Brew Day: Spontaneous Ferment Cider

Fittingly now that my last cider is finally in a keg, I have a new cider fermenting. Yeast and bacteria are all around us. It is natural and it is unavoidable. A fresh-pressed juice from an apple orchard by law does not have to be pasteurized. If you buy a jug at your local orchard that is not pasteurized, the jug will likely be adorned by some type of warning. As a result, any yeasts or other microorganisms on the apple when it was pressed are in the juice. Thus it is possible to ferment juice into cider without adding yeast.

Recently my friend Doug offered to pick up five gallons of fresh-pressed juice from an orchard in Amesbury, Mass. After he dropped the juice off, I decided to take one of the five gallon jugs, pour it into a one gallon growler, and let it spontaneously ferment to see what kind of unique flavors I might get.

Doesn't get more fresh than this!

I tucked the other four jugs into my mini-fridge. My intention was to ferment the rest of the juice with a white wine yeast. All I needed to do was free up a five gallon carboy. Three weeks later, by the time I did have a free carboy the bottles looked like this:

Bloated like me after dinner on a business trip

Much to my surprise the juice had already started to ferment. Most micro-organisms go dormant at refrigerator temperature. The CO2 that was produced caused the jugs to swell. When I broke the seals, I had to bleed off the pressure. One of the juges even gushed. Luckily I aimed the gushing juice right into a funnel.

At that point I decided to let the spotaneous fermentation go. I blended my original one gallon in with the four gallons from the refrigerator. I tasted a sample from the one gallon jug. It smelled kind of
sulphury, but tasted okay. To de-gas I may rack the cider again, but it probably just needs time.

The ability to keg and force carbonate gives more more room to experiment. I can sulphate and back-sweeten a cider with apple juice concentrate or un-fermented juice without worrying about yeast re-fermenting the added sugars.

When I finally built my keezer, my last cider was one of the first three beverages I put on tap. Cider is so easy to make I should try to keep on one draft all the time.

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Surveying the damage of my own neglect

Not only have I barely brewed over the last several months. I have also been too busy, distracted and lazy to package beers in carboys, Beers that have been ready to go for quite awhile. I couldn't even package my beers before we moved. On moving day, the movers carried my full carboys down the street from our old apartment to our new house.

As I work on getting a plumber to install a hose bib so I can get brewing soon enough, I took draws out of all of my carboys to see what beers are still worth packaging, and what beers I should just dump.

Wet Hop Head Pale Ale: My most recent batch is also the only batch I have brewed at home since June! Who am I? What the hell is going on?? Anyway, this had a really nice, floral hop flavor. It was restrained in the sense that the beer drank more like a pale ale than an IPA. The light caramel and Biscuit malt provide balanced and a similarly restrained malt flavor. This would have been a cool beer to bring to Ales over ALS. It would have been a cool story to tell attendees that the beer used fresh picked hops that were locally-grown on a family farm. Verdict: keeper

Pretty Things Jack D'Or Clone: One of my friends on Twitter recently asked how this beer came out. Much to his and my disappointment, it wasn't good. This was a three gallon batch that I fermented in a five gallon carboy. I never racked the beer to a smaller vessel. This batch was just infected. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what the off-flavor was, but it wasn't good. I'm going to give this a try again, probably with a different yeast. Verdict: dumper

The Sour Chris: Coming along nicely. Has a clean sourness. If one is clean, and ten is vinegar, I'd give this about a six in terms of tartness. I'm going to give this more time to see if it adds tartness and complexity. Verdict: keeper

The Pasteinator: Man I really wanted to nail this beer, but boy is it terrible! I had originally brewed this for our club's competition. I held off because the beer was quite alcoholic. My hope was that the harshness would mellow in time. After tasting the beer for the first time in months, the harshness had lessened, but was present enough to ruin the beer. I chalk this one up to fermenting at too high of a temperature. I look forward to brewing another bock or dopplebock this winter to enjoy next spring. Verdict: dumper

Simple Cider: This has been in secondary for quite awhile. When I tasted the cider when I racked it, it was quite good. The extra time has only made it better. Verdict: keeper.

Chali 4: This was an extract Patersbier or Trappist Single I slapped together as a starter beer. My plan was to use the yeast cake from this beer to ferment a planned Belgian Dark Strong Ale.

