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To Make Cider

A method for producing cider from ripe apples using clean casks and sulphur fumigation.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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To Make Cider

To Make Cider

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Ensure the mill, press, and materials are clean and sweet.

  2. Grind the ripe apples and let the juice sit in the pumice for 24 hours for better flavor.

Ferment

  1. Place the juice in open casks or vats to ferment.

  2. Monitor the fermentation until a soft spongy crust forms and begins to crack.

  3. When the crust cracks and white froth appears, draw off the clear liquor into clean casks.

Fumigate and seal

  1. Fumigate the cider by igniting a strip of cloth dipped in melted sulphur inside the cask.

  2. Shake the cask to incorporate the fumes, then fill and seal it.

  3. Rack the cider off again in late February or early March.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Ripe apples
Provide the sugar and juice that yeast ferments into alcohol, and the flavor of the cider.
Melted sulphur
Its fumes help stabilize the cider by inhibiting unwanted microbes and oxidation.

The step that matters

Draw off the clear liquor when the crust cracks. Drawing off too early leaves cloudy, sugary juice that may keep fermenting unpredictably, while waiting too long lets the cider oxidize and sour. The cracked crust and white froth signal active fermentation is ready to be separated from the solids.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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