How to Make Sweet Apple Cider

How to Make Sweet Apple Cider

Sweet cider, also known as fresh cider, is not fermented but made fresh and drunk immediately or refrigerated for a short period. Our first apple trees were planted in 2017, voles girdled most of them one winter when we got over 4 feet of snow, so we had to replant several, but we continue adding a few trees yearly. Our oldest trees are finally starting to produce decent apple crops. Last year (2023) we harvested enough apples to make a batch of sweet cider and fermented hard cider. This year we have already made one small batch of cider and froze most of it to either drink as sweet cider or ferment later into hard cider.

What Apples Should You Use?

​Sweet cider is, not surprisingly, made with sweeter apples. Chances are if you like to eat the apple fresh you will probably also like it as cider. Feel free to refer to my blog post on apple varieties to see what varieties are generally used for particular purposes but, almost any apple can be made into cider. Some advice I have seen multiple times is that the best apple cider is made from free apples; basically use what you can get. The best hard cider is made with a combination of tannic/bitter, sweet (low tannin/low acid), and sharp/acidic apples. Sweet cider can be made with sweet or sweet/sharp apples, but tannic apples are generally not used.
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Last year we made a Honeycrisp cider, this year we made a Honeycrisp and a McIntosh cider. Both were tasty but the Honeycrisp was sweeter and the McIntosh, while sweet was also a little more acidic.

McIntosh apples (left) and Honeycrisp (right) that we turned into fresh apple cider.

Cleaning Your Apples and Equipment

​I scrub my apples with a vegetable brush with some distilled white vinegar in the water. I also pick out any bad apples. You can cut out minor holes or spots, but you do not want apples that have started to rot as it will give an off flavor to your cider, and it is also unsafe. It is also not recommended to use apples that have dropped from the tree as there will be a higher bacterial load on drops. We clean all our equipment well and spray it down with potassium metabisulfite (which we use for our winemaking). For fresh cider we rinse off the metabisulfite but for hard cider, it does not need to be rinsed (unless you are trying to do a wild yeast ferment) as you generally add potassium metabisulfite anyway before pitching your yeast the next day. You can also use StarSan or OneStep sanitizer which is also used in brewing beer. If you do not have these sanitizers, you can just scrub your equipment well with dish soap and rinse really well with hot water.

Apples ground with a food processor (left) are ground more finely than with a manual apple grinder (right) from Roots and Harvest (LEM).

How to Make Cider

Ideally, to make apple cider you will have an apple grinder and a fruit press, however, you can make it without those pieces of equipment. Last year we rough chopped our apples and then used a food processor to grind up the apples. The advantage of this method is that I think it created more juice since the apples were ground up pretty well, the big disadvantage is that it took a long time and lots of chopping. This year we bought a Roots and Harvest (sold by LEM) apple/fruit grinder. The advantage of this grinder is that it was faster, but the disadvantages are that I think we got less juice out and it wasn't as easy to turn the handle as I expected. Large apples still had to be cut in half, but it was much less work than chopping them for the food processor. Getting the grinder moving first and putting in only a small number of apple halves at a time did make it easier to turn. However, if you are planning on processing a large volume of apples, an electric grinder, while expensive, would be much faster and easier.

Alternatives I have read about for grinding apples are pre-freezing them which breaks the cell walls releasing the juice when they thaw or using a new kitchen garbage disposal or woodchipper. Since garbage disposals and woodchippers are not designed to be food-safe, I prefer using equipment that is specially designed for food. Pre-freezing apples requires free freezer space, which is not always available. This year we tried freezing small apples whole and cutting the large apples in half before freezing them. We use food safe 5 gallon bags that we use to freeze our elderberries and grapes before processing them so we used them for the apple halves as well. We have not yet ground and pressed these apples (thaw them first!) but I will update this post when we do.

​After you grind all your apples put them in a mesh bag. You can hang your bag, let the juice drip out, and then manually squeeze out extra juice at the end or use a press. Since we make wine, we already had a grape press, so we put the ground apples in the mesh bag, pressed them, and collected all the juice as it ran out of the press.

A Roots and Harvest (LEM) apple/fruit grinder (left), ground apples in a mesh bag placed in the fruit press (center), blocks of wood on the top of the press to allow pressing of smaller batches (right).

Pasteurizing your Cider

​After pressing you may want to pasteurize your cider. To legally sell fresh cider in the United States it must be pasteurized. If you are making cider for your consumption, you do not have to pasteurize it. If the very young, very old, or anyone immunocompromised will drink the cider I highly recommend pasteurizing it. Unpasteurized cider can be contaminated with E. coli or other bacteria. To pasteurize cider, heat it to 160-185°F for at least 1 minute. If you will store it in glass jars, be careful pouring hot cider into them as thermal shock can cause the jars to break. I recommend having clean, warmed jars ready to pour the hot cider into so there is less chance of thermal shock. Pasteurized cider can be stored in a refrigerator for up to one week. If you choose not to pasteurize you should drink it within a day or two.

Long-Term Storage of Cider

​To store cider long-term, I recommend freezing it. You may also can cider for long-term storage, but heating cider to can it turns cider into apple juice (at least in regards to flavor).

References and Resources

1. Stephanie Ostrenga Sprague and Christine Venema. Pressing apple cider at home. Michigan State University Extension - November 22, 2022. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/its_cider_time
2. Making Apple Cider. University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Service. https://nchfp.uga.edu/papers/UGA_Publications/makingapplecider_uga.pdf