Name: CIDERS.—ARTIgICIAL, or Cider Without Apples
Ingredients: 1 gallon cold water; 1 pound dark brown sugar; ½ ounce tartaric acid; 8 tablespoons yeast

CIDERS.—ARTIgICIAL, or Cider Without Apples

Ingredients

1 gallon cold water
1 pound dark brown sugar
½ ounce tartaric acid
8 tablespoons yeast

Directions

Make the mixture

Combine cold water, dark brown sugar, tartaric acid, and yeast in a large container. Shake well to mix the ingredients.
Make this mixture in the evening; it will be ready to use the next day.

Keep and adjust

For larger batches, keep a few quarts to use for the next batch without adding more yeast until the keg needs rinsing.
If the mixture becomes sour, add more of the ingredients to balance the flavor.

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.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Yeast: Ferments the sugar, producing the alcohol and carbonation that make the cider.
Dark brown sugar: Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and molasses flavor.
Tartaric acid: Adds the sharp, tart acidity that gives the cider its bite.

“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.