I know for ten minutes it will kill yeast but will it kill all the bad stuff that bugs leave behind and such? I’m speaking for fresh squeezed Apple juice with a few wormies. Also should I let my crushed apples sit for awhile before squeezing for maximum juice?
Thanks
Cut the wormie pieces out before juicing. I do not recommend heating at all. Letting the apples sweat (sit) for a week or 2 is pretty standard practice.
It should kill most organisms, but it might not kill spores.
Lots of people say this but all old school cider makes don’t bother, like old school natural ciders use these rough looking apples right?
Spores? Would that get you sick or just affect flavor?
I just started my first batch of natural red wine using my father’s grapes, no added year or sanitization, why can’t that be done with apples?
Ask 20 cidermakers how to make good cider, and you’ll get 20 different answers. A great thing to keep in mind is, we can each do it our own way, and we can all make great cider regardless. Cider is truly the simplest alcoholic beverage to make on this planet, and can turn out fantastic on your very first batch without even trying. All the fussing that many cidermakers put into it, I think is just complicating something that doesn’t need to be very complicated at all whatsoever.
I usually heat my juice to the 160 F for 10 minutes, cool and add my own yeast. I love how this turns out. Others don’t, to each his own. The heat does indeed kill everything we need to be concerned about. Botulism spores won’t be killed at 160 F, but this is also not applicable because the pH and alcohol will kill them later.
I have also made some wild ciders adding no yeast. Those are more a crapshoot. Sometimes they turn out well. Often (usually?) they really don’t. But of course there are cidermakers out there who swear that all the best ciders are wild ferments. shrug I myself prefer more control and don’t enjoy dumping gallons of cider that didn’t turn out.
As for masceration (leaving the crushed apples sit), many makers swear this is very important. Personally I haven’t bothered, and I still enjoy my cider very much. Again, shrug. It’s really up to you. If you are interested, then I suggest experimenting both ways to find out what YOU prefer.
One of the best ciders I ever made was with disgusting looking apples that were full of worms. I cut out only the moldy and brown mushy parts, but I juiced everything else worms and all. If you do this, just… don’t tell anybody! (Oops!)
Just trying to give you the benefit of 20 years of experience. What you do with it is up to you.
You can. My experience is about 50/50 between cider and vinegar.
I’ve got about 5 gallons of cider vinegar laying around. I actually use it for stuff once in a great while.
Thank you I needed this been crushing all day with my new press I love it. One more question is there any disadvantages to using aluminum versus stainless steel pot when bringing to 160?
Either metal should be just fine.
Thank you
Awesome post thank you. I had to let my cider sit in my one steel pot and aluminum pot overnight to cool down so that will be a side by side comparison. While be a while wasted 12hr day off processing apples if it fails though… I’ll pray for the best.
Sixty years ago when I was in high school and still living at home, we made our own cider by crushing the apples from our apple trees worms and all, pressing the juice out, draining the juice into gallon jugs, and storing it in our basement.
Wild yeast and no pasteurization.
Eventually, of course, it would turn into cider vinegar. But at some unpredictable and intermediate stage along its journey from juice to vinegar, it tasted better to me than any I’ve had since.
I’ve tasted a few commercial hard ciders and quite a few samples at monthly brew club meetings --pre-covid of course–and have yet to find even one that tasted as good as we made.
I’m still hoping and sampling . . .