How to Make Cider at Home: A Complete UK Guide

There's something deeply satisfying about drinking cider you made yourself — and the good news is, making cider at home is genuinely one of the easiest fermentation projects to get started with. Whether you've got a garden full of apples or you're starting with a concentrated kit, here's everything you need to know.

Choosing Your Juice: Fresh, Pressed or Bought?

The quality of your cider starts with the quality of your juice. Your main options are:

• Freshly pressed apples — the gold standard. As a rough guide, you'll need around 1.5–2kg of apples per litre of cider. If you have access to a mix of bittersweet, bittersharp, and dessert apples, blend them for complexity — traditional West Country and Herefordshire varieties are ideal, but most garden apples will produce a decent cider.
• Cold-pressed juice from a local press — many community orchards and farm shops offer juice pressing services in autumn. Unpasteurised juice is best for live fermentation, though it comes with more variable wild yeast activity.
• Pasteurised apple juice from a supermarket or supplier — a completely reliable option year-round. Look for juice with no preservatives (especially no sulphites — ascorbic acid/vitamin C is fine). Bramley and Cox blends work particularly well.

Making Cider Without a Press

Not everyone has access to a cider press, and that's absolutely fine. The easiest press-free method:

• Grate or blend your apples into a rough pulp (a food processor works well for smaller batches).
• Freeze and thaw the pulp first if you can — this breaks down the cell walls and makes juice extraction much easier.
• Strain through a muslin bag, squeezing firmly to extract as much juice as possible.

If that sounds like too much hassle, making cider from shop-bought apple juice is a completely valid shortcut — just make sure it's 100% juice with no preservatives (potassium sorbate in particular will stop your yeast working).

To Sulphite or Not to Sulphite?

If you're using fresh-pressed juice or wild apples, adding a Campden tablet (potassium metabisulphite) at roughly 1 tablet per 4.5 litres will suppress wild yeast and bacteria before pitching your chosen yeast strain. Wait 24 hours before pitching. With pasteurised juice, this step is optional but still a useful precaution.

Yeast Selection: The Biggest Variable in Cider Making

Yeast choice defines the character of your cider more than almost any other decision:

• Dedicated cider yeasts (e.g. Mangrove Jack's M02, Gervin GV13) — designed to preserve fruity apple character, attenuate fully, and produce clean, balanced ciders.
• Champagne or wine yeasts (e.g. Lalvin EC-1118) — very high attenuation means a bone-dry finish. Good for traditional farmhouse styles, but you may need to back-sweeten before serving.
• Ale yeasts — a dry English ale yeast can work well if you want a slightly fuller mouthfeel and some residual body. Not traditional, but produces approachable results.

Avoid bread yeast — it attenuates poorly and produces off-flavours at cider fermentation temperatures.

The Basic Process

1. Sanitise everything that will touch your juice — fermenter, airlock, spoon, the lot. Use VWP or ChemSan.
2. Take a hydrometer reading of your juice to know your starting gravity.
3. Add your yeast and nutrient — apple juice is relatively low in nitrogen compared to wort or grape must, so a small addition of yeast nutrient early in fermentation reduces the risk of stressed yeast and off-flavours.
4. Ferment at 15–20°C for 1–3 weeks, until the bubbling slows and your gravity reading stabilises over 2 consecutive days. Cooler fermentation (closer to 12°C) is slower but rewards you with a cleaner, more aromatic result.
5. Rack off the sediment into a clean vessel and leave to clear for at least 2–4 weeks.
6. Bottle — still or lightly carbonated, depending on your preference.

Sweetness, Clarity, and Back-Sweetening

Fully fermented cider is almost always very dry. If you prefer a sweeter result, your options are:

• Back-sweeten with a non-fermentable sweetener like lactose — works well for still or kegged cider. Never add regular sugar to sweeten, as it will simply referment in the bottle.
• Stabilise first with potassium sorbate combined with a Campden tablet before back-sweetening a bottle-conditioned cider — this prevents re-fermentation, though it will produce a still cider.

For clarity, cold crashing and finings such as bentonite or isinglass will drop your cider bright within days.

Packaging: Still, Sparkling, or Kegged?

• Still cider — bottle or keg directly after stabilising and clearing. Ideal for drier, more complex farmhouse styles.
• Bottle-conditioned sparkling — prime with carbonation drops or a small, measured dose of sugar (around 6–8g per litre) and condition at room temperature for 2 weeks before chilling.
• Force-carbonated in a keg — the most controlled method. Carbonate to approximately 2.5–3 volumes of CO₂ for a lively, refreshing finish. Browse our King Keg range.

The Easy Route: Making Cider From a Kit

If pressing and juicing sounds like hard work, a concentrated cider kit gets you the same result with a fraction of the effort. Sterilise your equipment, dissolve the apple juice concentrate in water to 23 litres, pitch the supplied yeast, and ferment at 18–22°C for 7–14 days. The process is identical to beer — the same equipment works for both.

The John Bull Country Cider kit is one of the UK's most popular, producing 32 pints of genuine, full-flavoured apple cider. The Bulldog Cider range is also outstanding — available in apple, pear, mixed berries, toffee apple, and strawberry & lime varieties. Browse the full cider kit range.

What Equipment Do You Need?

The same basic setup as beer brewing: a 25-litre fermentation vessel (or a demijohn for small batches), an airlock, a hydrometer, a thermometer, steriliser, and bottles or a pressure barrel. If you already brew beer, your existing equipment is fully suitable for cider — no extra kit needed.

How Long Does Home Brew Cider Take?

Kit ciders ferment in 7–14 days; fresh-pressed ciders typically take a little longer, plus 2–4 weeks of clearing. After bottling, condition for at least two weeks at room temperature before chilling. Cider genuinely benefits from cold conditioning — a week in the fridge before drinking noticeably improves clarity and crispness.

Browse our full range of cider making kits, plus the yeast and finings and equipment you'll need to track your progress. If picking, pressing and fermenting from scratch feels like a step too far to begin with, our cider kits are a great way to get a feel for the process first. Based in Halifax, West Yorkshire — visit brewco.uk to browse the full range.