Tips For Making Great Cider 🍎

2026-03-19

The best part about making your own hard cider (other than delicious cider) is how easy it is start. While starting a beer usually takes me about 4 hours including setup and cleaning after, I can get a great cider going in only about 30 minutes!

Tips for a great Cider:

Use yeast nutrient

Unlike with grains used in beer production, apple juice or pitch lacks essential nutrients needed for a healthy and full fermentation, so it is critical to add those nutrients to prevent stress chemistries from being created by your yeast.

Fruits like apples often lack sources of Nitrogen, Zinc, and Magnesium, which are critical to the survivability of yeast in increasing alcohol concentrations. By denying yeast of these nutrients, they can end up producing Diacetyl, which results in a buttery flavor. This may be exasperated by a cold temperature fermentation, which slows the reduction process that converts Diacetyl (buttery flavor) into Acetoin (musky fruit flavor), and eventually into 2,3 Butanediol (no flavor, what we want!).

Ferment Low and Slow

Allowing ample time for yeast to "clean up" the biproducts of fermentation is a good decision for any alcohol-containing product. In addition to ensuring a complete Diacetyl reduction process,

Low fermentation temperature slows the esterfication process, which is a reaction that creates esters as a byproduct of an alcohol and acid reaction. When fermenting apple juice or pitch, which contains malic acid, we can expect fragrant and fruity notes, with flavors described as bananas or apples - in many cases these flavors may be desirable, but often the result is unpredictable and influenced heavily on the yeast's strain, viability, and cell count at pitching. The flavors resulting can often be quite unpredictable, however

Here is a great and quick recipe I made using store bought fermentables that turned out delicious!

Fermentables:

  • 2.5 gallons Musselman's Fresh Pressed 100% Apple Juice (Contains 26 grams sugar / Half Gallon) Pasteurized, not from concentrate, Varietal bland, ascorbic acid (130 grams sugar content)

Yeast:

Other:

  • 1/2 gallon RW Knudsen Just Black Cherry 100% Black Cherry Juice (33 grams sugar natural)

Procedure

  • Create a yeast nutrient slurry: Boil a small volume of water and mix in your 4 tsp of yeast nutrient to sanitize and disolve the mixture.
  • SANITIZE EVERYTHING! This is critically important, since we won't be boiling any liquids. I mix StarSan non-rinse sanitizer in a 5 gallon bucket and apply to equipment by dipping them or spraying thoroughly with a spray bottle.
  • Measure specific gravity of the Musselman's apple juice using a hydrometer. It should read to about 1.048
  • Add yeast slurry and juice to glass (3 gallon volume) carboy
  • Seal with airlock filled with sanitizer
  • Shake / Rock carboy to airate must
  • Store / Ferment at 68F for 2 days
  • Adjust to 60F for 45 days
  • Add 3 crushed camden tablets and 1.5 tsp of potassium sorbate into 1/4 gallon of cherry juice

Optional:

  • Siphon cherry juice into CO2 purged, sanitized keg
  • Siphon cider into keg

The final gravity of cider was measured at 1.006, resulting in a final alcohol content of 4.6%