Start with the right apples

Cider apples are not eating apples, and the difference matters enormously. The best traditional English cider comes from bittersweet and bittersharp varieties — Dabinett, Kingston Black, Yarlington Mill, Brown Snout, Michelin — whose tannin gives the drink its body, its gentle bitterness and that faintly astringent finish that makes you reach for another glass. If you are lucky enough to have access to an old orchard, use it. If not, blend roughly 60 per cent bittersweet, 30 per cent sharp (a good Bramley) and 10 per cent sweet to get close to a proper West Country style.

Press fruit that is ripe but sound. Windfalls are perfectly good provided you gather them promptly and cut out bruises and rot — a small amount of mould will taint an entire batch. Apples that have sat for a week or two after picking press more easily and taste sweeter, as starch converts to sugar. Rinse them in clean water and discard anything you would not be happy to eat.

Clean kit is the whole game

Before you touch a single apple, wash everything the juice will meet: the mill, the press, the buckets, the demijohns, the siphon and your own hands. Hot water and a food-safe sanitiser, then a rinse with boiled, cooled water. Wild yeast and acetic acid bacteria ride in on fruit and cling to scratched plastic, and a batch that turns to vinegar rarely forgives you. This is the least glamorous part of cider making and by far the most important.

You will need:

• A scratter or mill — a clean, dedicated garden shredder works at a push
• A basket press or a small spindle press
• Food-grade buckets and a fermentation bin
• Demijohns or a fermenting vessel fitted with an airlock
• A hydrometer, a thermometer and a siphon
• Strong bottles: swing-top, champagne-style or recycled beer bottles

Milling, pressing and reading the juice

Pulp the apples — the finer the better, short of turning them to purée — then press in small batches, building up the cheese gradually and letting the juice run freely before adding more pressure. Old hands say the first runnings are the finest, and they are usually right.

Before fermentation begins, take a hydrometer reading. Most English cider apples give you somewhere between 1.045 and 1.060, which will ferment out to roughly 5.5 to 7.5 per cent alcohol. If the reading is low, a little sugar or concentrated apple juice can lift it; if it is very high, dilute with fresh juice. Taste the juice now, too — it should be sweet, sharp and tannic all at once, like a rough sketch of the cider to come.

Ferment slowly and let it settle

Traditional cider was fermented with wild yeast, and you can still do this, but it is a gamble. A reliable cider yeast gives a cleaner, more predictable drink while still letting the fruit speak for itself. Pitch it into juice at around 18°C and keep the vessel somewhere steady between 15°C and 20°C — a cool utility room, a garage or a shed in autumn is ideal. Heat drives off aroma, and violent swings in temperature stall the ferment; a stalled ferment is hard to restart.

Primary fermentation takes one to three weeks. When the airlock slows and the hydrometer reads the same on two consecutive days, rack the cider off the lees into a clean, sanitised vessel with as little splashing as possible. This is the point where a secondary, malolactic fermentation may begin quietly on its own, softening the sharpness of the malic acid and rounding the cider. Leave it alone. Time is an ingredient.

Bottling, priming and patience

Bottle only when fermentation has genuinely finished — a stable hydrometer reading over a week, and no rising bubbles. For a gently sparkling cider, prime with about 8g of sugar per litre, or a teaspoon per 500ml bottle, and use bottles strong enough to take the pressure. For a still cider, add nothing and rack once more if the cider is hazy. Fill to within a couple of centimetres of the top, cap, and store somewhere cool and dark.

Leave the bottles for at least three months, and longer if you can bear it. Six months transforms a decent cider into a good one; a year can make it remarkable. Label each batch with the date and the apple blend, and keep notes — the orchard will teach you more each autumn than any book. Cheers.