Juiced?

I have never made a cider but after checking out this part of the forum I have been inspired to try to make one. I have a question in regards to the juice needed to create a hard cider. Is it and option to juice any fruit and use it as the base for the cider rather than buying from concentrate?


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JLamb said:

I have never made a cider but after checking out this part of the forum I have been inspired to try to make one. I have a question in regards to the juice needed to create a hard cider. Is it and option to juice any fruit and use it as the base for the cider rather than buying from concentrate?


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Hi. How do you mean "any" fruit? You mean any apple, or any fruit (like lemon, banana, apricot..?) Traditional cider is made from pressed apples, that's all there really is to it - use of any concentrates is just a shortcut and really not the best way, unless you just want a bit of practice. They just don't taste the same, and have had all kinds of things done to them.

You can make an alcoholic beverage out of just about any fruit you like, though most will not naturally have enough sugar in them to make a significant concentration of alcohol, and even with the addition of sugar, once it's fermented out there might not be much flavour to speak of.

If you are juicing "any fruit" (apple or otherwise), you need to be careful about sanitising, and if you mean using a home juicer, it is all too easy with those to get contaminants in the juice and end up with vinegar or worse. Also, home juicers are very inefficient - I worked out roughly that I could get 30% more juice by pressing...

markowe said:

Hi. How do you mean "any" fruit? You mean any apple, or any fruit (like lemon, banana, apricot..?) Traditional cider is made from pressed apples, that's all there really is to it - use of any concentrates is just a shortcut and really not the best way, unless you just want a bit of practice. They just don't taste the same, and have had all kinds of things done to them.



You can make an alcoholic beverage out of just about any fruit you like, though most will not naturally have enough sugar in them to make a significant concentration of alcohol, and even with the addition of sugar, once it's fermented out there might not be much flavour to speak of.



If you are juicing "any fruit" (apple or otherwise), you need to be careful about sanitising, and if you mean using a home juicer, it is all too easy with those to get contaminants in the juice and end up with vinegar or worse. Also, home juicers are very inefficient - I worked out roughly that I could get 30% more juice by pressing...

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I assume I should look into pressing equipment. But any fruit I mean like what if I made a pineapple cider or a cherry cider. I understand some fruits may not have enough sugar content to ferment and create enough alcohol. I assume it would just be trial and error to find out what would work. But like you said sometimes adding sugar won't make up enough to increase alcohol.


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You can brew any fruit with sugar in it, literally. As for the flavor/result, that's pretty much to be determined by a lot of factors. You can shop around here on the forum and see if you can find some combinations you are considering (a lot of things have been already done).

I actually try random batches every once in a while just to see what will happen, I'll be trying a "tropical mix" cider after I rack one of my batches soon. 70-80% chance my wild tries are garbage.

This hobby is all about experimenting - as long as you have grasped the most BASIC principles (sugar, yeast, sanitation) there is no reason not to just get a few pints of any juice you fancy and add yeast and see what happens! There are no rules set in stone. If it's not alcoholic enough when it's done, well, you will probably need to add sugar in some form next time. If it doesn't have much of a taste, then probably you want to look into mixing it with the juices of other fruits. Just take some fairly precise notes detailing how much you put of what in when, and you will be able to tweak next time.

For the record, though, pineapple cider has been discussed here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/pineapple-cider-262660/ (though it was mixed with apple juice in this case). Also, you can Google around for "country wine" recipes - just about every combo has been tried, and the only real difference between a cider and wine is the amount of sugar you are going to add and probably the type of yeast (i.e. you are aiming at a lower abv and probably more carbonation). Country wines usually involve adding a fair amount of sugar, for reasons already mentioned.