Don’t Dump That Cider!

Posted on 10.08.09 8:55PM under Brewing

It’s a constant battle against the aging goods in the fridge. Food and drink are consumed. Some is left. Open containers sit. Eventually they fade past the magical time that determines them to be expired. It is often with a heavy heart that I discard these could’ve-beens.

But some things shall not be tossed.

I have a natural soft spot for things that can be fermented. I cringe to dump any juice or syrup or anything like that. I know there’s sugars in there, and if I could just convert them to ethanol, I could have something viable from that soon-to-be-waste.

Of all the fermentable items, come this time of year, cider makes its way into the fridge. Since it is a rare visitor, the habit of drinking it is not well-established in the family. In fact, the kids take some warming up to the concept at all. Normally it’s one session of mulled ciders half-gulped by all and the half-gallon sits there for another couple of weeks until we collectively realize it’s been “too long” and it has to go.

This is where I come in. I don’t really like the mulled hot cider, but in my mind, there’s one thing that cider’s made for, and that’s fermenting.

One 3/4 full half-gallon of cider plus a half a jar of saved yeast of questionable status plus table sugar to top off the volume. Shake well, store at room temp. I am basically making prison hooch here. But it’s better than tossing the cider, and really only consumed the couple of cups of sugar that I added. Everything else was “just lying around”. If this works out, it’s like a half gallon of alcohol for about ten cents. That’s bargain brewing.

I guess in a week of so I’ll know if I’ve made anything that a person could actually drink. And I’ll probably drink it anyway. Shouldn’t kill me. And therefore, roughly paraphrasing the familiar saying, it can only make me stronger. Maybe I’ll dry hop it…

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  1. Posted by phlyingpenguin on 10.08.09 9:23 pm

    I always keep an eye out for managers special cider in the supermarket this time of year. If you can catch it, they’ll have cider on for $1 a gallon and plenty of it. They’re usually slated to “go bad” in a day or two, but there’s no reason to drink it as it is. My first batch, I just pitched yeast and it turned out pretty good. I’d say it came out to an extremely low ABV, but nothing a little added sugar doesn’t help. A friend literally picked up apples off the ground and stuck them in a fermenter with water and sugar (no yeast) to get the best cider any of us have ever had. YMMV.

    On a side note, registration for comments is kinda lame man. I know WordPress can be problematic with spammers, but you’re not going to get much feedback with that extra step in there. I might recommend Disqus or a similar service to you so at least people browsing might have an account or when they create one it’ll be useful later.

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