Modern Cider: Simple Recipes to Make Your Own Ciders, Perries, Cysers, Shrubs, Fruit Wines, Vinegars, and More

499 Pages·2017·18 MB·English

by  Emma Christensen

contents
INTRODUCTION
turning apples into juice
setting up your cider house
turning juice into cider
beginner ciders
Basic Apple Cider
A Touch Sweet Cider
Supermarket Cider
Better Supermarket Cider
Farmers’ Market Cider
Old Granny Fresh-Pressed Cider
Single-Variety Fresh-Pressed Cider
Traditional Fresh-Pressed Cider
the cider family
Perry (Pear Cider)
Cyser (Honey Cider)
Vanilla Perry
Black Currant Perry
Buckwheat Cyser
Perry Cyser
Crisp Sparkling Cyser
modern ciders
Black and Blueberry Cider
Pineapple-Coconut Cider
Smoky BBQ Apple-Pear Cider
Cherry-Pomegranate Cider
Spiced Winter Cider
Ruby Red Grapefruit Cider
Cider de Jamaica (Hibiscus Cider)
Dark and Stormy Cider
ciders for beer lovers
Dry-Hopped West Coast IPC: India Pale Cider
Dry-Hopped English ESC: Extra-Special Cider
Belgian Trappist-Style Cider
Belgian Wit-Perry
Berliner Cider-Weisse
Bourbon Barrel–Aged Cider
Apple Pilsner
soft ciders
Sweet Drinking Cider
Sparkling Apple Juice
Sparkling Cran-Apple Juice
Sparkling Grape-Apple Juice
Real Cider Vinegar
Apple Scrap Cider Vinegar
Spiced Apple Shrub
Dragon’s Breath Fire Cider Vinegar
apple wines
Crisp Apple Table Wine
Golden Delicious Apple Chardonnay
Snozzberry Rosé
Apple Pie Dessert Wine
Pear Champagne
Fig and Honey Dessert Cyser
Elderflower-Pear Dessert Wine
traditional ciders
Traditional Farmhouse Cider
Cheater’s Farmhouse Cider
English-Style Cider
Spanish-Style Sidra
Colonial New England–Style Cider
French-Style Cidre Doux (Sweet Cider)
Cheater’s Cidre Doux (Sweet Cider)
TROUBLESHOOTING YOUR HOMEMADE CIDER
RESOURCES
CIDER MAKER’S LINGO: A GLOSSARY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INDEX

introduction
I made and bottled my inaugural cider almost six years ago
while working on my first book, True Brews. Up to that point,
my association with ciders had been fairly limited to the
cheap variety served to shy freshmen like myself at parties in
college, which tasted nearly identical to the stuff served to
five-year-olds except it was fizzier and tended to make us
giggly. I wasn’t sure what to expect from my homemade
version, but I was fairly sure I could at least achieve giggle-
status.
But then my first cider absolutely blew me away. It was bright
and effervescent, boozy but sophisticated, tart but tempered
with the lingering sweetness of late-summer apples. This was
definitely a cider for grown-ups, fully deserving of a pint glass
and not a sippy cup.
Perhaps even more surprising, this cider was incredibly easy
to make. I picked up a gallon of apple juice at the store,
added yeast and a few other ingredients from my brew kit,
and left it to do its fermentation business in the corner for a
few weeks. As a homebrewer, I’m used to reserving whole
afternoons to making batches of beer, and as a winemaker,
I’m accustomed to months of wait time before wine
becomes drinkable. Compared to this, making cider felt like
cheating. Delicious cheating.
The wheels in my head started to turn. If I could make cider
The wheels in my head started to turn. If I could make cider
this good with basic store-bought juice, what could I make
with actual heirloom cider apples? What about fresh juice
from a local orchard? Or even (if I dared) the mass-market
stuff served to five-year-olds?
That was the beginning. This book is a map of where I’ve
traveled in the years since.
what is cider?
In the simplest, most basic definition, cider is fermented apple juice. In
the United States, we’ve gotten our terms for alcoholic and
nonalcoholic cider somewhat confused over the decades, so we
usually refer to alcoholic cider as “hard cider” while everyone else in
the world just calls it “cider.” In this book, we’ll follow the global crowd
for our terminology: alcoholic fermented apple juice is “cider”;
unfermented apple juice is simply “juice.”
True cider, like the kind you make yourself or get from a good craft
cidery, is very different from the mass-market cider you may be used
to. For one thing, it’s typically not very sweet. It can be tart, sour,
balanced, funky, mellow, spicy, dry, bitter, apple-y, or wine-like, but it’s
generally not what most of us would consider sweet. True cider isn’t
even always fizzy; many traditional ciders are actually served still (that
is, nonsparkling or nonfizzy).
If you, like me, spent your college years drinking cider that was as
sweet as candy and as fizzy as soda, then you’ll need to retrain your
taste buds. I recommend a cider tasting to get a feel for what you’re
about to make. Head to a well-stocked liquor store and pick up a few
about to make. Head to a well-stocked liquor store and pick up a few
different bottles. Get a mix of US craft ciders and imported ciders, if
you can. Then invite a few curious friends over to your place and start
opening bottles. You’ll quickly get an idea of what the wide world of
ciders has to offer—and what tasty rewards are in your future when
you make your own.
how cider is made
All cider starts with juice. How and where you get this juice, its quality,
its particular characteristics, and its balance of flavors—these are all
factors that go into your finished cider. You don’t have to seek out
fancy heirloom apples just to make good cider, but you do need to put
some thought into the juice you’re using. We’ll go into this in much
more detail in chapter 1, Turning Apples into Juice. For now, just be
assured that no matter what apples or juice you have available, you can
definitely make a tasty cider. No doubt about it.
Once you have some juice, turning it into cider is the easy part. Fresh-
pressed juice is so full of natural sugars and wild yeasts that you can
practically see it start to ferment in front of your eyes. Even
pasteurized, store-bought juice has plenty of sugar to ferment; you just
need to add some yeast purchased at a homebrew store.
The yeast eats up the sugar and gives you alcohol and carbon dioxide
in return. In a few weeks, you’ll have homemade cider—it really is just
about as simple as that! In chapter 2, Setting Up Your Cider House,
we’ll go over all the equipment and extra ingredients you need to make
a good cider, and then in chapter 3, Turning Juice into Cider, we’ll go
over this whole cider-making process in greater detail.
making a modern cider