HOW IT'S MADE
FoodCrumbles.com
October, 2021
It starts with apple juice
01.
Ideally made from apple cider apples Ours is pasteurized
Apple cider apples
02.
How to measure sugar content?
Specific gravity is a measure for the density of your APPLE JUICE vs. WATER.
Dissolving sugar in water makes water more dense.
You do so using the SPECIFIC GRAVITY
How to measure sugar content?
You'd want your apple juice to have a specific gravity of:
1.04 - 1.075
Which is about 10-18 g/l of sugar
As a result, a higher sugar content results in a higher value for specific gravity!
How to measure sugar content?
You use a HYDROMETER!
At higher sugar content
The hydrometer floats higher
& higher
Apple cider apples
02.
Transforming JUICE into (HARD) CIDER
03.
STEP 1: Sanitize ALL tools
STEP 2: Weigh out your CIDER YEAST
STEP 3: Test and activate the yeast
Transforming JUICE into (HARD) CIDER
03.
STEP 4: Add yeast to apple juice
STEP 5: Close vessel with juice + yeast
STEP 6: Add a water lock
What happens next?
The CIDER YEAST will eat the sugars and convert them into alcohol
...and flavors!
How much alcohol? That depends on the amount of sugars!
The apple juice will FERMENT
Why a water lock?
It needs to escape, else your vessel will blow up!
It does so through the lock
While preventing insects etc. from entering
The yeast makes CARBON DIOXIDE, a gas
Transforming JUICE into (HARD) CIDER
03.
Transforming JUICE into (HARD) CIDER
03.
SEVERAL weeks (about 4) later...
Yeasts have eaten all the sugars, they're done!
STEP 7: Transfer ALCOHOLIC apple juice (=cider) into bottles
Transforming JUICE into (HARD) CIDER
03.
Transforming JUICE into (HARD) CIDER
03.
STEP 8 (optional): add a little (!) sugar to the bottles
Fresh food for the yeast! They'll produce new CARBON DIOXIDE
But, it will be trapped in the bottle, carbonating your CIDER!
Transforming JUICE into (HARD) CIDER
03.
Transforming JUICE into (HARD) CIDER
03.
STEP 9 (final one): Wait, and wait a little longer
Let the cider age and develop flavor
In the meantime, read our FULL article :-)!