How to turn this year’s apple harvest into a tasty, refreshing beverage. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.
Using all of the apples from your harvest can be challenging. Of course, there’s apple sauce, chopped salads, apple pies. But, there’s a tasty beverage that’s also really easy to make: Hard Apple Cider. It’s one of the most readily available ferments for beginners, and even better, often if it goes awry, the resulting mistake is apple cider vinegar.
The first rule of making hard apple cider is that it can’t be done with juice or cider that has preservatives, as these will prevent it from fermenting. The process simply requires putting the juice in a large glass container, leaving a little room for bubbling and such, and covering the container with cheesecloth or an old piece of a t-shirt, anything that’ll allow air and wild yeast in and that will keep fruit flies out.
Within a couple of days of sitting on the kitchen counter or in the pantry, it will begin turning alcoholic. Just give it a quick stir or two each day, for a week. As with any ferment, once it’s ready, just stick it in the fridge to slow down the process.
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