Well, I've only ever made three batches of cider, so take my advice with a grain of salt if you want. I'm sure someone else can tell us a more efficient or "better" way, but let me share my experience with you.
Your recipe should be simple. Me, I like apples and yeast. Its a classic.
What kind of apples? Well I stick to free apples because they're readily available and you can't beat the price, but I will say I pick the Gala and Newtown Pippin trees first. The Gala apples are very sweet, but the Pippin's are a prized cider apple.
How do you find free apples? Drive down the road and look for apple trees. If you see one littering the ground around it with fruit, politely ask the property owner if he would mind you picking a few apples. If he isn't tending the tree, odds are he will let you pick some. Return next year with a bottle or two of cider from his apples. Likewise watch for trees on public land, like along a road side. Since you're going to juice them, not eat them, don't be afraid of imperfect apples. Small, deformed apples juice just fine. If they come off the tree when you grab them and aren't diseased or eaten by pests, they're good to go. If you need to pull, come back next week for that one.
If you don't have a cider press, you may be able to use a juicer or you may destroy a juicer. Apples don't like to give up the juice. I don't have a press, but I do have a 3/4HP commercial juicer. I just quarter the apples and drop them in, pulp goes one way, juice the other. I've killed other juicer machines, but those were wimpy little consumer models from wal-mart. I don't do any prep to the apples really, just tree to bushel, quick rinse, chop and juice.
I get about 50-60% juice by weight depending on variety and time of year. This is actually not that great, but I am lazy and it is easy. A good press (so my friends brag) can get 80% juice and leave bone dry pulp, especially if you prep the apples with pectic enzymes. I could probably up it a bit more if I added enzymes to the pulp and sent it back through, but again, I am lazy and apples are free.
To prepare the juice, I pasteurize it at 180 degrees F. Pour it into a pot and stir it over low heat. You're going to need to skim the juice as it heats up, the pectin in the juice will begin to denature and clump together, so skimming it will save you clearing time later. Why so hot? It seemed like a good idea at the time and it definitely killed off anything that may have been lurking on those apples.
If you want to hit 7%, you'll need to add some sugar. I've never seen fresh from the tree apple juice hit that gravity, mine tend to hover about 1.050 SG give or take. A rule of thumb says a pound of sugar gives you almost 1% in a five gallon batch (.046 per pound per gallon, so one pound adds .0092 to a five gallon batch). If I wanted to hit 7% abv I'd need one and a half pounds of sugar.
Once the juice cools, I pitch my yeast and wait. Nottingham Ale Yeast works well, but I've currently got a batch running with Lalvin 71B-1122 so we'll see. I read about a lot of other people using Nottingham, and I have to say it works for me too so it seems a fair recommendation.
Now, since I did not add any pectic enzyme, the cider will be cloudy. Just how it is.
Come bottling time, I back sweeten with more apple juice and cap. You could prime with corn sugar, but I like apple juice as it keeps with the very simple recipe of apples and yeast.
I give the bottles a few days to carbonate, then I pasteurize the bottles to kill off any remaining yeast and preserve the residual sweetness. You can pasteurize a few bottles at a time in your brewing kettle, give them 10 minutes in 190F water before pulling them out and loading the next ones in, but I find it quicker to load my bottles into my dishwasher and set it for high heat. Come back an hour later and all the work is done for me. If your dishwasher is too hot or they remain in the hot water bath too long, you may loose a few bottles. Try to avoid that, process only one or two at first so you get the hang of it and/or know that your dishwasher isn't going to betray you.
If I were going to keg it, I'd just pasteurize it prior to putting it in a keg.
So to recap, my recipe is this;
~80lbs of apples mixed or single variety as they become available
One packet yeast.
Equipment needed beyond the usual beer paraphenalia; one dishwasher, one commercial juicer or cider press.