When I took a pull and gave Jennie a taste she said it didn't really taste like anything. When I explained that it is supposed to be a light, easy drinking beer, and to imagine the beer carbonated she smiled and kind of shrugged. This was an easy beer to make and I have reasonable hopes for it. I could easily brew this again next summer to build up enough yeast for a Belgian quad. Verdict: keeper

While I still can't brew, I do finally have a chest freezer. I already had a temperature controller. I plugged the freezer into the controller, set it for 35F, and kegged Wet Hop Head, Simple Cider, and Chali 4. Now I just need to finish building my draught system.

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Making hard cider at home

I haven’t entered as many homebrew competitions this year as I would have liked. Instead of laziness as it was in the past, it has been down to the fact that most of my brewing in 2016 has been dedicated to specific projects like the United States of IPA, and the two batches I brewed for Ales over ALS. I simply haven’t had a lot of extra bottles to ship out or drop off.

In my entire time as a brewer the only medal I have ever won in a competition was actually for a cider. In 2013 my New England Cider finished third out of ten entries at the Boston Homebrew Competition. Since then I have brewed beers that have received higher scores than the 30.5 that the cider earned, but to date that is the only award I’ve won.



Cider is fun and easy to make. After making several batches during our first couple years of brewing, I am making my first batch in several years.

For our purposes here all cider is hard cider. Unfermented ‘cider’ like you drink on Thanksgiving will be referred to as apple juice. Before Prohibition all cider was hard by definition.

• Start with your juice. The juice can’t have sulfates. Sulfates are sometimes added to juice as a preservative; they will kill your yeast. Fresh pressed cider from a local orchard works best, but I have also made cider with Target brand juice bought on clearance after Christmas.
• Treat your juice with a camden tablet to kill any wild yeast and let sit for 24 hours.
• Pitch the yeast of your choice. In the past I’ve used ale yeasts. Wine or champagne yeasts can also work and will make a drier cider. There are also cider yeasts available. When you pitch your yeast add yeast nutrient as apple juice is not as nutrient-rich as a barley wort.
• Keep your fermenting cider in the primary fermenter for 2-3 weeks.
• Rack to a secondary for up to 8 weeks for additional conditioning.
• Bottle or keg as you would a beer. Add priming sugar or force carbonate if you want to make a sparkling cider. Ciders can be sparkling, still, or pellitant which is very lightly carbonated.
• You can also add ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) at bottling to prevent the cider from becoming oxidized and darkening. Your cider can darken when exposed to oxygen just like the inside of an apple after you bite into it.
• Some cider-makers like to back-sweeten their cider at this point with sugar or apple juice concentrate. Most commercial cider makers back-sweeten and force carbonate their ciders. If you are brewer with kegging equipment this is certainly an option. If you are bottling your cider and want to back-sweeten you will need to add another camden tablet and make a still cider, or use an artificial sweetener that the yeast won’t ferment. Otherwise you will have gushers and bottle bombs as the yeast ferments the additional sugars in the bottle.

That is the easiest way to make cider at home. You can add different sugars before primary fermentation to increase the alcohol level. You can also add any other flavors you would like to add during secondary fermentation. My ‘award winning’ cider added local wildflower honey and was aged on oak chips.

Cidermaking is more similar to winemaking than it is brewing. More experienced cidermakers know how to manipulate the levels of tanin and acidity in the cider. Many also select the variety of apples they want to use and press the apples themselves. This is all outside of my area of expertise. After several years of not making a cider, and having a better idea of what I don’t know about cider, I wanted to keep it very simple this time.

At Homebrew Con I grabbed a packet of Mangrove Jack’s Cider Yeast. I have been told that this yeast will make a dry cider, but still preserve apple flavor and aroma more than a champagne yeast. I bought my apple juice from the Modern Homebrew Emporium. The shop sources its juice from Box Mill Farm in Stow, MA. The juice smelled and tasted outstanding and should make an excellent cider.



I will probably rack the cider to a secondary this weekend. I think I will take some of the oak cubes I bought for Pyrite Pistol, soak them in some rum, and add those to the carboy. While making this cider I cracked open one of my original ciders from 2012 and found it was still quite tasty. I may have to enter it into another competition to see if I can win another award.

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