Cider is fermented apple juice, perry is fermented pear juice.


Making cider or Perry

Apples and pears are hard and have nowhere near the free running juice that grapes do. Pressing whole or even halved apples or pears will produce sod all juice! (I know this from personal experience—I halved a few Kg of pears, loaded them into a fruit press—and got bugger all!

So we have to mill the fruit into small pieces in our mill or crusher. Pieces should be about the size of 1cm.

Now we can press, right? Not quite. We want apple juice, not apple mush. So the milled apples are packed into muslin sheets forming “cheeses” which are carefully positioned in the press. The press can be a basket press used also to press grapes or a stainless steel basket.

We also leave the apples or pears to “macerate.” Mill the apples, cover and leave to stand a few hours.

Oh, and cider apples are not used just after picking—they are left until they are slightly soft—develops juice and flavor.

After pressing the must is run into fermenters, covered and left to get on with things—we rely on natural yeasts in the fruit.

Can press varieties separately but often some blending is used:

1. As stated elsewhere, tart apples can be added to a bittersweet crush

2. Aromatic apples can added to give an apple character to a cider, or some Beurre Bosc added to a Perry press to give a pear character (character, not taste.)

You would use tart or aromatic apples or pears that might look a bit unappetising for eating.

The Fameuse or Snow Apple I talk about in the Varieties thread could be an apple to add to a cider crush—it is aromatic.

You can use the same procedures to make juice—but the bottling is different!

This is Fermentations not food, cretin. It uses material from the garden.

A quick note re brewing.

Doubt I will set up a full size mash brew system—unless I can buy a turnkey brewing system maybe. Just 50L ss kettles are a burden to lift because of my joint problems.

Doesn’t mean I won’t brew! But will have a half-size set up where I do two small mashes to make one batch of full strength beer. Maybe I will find another mash brewing enthusiast?

Small mashes are easy to do. I have a 30L? 40L? pan, do the boils in that. Get a hole drilled low and a socket welded over the hole so I can put a valve on that and let the wort run out of that into the fermenter at the end of the boil. Immersion chiller or counterflow? Details to be sorted later!

If you think you would like to try making cider:

https://www.booktopia.com.au/craft-cider-making-lea-andrew/book/9781785000157.html?source=pla&gclid=CjwKCAjwhNWZBhB_EiwAPzlhNi3toc4keaslz6b0GOrtPg1Le4R2imCJ06a7Zgr...

would be a good start.