Nano Cidery

In September, I went out apple picking with the kids, and decided to pick up some cider, to try to ferment it, something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I don’t usually drink hard cider, but I’ve been wanting to try making it ever since reading about the process in Make Magazine years ago.

I ended up following guidance from these sites:
https://www.midwestsupplies.com/blogs/specialty/instructions-on-how-to-make-hard-cider
https://howtomakehardcider.com/

I really like the idea of working at a small scale - it works really well for our apartment, and limits waste while experimenting. Startup costs were really low - apart from the cider, I picked up everything at Toronto Brewing:

• Cider
• Starsan sanitizer
• Lalvin D47 yeast (recommended by store staff for cider)
• Bottles (I re-used Grolsch swing-top bottles I started drinking prior to the exercise for bottling, and a wine bottle for fermenting)
• A food grade hose for decanting
• An airlock and stopper

My first batch was a bust. It turns out Downey’s farm adds potassium sorbate to their cider, and it didn’t ferment.

For my second batch, I went to our local Loblaws grocery store and bought their house brand cider. I added some brown sugar at fermentation time to increase alcohol content, and then added some dextrose at bottling time for carbonation. I fermented for two weeks, bottled, and tried my first bottle two weeks after bottling. The carbonation was perfect - lightly carbonated, tiny bubbles. But the cider was mostly flavorless - it wasn’t terrible, but didn’t taste great. I tried another bottle today, after 4 weeks - it was still flavorless, but somehow much better.

My third batch is currently in a second stage of fermentation. I fermented for two weeks, decanted, and have let it sit for two weeks. I plan to bottle it tomorrow. Should be ready to try around Christmas!