A few weeks ago, I set about turning some fresh-pressed cider into alcohol. I tried to keep costs and equipment minimal, the process simple, and the product drinkable.

In part one, I collected materials, began the intensive sanitizing, and set up the cider to ferment. In part two I encountered a handful of disasters but managed to successfully transfer the cider to bottles.

While I made some compromises that weren’t worth the time or space saved (see: trying to bottle cider the old-fashioned way without a siphon clamp, sanitizing with bleach), and took some risks (covering the opening of overflowing fermentation jugs with tin foil), and made a mess (all over the floor), I did ultimately end up with something I could drink without following up with a spit-take.

I tried my cider again this past week after letting it sit in the refrigerator for a week after bottling it. The first bottle I opened involved some very yeasty sips, and there was a lot of sediment on the bottom; looks like I was even sloppier about siphoning than all the cider I spilled would suggest. Some of my bottles will be worse than others for this, but I’ll be trying to decant the ones with the most sediment in hopes that some of the gross stuff will settle out.

Otherwise, the cider is sour and apple-y tasting. The yeasty sips are very unpleasant, so if you attempt this, take a lot more care than I did about keeping the yeast out of your final product. It will taste like bread smells, if the bread were half-baked and then left in a dark, dank place for days.

Another piece of the problem may be that I’m keeping these bottles in a drawer in my fridge that I interact with regularly. If I put the bottles in more static positions, the yeast would settle out better.

Next steps for better flavor

So my first cider is hardly an elixir of the gods; even in a taste test against Miller High Life, it seems watery. It’s not sweet, by any stretch. But if I were interested, there are a number of steps I could have taken to remedy this.

Home brewers can up the alcohol content in their cider by adding sugar when transferring the cider to its secondary fermentation vessel, if they transfer the settled yeast too. There is still yeast in there that wants to eat yet more sugar and produce yet more alcohol, so it’s possible to keep driving this process with more and more sugar until eventually, you have wine. You don’t want wine. This isn’t a wine class, but that is the relationship at work. A cup of sugar a week at a time will nudge this process along; you can repeat this multiple times until the desired alcohol content is reached.

If you don’t like flat cider, you can also add brown sugar, more apple juice concentrate, or dextrose during the bottling stage in order to carbonate it. This is where we get into an iffy pressure situation—the carbonation stage will create pressure inside the glass bottles and can cause explosions, if improperly managed. Someday I may get so far as this, but for now I choose flat apple cider in my mouth over carbonated cider on the ceiling of my apartment.



These carbonation materials are added in small amounts for a gallon’s worth of cider: 1/8-1/4 cup of brown sugar (dissolved in half a cup of boiled water), 1/4 can of apple juice concentrate, or 1/8 cup of dextrose. You also don’t want to add this stuff until the cider has aged a month or so.

So then the question is, if you use sugar to booze up or carbonate your cider, how do you sweeten it? I’ve seen a number of products to this end, but the best recommendation I’ve seen is xylitol. Xylitol sounds chemical-y, and you probably recognize it as a flavoring in gum, but it is a naturally occurring plant sugar that yeast cannot eat. Normally you would add this prior to the bottling stage, stirring a small amount in and then letting the yeast dregs settle out before bottling it. Three tablespoons per gallon gets you a light, sweet flavor, but you can add more or less and adjust to your tastes.



In defense of just getting started

I’m surprised how simple, if messy, homebrewing can actually be. Sanitization is the most tedious part, but beyond that, micro-batch cider making was neither egregiously time-intensive, nor did it have a very steep learning curve. I turned out something drinkable on my first try without either a full-blown set of equipment or the most orthodox of methods. Anyone could do the same, provided they have a couple free hours of time on a few consecutive weekends.

The homebrewing community is fortunate to have so many people who can describe the process in a rigorous and detail-oriented way, as most of the guides I encountered do (though most were short on the why’s and how’s of the process decisions). But for what the bounty of resources on the Internet gives, it also takes away: the involvement and commitment that reads from some of the more intensive guides out there can be intimidating for first-timers. I wanted to cut through the expensive and complicated parts of homebrewing to what was absolutely necessary, begin at the beginning.

In a way, it’s comparable to programming: no one is going to learn to code if they start with Volume I of The Art of Computer Programming. But sit them down in front of Code Academy, and even if some things they learn aren’t immediately useful for a modern software engineering career, the curve is shallow enough that there’s a better chance they’ll have the patience to get there. That’s no judgment on The Art of Computer Programming; I’m sure it’s a great set of tomes that are inscrutable for most of humanity. But sometimes you need to shrink the distance between yourself and that first stepping stone.

I made some of what more experienced homebrewers would call outright mistakes. Certainly some of the choices I made did put the quality of the product at risk in the interest of saving money, space, and time, but the best defense of my methods is that the cider I am currently drinking, which again is no prize, is not bad for a first attempt.

I’m sure there’s an element of luck involved, but with preparation, I wouldn’t need it. A number of commenters experienced with homebrewing had some great advice for what I could do differently to not lean so hard on good fortune and ensure a better result and experience next time. It wouldn’t take much.

Mistakes, regrets, and things to do differently

Many of you were horrified that I used bleach to sanitize things because of the potential for bleach-y flavor and contamination. By the end, I became horrified too, but more because of the time commitment that bleach sanitization is compared to simply buying StarSan. Some of you suggested sanitizing in a boiling pot of water or by cooking things in the oven; both are good, cheap methods, but my kitchen is a little small for it. I declare an $8 bottle of StarSan and a $4 spritzer to put it in a worthy investment.

Some of you, like Pocky is God, also suggested using champagne yeast instead of the dry wine one I used. My impression is that champagne yeast somehow does a better job of making more alcohol, and it’s about the same price, so this will be interesting to try the next time I’m in the yeast market.

SoCalBoomer suggested, among several good points of guidance, that I put the overactive cider in a water bath to cool it down and stop the cider pressing out of the airlocks. I didn’t even think of this and would definitely try it next time, though I am also now equipped to set up a blow-off valve in the event of overactivity.

Many of you pointed out I never needed an auto-siphon, which runs $12-15, but I could have used a siphon clamp, which is $2-4, or a bottling wand, which is apparently $0.50. I regret not looking further into that. Pour some cider out for all the cider that was lost in the line of duty.



One of you (allanj37) suggested “sanitizing” my mouth with whiskey and priming the hose that way, rather than drawing the cider into the tube with priming water. Much as I like whiskey, I think I’ll keep my mouth germs out of the bottles and stick to the priming water.

A question came up in the comments about using mason jars to bottle cider. I thought about doing this myself, but as others pointed out, mason jars are not built for the pressure situation that bottling alcohol creates: their lids are meant to be sucked in, not pushed out. They’re also clear, which allows alcohol to spoil more easily in light and become skunked.

Helmingstay noted that five-gallon brews are a much better investment of time and energy. I support this, and if you have the space for it, you should go for it—the output of a gallon brew is pitiful.

But I have a tiny apartment that can’t really accommodate a slate of five-gallon-size brewing equipment, and as I stated at the outset, I intended to pursue this without spending a ton of money. Full-size brewing equipment kits are expensive. I wanted to see if I could get by without all of that expense, and I could, and you can too, even if you are not so solvent or aren’t rolling in vast acreages of space.

For all the difficulty, I could see this being a fun and fruitful endeavor once I get the hang of a few more aspects. My point is, you should try making some alcohol. You will need it by the time you’re done making yourself some alcohol.