How to make apple cider at home - a noble French drink
Its delicate apple flavor, rich fruity aroma and the ease with which it is drunk make cider a favorite drink, at least among women. However, instead of making revenue to shops and buying there it is not clear what is in jars, you can cook it yourself. Homemade apple cider is an absolutely natural and even very healthy drink. Of course, if consumed in moderation.
There are many recipes for cider: it is made with or without sugar, only from apples, or with the addition of various spices, such as cinnamon. The basis of all of them are two drinks, which we will learn to prepare today.
One of the main rules of good fermentation: apples cannot be washed. Otherwise, natural live yeast that lives on the peel is washed off.
Homemade apple cider - brut sugar free
- Grind the apples and put the cake in a glass container for fermentation. In a warm place, the process will take about a month, but it is better to put the workpiece in a cool room.
- After three months, remove the fermented apple cake from the sediment, filter and bottle. The same amount of time will be needed for aging, after which the drink is ready for use.
Store cider-brut in the refrigerator, and it can stand there for 2-3 years.
To increase the degree to 10%, natural sugar-free apple cider is made not from cake, but from the cake itself. juice... It must be allowed to settle for a couple of days, and then sent to fermentation according to the procedure described above.
Apple cider with added sugar
If you only have fruits with a low sucrose content at hand, then you cannot do without sugar. Otherwise, drinking sour cider will not be very pleasant, and the workpiece will ferment poorly.
You can make sweet cider as follows:
- Grind 10 kg of fruit until puree.
- Pour the resulting mass into containers, without adding 1/3.
- Add to each bowl from 100 to 150 g of sugar at the rate of each kilogram of applesauce. The total amount of sugar per 10 kg of apples is usually no more than 1.5 kg. But the sweeter the fruit was, the less sugar will go away, so you need to try.
- Leave the wort in a room in a dark place for a couple of days, stirring occasionally.
- Strain by removing the cake, and send the resulting juice to fermentation for 30-60 days.
- Strain the fermented cider again through cheesecloth, bottle and stand for 120 days in the cellar.
In principle, you can drink cider after fermentation is over. But the drink that was allowed to stand will be more tasty. And to get carbonated cider in bottles, before sending it for aging, you need to add a spoonful of sugar. After 2 weeks, the cider will have a pleasant bubble and sharpness.