John and I both made a couple batches of cider in the fall of 2014.

He has his method. I have mine.

We tasted them side by side and discussed our choices of pressed juice, fortifications, yeast and bottle conditioning.

Nothing better than crisp refreshing cider to mix it up once and a while.

I have found that some people like cider and some people hate cider. Cider isn’t my favorite beverage, but I’ve discovered some interesting facts about cider.

I don’t know of a commercial cider that I really enjoy. There are some new cideries opening up around here from time to time; and I occasionally seek out their products to see what’s new and different and yet none of them thrill me.

I have discovered that making cider at home, similar to home brewing, you can craft the beverage to be what you like. Just like tweaking a favorite beer style to fit your taste buds, cider making has some leeway as well.

For my ciders, I have gotten the most success out of adding a little dry malt extract to them. Using a little DME tends to help retain a little gravity at the end of the ferment. Not all the DME is fermentable which leads to a cider that has more of a 1.005 finish rather than something lower than that or even below 1.000.

That touch of residual sweetness helps carry the apple flavor when most of the aromatics and such have been driven off by fermentation.

John prefers to use some honey to fortify his cider. Honey is nearly completely fermentable, just like the pressed apple juice is. When John doesn’t have in residual sweetness he makes up for with floral character from that honey. A nice honey fragrance tends to trick my palate into thinking the cider is sweeter than it is. Depending on the source of your honey you can get some very interesting notes in the cider. Being a mead maker as well, John has developed a keen sense on how to use honey and what its contribution may be.

Fortifying your pressed juice to make cider with an ancillary sugar source is somewhat necessary as well. You can very quickly ferment your juice straight up. It will create a decent cider but the alcohol level will be fairly low. You get a session cider if I can borrow the term. I think that we expect cider to be a little stronger than 4% though. There is something about their being 8% ABV in the beverage that helps carry the flavor a bit and enhances the experience.

Ultimately, it’s about what you like. I am a die hard beer guy so I think that touch of malt in my cider satisfies me when I a craving something other than beer (either to brew or drink). The nice thing about cider making is that its pretty much as simple as putting yeast into cider and stirring. A little yeast nutrient doesn’t hurt either.

Let us know about your cider making tips and tricks.

Cheers!