wine and ale yeasts are fine)
- Lactose (optional for sweet, sparky ciders)
- A fermenter with an airlock
- Bottling equipment
- Sanitizer (like StarSan)
You can find the mentioned equipment in my article where I reviewed the best equipment for brewing that’s also used for cider/mead making.
How to make hard apple cider at home
1. Clean and sanitize everything
You can use my guide on sanitation and cleaning if you need help with this step.
It’s important to properly clean and sanitize all equipment such as fermenters and airlocks that will get in touch with cider. Otherwise, the common bacteria lactobacillus could contaminate the cider and make it taste vinegary.
2. Pour apple juice into the fermenter
If you use store-bought juice it’s pasteurized which means there is no wild yeast or any bacteria in it, so pour apple juice into the fermenter and that’s it.
In case you are using your homemade juice it’s not pasteurized and there might be contaminants or wild yeast. In such a case you’ll need to pasteurize it first, and cool the juice to around (68°F 20°C) prior to pitching yeast as otherwise, you could kill the yeast!
3. Add yeast (nutrients are optional)
Pitch yeast alongside nutrients as nutrients will allow for a fast, healthy fermentation.
In the linked article you can find my suggestions for yeast nutrients because you don’t need to buy any commercial product but rather use black tea or dead bread yeast cells as explained.
4. Aerate
Close the lid and make the fermenter sealed with an airlock at the top filled with either sanitizer/water mixture or some vodka.
Give the fermenter a rough shake and repeat it a few times to mix some oxygen with the liquid. (This is an extra step that’s super easy to do, although your wort is probably already decently aerated at this point because you aggressively dumped the juice into the fermenter.)
Oxygen is required as yeast nutrients at the beginning, but you should be careful not to introduce oxygen once the fermentation has been completed. Thus, avoid splashing when racking or bottling and limit any exposure to it at any stage.
5. Ferment
Let the cider ferment in a dark place without disturbing it for the next 5-7 days. Recommended temperature is always written on the back of the yeast package, but for most yeasts, it’s a room temperature that’s ideal (64°F – 72°F or 18°C – 22°C).
If yeast allows for a warmer fermentation above 72°F, I’d still ferment it in the lower range because higher temperatures could produce more of a harsh, warm alcohol taste which isn’t lovely.
If that happens you’ll need to condition your cider for a few extra weeks and sometimes even months just to mellow it.
I also recommend that you take gravity readings if you want to be sure the fermentation is complete, if you don’t have the equipment then give the fermenter a few extra days or also transfer it to the secondary for some extra time just to be sure it had enough time to ferment.
6. Rack to secondary (Optional)
When primary fermentation is complete you can prime with sugar and bottle or skip priming for a flat cider and bottle.
However, racking to a secondary container will help you with the initial conditioning and filtering of sediment which can improve clarity.
I don’t always rack to a secondary container as it’s really optional, but it comes with certain benefits, so for instance, you’ll have less sediment in the bottles and it might be handier to cold crash in a bulk.
In either case, if you find this step unnecessary which is understandable if it’s your first time, simply skip this step.
7. Prime with sugar/back sweeten
Now you have two options, the first being the easy one and the second requiring a bit more work as I mentioned at beginning of the article.
1. Carbonated, dry hard cider
The first option is to simply carbonate your cider to desired Co2 volume without adding more sugars to back-sweeten it.
To achieve this, simply prime with the right amount of sugar to achieve the desired carbonation. I prefer corn sugar (dextrose) for priming purposes as it’s easily fermentable and doesn’t affect the taste of the cider.
Cider is highly carbonated booze, so aim between 3.0 and 4.0 Co2 levels.
The last time I brewed hard cider some bottles were close to 5.0 Co2 levels and they were too sparky and were gushing when I’d open a bottle.
So, don’t go above 4.0 Co2 levels even if you like it extra sparky.
You can find how much priming sugar you need with a calculator I created.
2. Sweet and carbonated hard cider
If the first option isn’t something you want, you’ll need to add extra sugar to back-sweeten the cider and carbonate it.
However, this is a bit harder to do as any sugar you add after fermentation will continue to ferment because the yeast is still alive and thus you won’t be able to make it both sweet and carbonated easily.
