-cide

[Middle English, from Old French (from Latin -cīda, killer) and from Latin -cīdium, killing, both from caedere, to strike, kill]

Making hard cider is very simple. I have now brewed 4 batches and each has been a hit among my alcohol consuming friends. The basic recipe goes like this:

1. Clean, and using iodophor, sanitize 5 gallon carboy, funnel, airlock.
2. Add 1 tsp of yeast nutrient to carboy.
3. Add ale yeast (powder or liquid, some people use champagne yeast).
4. Using funnel, pour about 4.5 gallons of unpasteurized cider into carboy.
5. Insert airlock and rubber stopper into carboy opening.

At this point you just need to wait. After about 5-7 days the yeast will give up and you won't see any more bubbles in the airlock. At this point I rack the cider to a new carboy using a siphon. This step leaves behind a lot of sediment so the final product will be a bit clearer. After a few more days the cider can be racked once more into the keg and force carbonated.

So that's the general plan anyway. This batch has given me some troubles though. I got a little greedy and put a little more cider in the carboy than before. You don't fill it to the brim because you want to leave some head space for the yeast. It tends to rise a bit during fermentation. I didn't leave enough space this time.

It's a little bit surprising the first time you look at the carboy and see that the airlock is completely clogged with yeasty cider gook. It's a little more concerning when we're talking about 4.5 gallons of product, so it's worth fixing. My solution was adapted from others found on the Internet. First, sanitize one side of a piece of tin foil. Using a paper towel, clean up any of the mess that has crept out of the carboy. Commit the atrocity and remove the airlock and quickly replace it with the tin foil by tightly forming the foil over the opening. We've now broken the seal and allowed air into the cider, but hopefully our efforts will minimize any infection. Use your bottle washer to clean out the airlock and rubber stopper. Re-sanitize them and pull the switcheroo one more time.

One of the most imperative rules about brewing is to maintain an impeccably clean environment. But I'm going to make an addendum to that: Maintain a sanitized environment, but don't throw away perfectly good beer. At these quantities it's worth taking some risks to see if you can rescue a troubled batch. I'm pretty sure this is the reason behind many of the alcoholic innovations anyway -- e.g. certain styles of beers are sour and you can imagine some of our brewmaster forefathers ruining a batch but developing a taste for it because, well, it was there.

I left out the final step of my cider recipe. I like to name each batch, and so far each cider has been a pun off of the word. Previous batches included: Suicider, Genocider, and Pesticider. I'm currently thinking about The Deciderer, in celebration of the exit of our current President. I might turn this into gifts for some relatives though, so maybe it should be named Fratricider.