My first apple cider

The county gave our town a bunch of apple trees, about 20.
Most of them made it and they were full of apples this year.
Cortland, Braeburn and honey crisp.
Braeburns didn't produce much and many were picked before they were ready
The honey crisp got destroyed by japanese beatles and other bugs.
That kept them away from the cortlands. Which turned out great.
There was a bunch of apples left over at the end of the season.
Another friend had too many grany smiths and a mystery tree had a bunch of sweet/tart fruit that made great apple crisp.

Many were sliced/frozen but there were too many for that, so I made apple juice for the first time.

My buddy had a 3 gallon Juicy Fruit apple press that had sat for 10 years, he lent me.
Another buddy had a small electric meat grinder that he hadn't used in 10 years.
I spent a few hours chopping them up pretty small and running them through the meat grinder.

Then pressed the juice out and put it in bottles.
Had to just press a little, then go back and give it another twist every 15 minutes or 1/2 hour.
Out of about 1 1/2,  5 gallon buckets. I got a little over 1 gallon.
Left a couple bottle out on the counter for about 9 days in the semi cold kitchen.
And we tried some today.  It was fizzy and sooo nice.
I thought the apple juice was great, but the cider really is a nice drink.

Working on a second batch, ran out of Cortlands but found some big sweet yellow apples.
That one has another tree growing from the root, with small, red tart, hard apples.
And I can still get some more granny smith apples.
I go through some fresh ginger and trim the tough parts off. Made some tea with the ends and added that.
It's not as good as juice from the first batch but the added ginger makes it nice.
I think it will make good cider to share with my friends.

I'll take some pictures to add to this post.
I can get more grannys, yellows and little hard reds, might make another batch.

This is a first for me. Permies is a good place to share this first.

Hi Craig,
It sounds like you are making hard apple cider?

Apple cider is simply what you get from squeezing apples.

Hard apple cider is apple cider that has been fermented into an alcoholic beverage.

***Edit - In the USA there is a difference between cider and hard cider. In other countries, they are the same thing. I stand corrected :)

Be careful if you come to the UK Matt! Here "cider" is always hard cider, and "apple juice" is just apple juice - a good "scrumpy" (traditional non fizzy hard cider) is dangerously drinkable!

Congratulations craig on your brewing experiments. I find sometimes it works surprisingly well for me, other times the results are...disappointing.

I was hoping to do a bit more this year, but my apple harvest was pretty poor. Last year I got a reasonable crop from my "Tom Putt" apple and juiced that. It isn't a great cooker because it cooks to lots of juice, but is OK to eat fresh and produces a reasonable juice yield (I forgot to measure it though). The juice I set to ferment in a demijohn with an airlock and some of the pulp I added a sugar brine to and left in a clip top jar (like I would when making apple cider vinegar). The pulp and brine fermented more quickly but the demijohn soon caught up. I strained and drunk the pulp cider fresh after a couple of weeks and it was lovely.
The stuff in the demijohn was less successful however. I left it in the demijohn for about 5 months, although it had stopped fermenting. Maybe I should have bottled it up as the taste was a bit odd - like buttery? It may have been that the surface area was too great (it didn't fill to the neck of the bottle) or maybe stray yeasts got in when the bubble lock ran dry. We worked out later it was probably a slime mould on the surface that gave the odd taste. Apparently they have one they add to chardonnay wine (which maybe why I don't tend to like those very much!) It was sort of drinkable, but I didn't risk it. I have kept some of it as a cleaning solvent, but I may just spread it in the garden.
So far I'm getting good results from the slap dash approach and less good from the careful, clean approach

Nancy Reading wrote:Be careful if you come to the UK Matt! Here "cider" is always hard cider, and "apple juice" is just apple juice - a good "scrumpy" (traditional non fizzy hard cider) is dangerously drinkable!...

Well I learned something today

Matt McSpadden wrote:

Nancy Reading wrote:Be careful if you come to the UK Matt! Here "cider" is always hard cider, and "apple juice" is just apple juice - a good "scrumpy" (traditional non fizzy hard cider) is dangerously drinkable!...

Well I learned something today

I think what we call 'apple juice' can either be clear (filtered) or cloudy (unfiltered) and the latter 'cloudy apple juice' is closest to what you might call 'soft cider'.

Then what we call 'cider' is always alcoholic, but it can be clear or cloudy, and as Nancy says, the 'scrumpy' can be verging on hard liquor (up to 8.5% alcohol by volume).

We also have 'perry' which is fermented, alcoholic pear juice, likewise!

A correction to my previous post - both the ciders were in demi johns - I just found a photo I took (whilst looking for something else) of the fermentation set up. This was before the bubbles started....

My buddy called it sweet cider and said if I keep it going longer it will become hard cider.
It is still sweet tasting, though not as sweet as the apple juice was.

There is enough fizz that I can't just open the bottle.
If I did it would fizz over.
Have to let some air out then let the foam settle.

So Nancy, you got some use out of the pulp too?
To make apple cider vinegar?
A sugar brine is probably just what it sounds like, a salt and sugar water mix.
What are the proportions or how do you make it?
There is quite a bit of pulp, it's still very wet even after being pressed for hours.
I would like to use it for apple cider vinegar.
Someone told me they made apple cider vinegar from peelings but didn't mention a brine sugar solution.

Apple cider vinegar sounds like another step down this road, I don't drink alcohol so hard cider isn't part of the plan.

Your buddy is probably right. The apple juice has natural yeasts in which change the sugars in the juice into alcohol and gas. Even your sweet cider has a little alcohol - even as little as 0.4% alcohol gives a sparkling drink. The longer you let it run the less sugar and the more alcohol it has. If you leave it open to air the alcohol then turns to vinegar. The stronger your alcohol is, then the stronger your vinegar solution will be.
There are a few threads on making cider vinegar. I used Kate Downhams' instructions in her Offgrid cookbook the first time I tried, and it worked perfectly. You can see the proportions on the side of the far demijohn: 2 tablespoons sugar to 1 (UK) pint water, put enough in so that the pulp floats. You might like to adjust that sweetness based on the sweetness of the apple juice and the fact that US pints are slightly smaller than UK pints.