Learning path

Become a better cider maker

You can measure a juice, plan a ferment around what you measured, blend to a target, and keep a cider sound through maturation.

Who this is for

You have made a few batches and want them to be good on purpose rather than by luck.

16 pages, each assuming only the ones before it. Every step is an ordinary page on the site; at the foot of each one is the way to the next.

The steps

The full process · Guide
From fruit, with every decision a first batch skips.
Planning a batch · Guide
Fruit, volume and losses worked out before pressing day.
Ripe fruit · Orchards
Starch, sugar and timing: the decision that sets the juice.
What pressing changes · Science
Oxygen, solids and time between mill and vessel.
Measuring properly · Guide
Gravity, pH, acidity and temperature, and which matter when.
Reading a juice analysis · Science
What the numbers predict and what they do not.
pH and acidity · Science
Two measurements of acid that answer different questions.
Yeast nutrition · Science
Why apple juice starves yeast, and what that does to a ferment.
Why ferments stall · Science
The causes in order of likelihood, before reaching for a remedy.
Blending · Explainer
What a blend can correct and what it cannot.
Blending to an acid target · Tool
The arithmetic of a blend, worked for your own juices.
Sulphite and pH · Science
Why the same dose protects one cider and not another.
Oxygen · Science
When it helps a cider and when it ends one.
Maturation · Science
What changes in the months after fermentation, and how fast.
Advanced practice · Guide
Keeving, arrested ferments and the methods that need control.
Judging your own cider · Guide
Tasting as a measurement, so the next batch can be better.

Understand cider — You drink cider, or are curious about it, and have never been told what it actually is.
Make your first cider — You have a demijohn or a fermenting bucket, juice or fruit, and no experience — and you want a sound first batch rather than a lucky one.
Understand perry — You have heard perry is not pear cider and want to know what it is instead.
Cider science — You want the mechanisms: why cider tastes, smells and behaves as it does.
Orchards and fruit — You want to understand where cider fruit comes from: the tree, the orchard and the year.
History and culture — You want the story: where cider came from, who drank it, and the customs that still survive.