For the last 20 years I’ve been letting the apples from my tree largely rot, with the odd bowlful being eaten or turned into pies. After a visit to a cider festival I thought I’d have a go at making some cider this year. I’ve no press, but found an “Instructable” guide on doing it manually.
After 5hrs of chopping, blending, mulching, squeezing and straining I was left with 2 demijohns of cloudy apple juice. I added a campden tablet to kill the natural yeast and added a shop bought yeast on Monday.
They bubbled away frantically for a couple of days, but yesterday it all seems to have stopped. The liquid is much clearer, there’s a lot of sediment on the bottom, but there’s now no bubbles or general activity at all.

I’d expected it to take several weeks before it settled down. Is it ready? Is it still brewing stealthily? Can I pour some off and see how vile it is yet? Should I give them a kick and see if they start bubbling again? More yeast?

Any help/advice much appreciated.

Does sound like it’s stopped fermenting but I admit I’ve never done cider so I’m only speculating. I didn’t know that’s what campden tablets were for, when you brew beer they suggest you put them in the water to purify it as well.

Maybe add some more brewing sugar to the jars as the apples may not have enough natural sugars to produce something truly potent.

Homebrew Forun

I used to use that forum a lot and it’s very helpful.

Thanks for the comments, I’ll have a look at that site.

Current cider state;

First thing to get yourself is a hydrometer so you can check the specific gravity, from this you can work out if you need to add sugar to the apple juice as often in the early pressing season the fruit will not have enough natural sugars to get full fermentation running…

We usually find that with our first few pressings we need to add sugar, but by the end of September the fruit often has enough natural sugar to run.

Our process is to let the juice ferment after adding some champagne yeast (in 30 litre barrels) with airlocks, then after around 4-5 months we ‘rack-off’ the clear cider into other barrels (leaving behind all the sediment and dead yeast), then after allowing some secondary settling we bottle (or just drink)

Our little ‘Cider Club’ now makes a regular 600-700 litres each year…great fun and brings lots of the local guys together (and the kids come along too…)

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and remember…first rule of ‘Cider Club’…

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600-700ltrs! You’re just showing off now! 😀

We took a hydrometer reading at the start of the week which showed 1035, I’ll try it again tomorrow and see what it shows.
The apples are pretty sweet, so I’ve assumed there’s enough natural sugar in them. Is adding more sugar likely to restart the bubbling?

As a guide we aim for an SG of 1055 which if we get full fermentation will run to a cider of around 7%-8% strength..

we did go nutty one year and had stuff up around 10% but after 4 pints everyone was getting a bit fighty.. 🙂

Did you add yeast or are you hoping to just use any natural yeast in the brew ?

I did add yeast, but I’m not 100% convinced I added enough. I also just used whatever yeast MrsV had kicking around rather than a specific cider yeast.

It’s fair to say I’ve done this as amateurishly as possible with the bare minimum of research before-hand 😀

Don’t worry – we started off just with one guy making a few demijons in his kitchen and now it takes over our lives every September 🙂

part of the fun of cider making is unlike beer/wine making you can get away with murder and don’t need to be absolutely scientific and spotless in your work, and if it all goes horribly wrong and is undrinkable then just let the air get to it and in around 12 months time you will have a lovely organic cider vinegar to cook with… (dont ask how we found this one out !)

Another cider maker (you brew beer but make cider) here. I’ve done it the last 3 autumns. First year I made 50L. 2nd 300 and last year 200L.

To answer your questions. It’s probably slowing down. Just coz it isn’t bubbling doesn’t mean it’s complete. If you get yourself a hydrometer if it’s down to 1.000 and not going down any further then it’s done. You won’t be able to estimate strength easily without a before and after hydro reading.

There’s no need to panic or rush. It will sit there quite happily – got a nice layer of CO2 sat on top keeping it safe.

Amount of yeast doesn’t matter. They grow and multiply! What yeast did you add? A cider or champagne yeast is best.

I’ve got a few threads on the Homebrew forum about my previous years activities.

What yeast did you add? A cider or champagne yeast is best.

I went for the highest grade of what-I-found-in-the-back-of-the-cupboard Sainsbury’s own bread yeast. A bit of googling suggested it should do the job, obviously as soon as I’d used it, further googling suggested I shouldn’t use bread yeast 😀

You’ve got me interested now as I was just at my parents house and saw the tree was absolutely full of apples.

Do they have to be a certain type though as I know the proper producers like thatchers use certain apples for the taste. These are big green ‘cooking’ apples so may be a bit sour? But they’re free I suppose.

What process did you follow for pressing the juice OP?

own bread yeast.

To paraphrase crocodile Dundee, you’ll be able to drink it but it’ll taste like shit.

This is based on having drunk hike made wine produced with bread yeast though so in fairness it’s not a great comparison, home made wine is always rank.

If you have a wilkinsons near you, they usually have a homebrew section and you can pick up some champagne yeast (that’s what we use – butwe get it in bulk from an online supplier as its cheaper that way)

not sure bread yeast is going to cut it…

it’s not a great comparison, home made wine is always rank.

Not true at all. Though it turns out that the best fruit wines I’ve made are from grapes…

Hi
I worked in a cider factory for a while. Normaly they would use spontaneous fermenttation from the wild yeasts in /on the apples themselves . By whizzing in a Campden tablet yo will have killed these off so the only yeasts there are bread yeast .
I dnt make bread but by looking at the pictures and going y your description the bread yeast has had enough . Its stopped feremnting , flocculated and sedimented to the bottom of the bottles.
A stronger wine /champagne yeast would probably still be ticking along. It may have woorked out but 72hrs is way quick for making cide, its usually months. At 1035 you will get aroung 4.5% abv if you can convert all the suagrs to alcohol.
No harm in sourcing a 5gm schet of yeast and adding that to see if it kicks off again. BTW it look like you added waaaaaay too much yeast in the first place

I have an eating apple tree and a pear tree. The pear one makes better cider by far, commercial cider apples are closer to cooking apples than eating apples. I’ve done swaps with a neighbour that has a Bramley cooking apple tree and made cider from 50% eating, 50% cooking which works well.
It does look like you’ve got a lot of yeast in there and putting the campden tablets in there means it’s all dead. Rack off to a sterile bucket and put a bit of champagne yeast in a leave it for a few weeks. Rack off back to the demijohns and leave until January. Then rack off to bottles, topping off with a teaspoon of sugar. Drink next summer.

Slow reply due to Bank Hol apathy.

These are the instructions I used;
https://www.instructables.com/id/Simple-Homemade-Cider-with-a-juicer-and-no-press/

I attempted to find Cider yeast, but Wilkos had sold out and I couldn’t think of anywhere else in town that would have any. Hence just using what we had kicking around.

Thanks for all the feedback so far.