Learning path

Make your first cider

A finished batch you measured from start to end, bottled without risk of over-pressure, and the means to tell what went wrong if anything did.

Who this is for

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.

13 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 first batch, step by step · Guide
The spine of this track: read it through once before you start.
What you need · Equipment
The minimum kit, and what can be borrowed from a kitchen.
Cleaning and sanitising · Equipment
The step most first batches are lost to.
The hydrometer · Equipment
The one instrument worth buying, and how to read it.
What your juice will make · Tool
Turn the first gravity reading into an expected strength.
Wild or cultured yeast · Explainer
The first real choice, and what each one risks.
Is it finished? · Tool
Read gravity over days, not airlock bubbles.
When fermentation misbehaves · Guide
Slow, stuck, smelly: what is normal and what needs action.
Sweet, sparkling or both · Tool
Which combination is safe to bottle, and which needs another step.
Making it sparkle · Guide
Priming and bottle conditioning, measured rather than guessed.
How much priming sugar · Tool
The amount for the fizz you want, from a gravity that has stopped moving.
Bottle safety · Explainer
Why over-pressure happens and how a bottle is kept from it.
If something went wrong · Guide
Working back from the symptom to the cause.

Understand cider — You drink cider, or are curious about it, and have never been told what it actually is.
Become a better cider maker — You have made a few batches and want them to be good on purpose rather than by luck.
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.