To figure out how to do this I have written a guide on how to carbonate and back-sweeten hard cider at the same time.
You should read the article in advance to get prepared for this step prior to starting!
8. Bottle and condition
Bottle your cider (this article was written for purposes of beer bottling, but identical rules and approaches apply to ciders). Leave the bottles at room temperature for 7-10 days to build the Co2 as the yeast works fastest at warmer temperatures.
When Co2 had enough time to build up, move the bottles to a fridge or some cooler place that should be at cellar temperature or lower, but don’t ever put cider in a freezer as frozen cider bottles could easily explode or ruin the flavors.
The cider should be chilled to 46°F (8°C) prior to serving, as the temperature will affect both the taste and will trap the Co2 from staying in the cider when you open a bottle.
The low temperatures make the Co2 contract, so the brew can stay carbonated longer when it’s chilled.
I open my first bottle of cider after leaving it for a few days in a fridge, if you feel it’s still green and needs more conditioning or it’s too hazy, give it more time. However, ciders don’t need long conditioning and are usually enjoyed with the minimum amount of conditioning (no more than 2-3 weeks).
I once again, recommend that you don’t condition too long and over-complicate the process if you are brewing ciders for the first time.
If you are interested to see how long can ciders be aged and how will aging improve them feel free to read more about the topic in my cider aging article.
What apple juice can you use?
The quality of apple juice will be determining factor for the quality of your homebrew hard cider.
You can use any apple juice with plenty of sugars, but bear in mind that depending on the type of apple used, cider will either be sweeter or more on the tarter side, so in my opinion you should aim for sweet apple juice.
Sweet apple juice is usually made from types of apples such as Fuji, Gala, or Cortland but there are types such as Idared that have a nice balance between sweet and tart that can also be used.
There are also more apple varieties and fruit you can use to make ciders, so feel free to experiment.
In either case, make the cider from the apples/fruit you love, and don’t bother listening to others. However, bear in mind that sweeter apples obviously contain more sugar which means the hard cider will be stronger, while more tart-tasting apples contain less sugar so you’ll have a light-medium alcoholic cider instead.
If the juice tastes tart prior to fermentation you should expect the hard cider to lean on the tart side after fermentation. As a matter of fact, the finished hard cider will have an even stronger tart taste unless you back-sweeten it, so if that’s not what you want, choose the least tart, sugary apples instead.
You can also find cloudy apple juice which contains plenty of pectin and starches, and clean apple juices that have been filtered.
Both apple juices will make good cider, but clean juice will produce a cleaner hard cider by the end of fermentation.
What store-bought apple juice can be used?
You can use store-bought apple juice for making ciders as long as they don’t contain any preservatives. Preservatives will damage yeast and thus you won’t be able to ferment your cider.
Ideally, you should squeeze apples at home and get fresh juice you can vouch for, but if you are brewing large batches squeezing apples manually is a nightmare.
My first apple cider was made from organic, preservative-free store-bought juice. The hard cider ended up being a great booze I was proud of, but I didn’t like the appearance as the juice I used was very hazy and I didn’t want to wait to naturally filter it out.
How many apples do you need if you are making juice at home?
While some apples yield more juice than others, it’s common to extract half the amount of the total weight of apples in juice.
So, for 5 gallons of apple juice, you’ll need at least 80 pounds of apples.
Now, I never bother to press 80 pounds of apples into juice as my garden doesn’t yield that many apples throughout the year.
If I am using my apples I am making smaller batches and if I am making bigger batches I’ll buy juice from local farmers.
You can find even cheaper apple juice at stores, but look for preservatives-free juices!
Final take on
I created this guide to help you make your first hard cider at home easily, but as you can see there are many optional steps that you can also include in your process.
My advice is to create a cider that you enjoy with the least amount of steps and long aging as this will inspire you to make another cider in the future and slowly get you going.
Cider making isn’t hard and I personally find it easier than brewing beers, but there is still room to improve my method.
Enjoy your next hard cider because I know it’s going to be delicious and everyone will know you as a person who turns apples into booze, truly the title to be renowned for in the town!