Made it: Hard cider in a 1 gallon batch

Credit: Abhijit Tembhekar

I always complain about recipe blogs that wax poetic before getting to the recipe, so I won't do that here, even though this isn't normally a recipe blog.

I'm including links here for your convenience, but all of these things are better bought from your local homebrew store. They'll be cheaper, they'll make sure your stuff fits with the other stuff where applicable, etc. Only downside is they'll probably try to talk you into doing 5 gallons batches instead. If you do buy using the links below, I'll get a small commission.

It's simple. You put your apple juice to a jug, sanitize it with a camden tablet*, wait a day, add hops if you want to, add yeast, cap it off with an airlock, wait 10 days or so, pass it over a copper mesh, cap it off with an airlock and wait two weeks again, add a little more sugar to make it fizzy, bottle it, wait a week, enjoy. I'll go into great detail below, but that's just how I do it, not How It Should Be Done™. And it looks longer written out than it really is. I probably could have done another batch in the same hands-on time it took me to write this out.

My real addition to the world of homemade hard cider is the copper mesh bit, which gets rid of bad sulfur smells and tastes.  

Hopped hard cider
Ingredients:

• 1 gallon unfiltered apple juice with no preservatives (important)
• 1 packet dry English ale yeast, such a Safale s-04
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• ~1/8 cup whole hop flowers (I used cascade) 
• 1 camden tablet  
• 2 tbsp bottling sugar (table sugar works in a pinch).

Equipment

What I'm fermenting cider in while writing this blog post.

•  1-2 gallon fermentation vessel with airlock

A note here. I usually use the setup shown above: a 1 gallon glass jug, a rubber stopper, and a bubbler airlock. But you can also get kits. This one looks pretty good. 

Many people also use a 1 or 2 gallon brewing bucket, like this one. It's technically superior, but you don't get to see inside, and I like to see inside.

• Some way to bottle it. I use repurposed beer bottles. You can get a capper for about $20. Or you can use swingtop bottles, which Grolsch beer comes in or you can buy new. Or you can even use plastic soda bottles.
• You can also get kits that have the fermenter, the airlock, the bottles, and a few other things all included. And for cider especially, it's a good way to go. The ol' Mr. Beer from the 90's is honestly hard to beat at about $30.
• A plastic funnel
• Copper wool (just copper, that's important)
• Some other gallon size container you can pour from and get really clean
• A spray bottle with a sanitizing solution inside. I like Star-San. If you use Star-San, it's a concentrate. Dilute 0.75 mL into 500 mL water (I use filtered tap).

The method
Disclaimer*: You can just take the first 5 ingredients, chuck them in a clean fermentation vessel of some sort, put it under an airlock, let it go till 4 days after it totally stops bubbling, add 2 tbsp sugar in a 1/2 cup of boiled water, bottle it, let it sit for 2 weeks, and then enjoy. Doing it that way, you're more likely to get some wild yeasts in there. If you like sour ciders and are okay with rolling the dice a bit, that's fine. I like a dry, crisp cider, so I do some extra things to exclude everything but my fancy English ale yeast.

If this looks like a lot and your brain just went tl;dr, no fear! I'm including a lot of detail, assuming you know almost nothing about homebrewing/winemaking/cidering/etc. If this was a video, it'd be 10 minutes, max.

