Learning path

Run a small cider house

You can say what a small producer checks at each stage from fruit to dispatch, what is written down, how a batch is judged before release, and what leaves the site besides cider.

Who this is for

You make cider to sell, or are about to, and need the parts of the job a home batch never asks of you: a safety plan, records, checks and a release decision.

14 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.

Start with step 1: What changes with scale

The steps

What changes with scale · Equipment
The jump from a home batch to a product someone else buys, and what it brings with it.
The safety plan · Equipment
Hazard analysis as a method, so the checks that follow have a reason.
Fruit intake · Equipment
The first control point most cider houses choose: what comes in on the fruit.
Cleaning · Equipment
Caustic and acid cleaning, and the residues a plan has to account for.
Sampling · Equipment
A measurement is only as good as the sample it was taken from.
Lab or cellar · Equipment
Which measurements a cellar can make and which need a laboratory.
Instruments you can trust · Equipment
Calibration, so a number written down means the same next season.
Records and specifications · Equipment
The batch record and the target it is held to.
Yield and loss · Tool
Where the volume went between press and package, stage by stage.
Sensory testing · Science
Which test answers which question, and how many tasters it needs.
Training the panel · Science
Teaching tasters to name a fault rather than only notice something wrong.
Release · Equipment
The checks before a batch is sold: refermentation, oxygen, fill, seams and the retained sample.
On draught · Equipment
What happens to the cider after it leaves, when it is served from a keg.
What else leaves · Equipment
Lees, washings and pomace: the by-products a cider house is responsible for.

Other learning paths

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.
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.