Cider at home: how to make a delicious drink

Cider is a light alcoholic beverage. It is made based on fruit juice. Usually, it is apples and pears. This drink quenches thirst perfectly. In the heat, you can drink it cold. In cool weather, you can heat it up.

Today, the FoodOboz editorial team shares life hacks for making apple and pear cider at home.

Apple cider recipe

For a traditional cider recipe without added sugar, you can take apples in the following proportions:

• Sour varieties - 60%
• Sweet - 10% of the total
• Tart - 20%.
• Bitter -10%.

Method of preparation:

1. Prepare apples, and pass them through a press or juicer to get apple juice.
2. Pour the juice into a glass container and cover with cheesecloth. Leave it for a few days.
3. Pour the juice into another container and put a water seal on it. Put the container with the juice in a dark place, the temperature should be 22-27 degrees.
4. Wait for the carbon dioxide to come out and bottle the cider. Pour carefully so as not to touch the sediment. Leave the bottles of cider for 3-4 months to ferment, and then you can enjoy the delicious drink.
5. If you don't want to wait that long, add special yeast to the future cider during the fermentation stage.

Pear cider

Ingredients:

Sour pears - 5-6 kg

Granulated sugar - 5 cups

Yeast - 25 g

Method of preparation:

1. Prepare the pears: do not wash, if you have your pears, remove the rotten parts, and squeeze the juice out of the pears with a juicer.
2. Mix the resulting pear juice with granulated sugar and leave for 3-4 days at room temperature. If the mixture is not fermented, add the yeast.
3. In a separate bowl, mix a glass of juice (temperature 27-30 degrees) and yeast. Leave in a warm place for 40-50 minutes, until foamy, and add to the rest of the juice.
4. Install a water seal or use a medical glove. Put the bottle in a dark room with a temperature of 18-25 degrees for 14-30 days.
5. When fermentation is complete (when the glove falls off), pour the drink from the sediment into a clean container. You can use cheesecloth.
6. Pour sugar at the bottom of sterile bottles at the rate of 10 g per 1 liter, and then pour in the pear cider. Be sure to leave 5-6 cm of space so that the container remains intact during secondary fermentation.
7. Put the bottles in a dark place at room temperature for 7 days, and check the gas pressure. Store the cider in a cool place.

Life hacks for choosing and processing apples for a rich cider flavor

1. Choose ripe or overripe apples: unripe apples will yield much less juice than ripe fruit when pressed.

2. Use winter sour apple varieties. A small percentage of sweet fruits may be used in cider, but winter varieties contain a high concentration of tannins and coloring substances.

3. Do not wash apples to avoid washing away wild yeast from the skin.

5. Clarify the cider before fermentation. If there is a suspension floating in it, fermentation by-products, especially citric alcohols, will appear during fermentation.

6. Pasteurize the cider. This is necessary to neutralize the harmful microflora and avoid further contamination of the cider.

7. Keep an eye on the fermentation temperature. Too high a temperature also leads to the formation of fermentation by-products.