Selfsufficientish.com

I have heaps of apples and I want to make cider! But.. I don't have a press - can I work around that?!! And can I mix up different apple varieties to use them all up? And, and... can anyone here give me a tip or two - and, err, a recipe? Fizzy recipe please, bad memories of camping in Newquay on the flat stuff

Well there's this on the main site.

Ah.. yes.. there it is...

Thanks!

Some years ago made a more than passable 'cider' type drink using loads of windfall Discovery apples, a 5 gall. plastic fermenting vessel (bucket type) with a fermentation lock pushed through the top. To apples, roughly chopped I added water, sugar and yeast - simple as!! I left it until it stopped bubbling, and then a further two weeks before weakness got the better of us and we drank it over the next few weeks.

It was refreshing, fizzy and effective. It formed a fairly firm sedament at the bottom of the vessel so we just scooped it - rather than bottling it on. I think you could probably take it a stage further and do a second fermentation with champagne type bottles. I might well try it this autumn. Anyone who tries it in the meantime, I'd be interested to know the results.

Good luck,
Sue

I did pretty much the same with the surplus apples I had last year I passed them through my food processor and then strained the pulp through one of my large jelly bags. I did bottle it thought- I syphoned off into 2litre plastic bottles and added a teaspoon of sugar to kick off secondary fermentation.......It was lovely! nice and fizzy like proper cider I had loads of compliaments ver christmas for it- even hardened local cider drinkers!!!

kind thoughts
Deb

I have no apples... but yet I would like cider...

Perhaps later in the year we will try this from our trees.

I made cider using that recipe and the trick is to leave it for a bit longer and perhaps reduce the sugar. It makes very potent stuff so be carefull It is also very sweet so unless you like that then do reduce the sugar.