← Drinks H47-05 · Module 5 of 7 · Pages: 20 · Worksheets: 5

Cider and fruit wine

From apple juice and berries to the bottle: measuring sugar, yeast, fermenting under an airlock, racking, sulphite, still and sparkling cider, with CO₂ safety and the law

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Cider and fruit wine

In short

  • 17 g of sugar per litre gives roughly 1 % alcohol. Apple juice at 11 °Brix gives roughly 6.5 %.
  • Ferment in a demijohn with an airlock at 15–20 °C (59–68 °F), with wine or cider yeast.
  • Fermenting 100 L of juice gives roughly 2.5–3 m³ of carbon dioxide: the room must be ventilated.
  • Bottle sparkling cider only in pressure bottles, with no more than 6–8 g of sugar per litre.
  • Making cider and fruit wine for your own household is legal in the UK, Ireland, the US and Canada, within limits set by law; selling needs registration and licences. Check the rules where you live.

What's inside

Chapters

  1. How cider and fruit wine are made
  2. Safety and the law
  3. Equipment
  4. Measuring sugar and alcohol
  5. Recipe: cider
  6. Perry, quince and blended drinks
  7. Wine from berries and stone fruit
  8. Fermentation, racking and clearing
  9. Bottling: still and sparkling
  10. When something goes wrong
  11. Common mistakes
  12. Printable checklist

Worksheets

  • Cider and fruit wine calendar
  • Sugar and alcohol calculator
  • Sulphite and bottle calculator
  • Batch log and dates
  • Demijohn register and labels

Fields and checkboxes can be filled in with Adobe Acrobat Reader (desktop and mobile), and the calculator adds up by itself. Filling in may not work in some browsers. A print version comes with the screen PDF.

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