1. Start! Put your apple juice/cider in whatever you're going to ferment it in. Sometimes it comes in a 1 gallon glass, jug. Awesome, you can ferment it right in that. It's REALLY important though that you get a kind that has no preservatives. Potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, these are no good because you WANT microbes—the ones you've picked—to go to town on your cider. If it's preserved with citric or ascorbic acid (vitamin C), that won't hurt your yeast.
2. Aerate your cider. You can stir vigorously, you can pour it back and forth between two containers, whatever. Your yeast need oxygen to get established. 
3. If you're going to measure the "gravity," which is how you'd calculate the alcohol percentage, take your "original gravity" reading now and write that down somewhere. Not crucial.
4. Crush a camden tablet between two spoons and swirl it into your cider. This will kill all the microbes already in your cider. Close your vessel and put it under an airlock.
5. Wait 24 hours. After 24 hours, the camden tablet is done and your cider is once again safe for yeast.
6. Pitch your yeast! Warm your yeast up gently to room temperature. Leave it on the counter for an hour, or stick it in your back pocket for 20 min. It just doesn't like to be shocked. 
7. If you're using hops, add them while your yeast is warming. The hops themselves kill many microbes, but not yeast, so don't worry about it. Just sprinkle the hops in there with sanitized hands.
8. Sanitize your yeast packet and a pair of scissors, cut open the packet, and pour it on top of your cider. I use about half of a packet (that packet is enough for 5 gallons of beer). 
9. Cap off your fermenter (sanitizing the lid/cap/bung/stopper/whatever and the airlock). Fill your airlock with water, or sanitizing solution if you're feeling paranoid, according to the instructions. 
10. Wait about 10 days, or till 4 days after the bubbles slow way down in your airlock/bubbler.
11. Racking day: Clean your copper wool with hot water (but not soap). Sanitize your copper wool and your funnel. Stuff the copper wool into the funnel as tightly as you can with your fingers. The copper will react with H₂S and other sulfur compounds in your cider. Sulfur smells/tastes are the most common fault in DIY hard cider.
12. Pour your cider into a second, clean, sanitized container of some sort, through the copper wool in the funnel. This will also catch your hops, which is fine. Leave the last 1/2 inch of so behind, which should be a brown sludge. Pour out that sludge, called "trub." Or keep it in a mason jar and use it in homemade bread (yum). Clean out your fermenter and re-sanitize it.
13. Pour it back to the fermenter through the copper wool again. Go back to the second vessel, again through the copper. Once more back through the copper into your fermenter. If it smells sulfur-y, do this twice more, ending up in your fermenter.
14. Cap it off with the (re-sanitized) airlock again. 
15. Wait about 15 days. 
16. Bottling day! If you're measuring the gravity, take a sample out to get your "final gravity" now. Write it down, take that and your original gravity number and put it in any internet final gravity/ABV calculator.
17. Dissolve 2 tbsp of priming sugar (or table sugar, in a pinch) in 1/2 cup of boiling water. Add it slowly while stirring (with a sanitized spoon or stirring rod) to your cider. This is to give the yeast one more snack, with which they'll make the cider fizzy. If you want a flat cider, skip this.
18. Put your cider in the bottles, which you've cleaned and sanitized. A gallon is 128 oz, you can figure out how many bottles you need. 
19. It'll be fizzy in 2-3 weeks stored at room temperature. Cider generally ages well in the bottle, getting mellower and more interesting over time. If you hit a flavor you're loving, stick all the rest in the fridge, it'll stay pretty stable in there. Drink it sometime in the next year.
20. If your cider sucks stick it in some dark corner of your basement for 4 months and try it again. A LOT of the time, it'll be good after the wait by the magic of cider biochemistry. 

I hope your cider-making goes well. I love it as an easy way to get a refreshing adult beverage cheaper than store-bought and just as good, better even. And unlike brewing beer, there's no boiling, stirring for hours, cooling, etc. 

It's also the best way I've found to get dry cider. Most commercial hard cider is sweet. I prefer dry. That's all about yeast and time. Different yeasts will leave different amounts of sugars behind. And if you stop the fermentation sooner, bottling sooner and then putting it in the fridge, that will also mean more sugar still in the bottle.

A note on sanitizing. I love Star-San. You just spray it on everything, including your hands, and you're good to go. It breaks down into a yeast nutrient, so you don't even have to worry about leaving a little behind in your bottles or fermenter. It also does a great job cleaning up the copper wool ahead of that step, the copper shines like nobody's business after a hose-down with Star-san. I use a dosing syringe from the drug store to deliver the 0.75 mL of concentrate into my spray bottle. 

The copper treatment is really where my chemistry education came out to shine. Cider often comes out with a sulfury nose and sometimes sulfur taste. You can age it away, you can just learn to like it. Camden tablets are great for sanitizing the cider ahead of pitching your yeast, but it also adds sulfur. If you boiled your cider like a beer instead, you could maybe reduce the sulfur that way. But the copper mesh trick works great, thanks to copper's reactivity with H₂S and other small sulfur compounds.

I promise it's easy. Cider is way easier than beer, wine, or liquor to make at home. And cheaper. You can make excellent hard cider at home without becoming a homebrew enthusiast and buying a garage full of gear. Enjoy!