Fruity Cider

local lad · Oct 4, 2012

Hi all, i am looking at making some Fruit cider(maybe forest fruit) but basically i haven't done this before, i was going to buy all of the kit from wilko and do one of them, but after calculating that it would cost Â£60+ i chose not to as i don't have much money. however after reading some posts on here i see that it may be possible to make a little for a tester in a demijohn at very little cost.

so my question is what would people recommend?

what juices would make a nice cider? (other than apple)
what sugar should i use?
what yeast?

and anything else that i need?

also a quick demonstration would be brilliant

: cheers:

RobWalker · Oct 4, 2012

what commercial varieties do you like?

you can get set up for very cheap if you put the effort on. 2L pop bottles, plastic FV, sanitizer and syphon tubing for like 15 quid, plus a Â£20 On The Rocks kit (which make a good sweet cider like rekorderlig/kopparberg.) at Â£35 for 40 pints, it's still a damn sight cheaper than the off license and you're set up for Â£20 for 40 pints after that :thumb:

local lad · Oct 4, 2012

I like kopparberg mixed fruit and that's what I would be aiming for. Although I doubt I would be able to get it perfect.
It was really the bottles that put me off. Someone told me that its not safe to put it into plastic bottles because it could explode!
if you can use pop bottles then I might give it a try. Thanks.

RobWalker · Oct 4, 2012

pop bottles are better technically speaking, plastic can take up to 100psi. IE 3x more than car tyres.

GeorgeSalt · Oct 5, 2012

I put all my cider into 2l pop bottles. It should be fully fermented before it goes in the bottle, with full control of the priming sugar (if you do that sort of thing).

The only explosion I'v had using pop bottles was with Elderflower Champagne when I wasn't quick enough releasing the pressure.