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Recipe: Easy Hard Cider

This fairly straightforward home cider recipe makes use of saison yeast to ensure a complete fermentation, with many other variations possible.

Josh Aune , Joe Stange Jun 20, 2021 - 5 min read

Recipe: Easy Hard Cider Primary Image

Photo: Matt Graves/mgravesphoto.com

An increasingly popular option for home cidermakers is to ferment their juice with Belle Saison yeast—or other strains that are var. diastaticus, which helps to ensure a complete fermentation as the yeast keep chomping away on sugars.

As an added bonus, these yeast strains also produce some glycerol, which provides a bit of body and just an impression of sweetness—as they do for saison—despite fermenting out the juice (or wort) completely. That makes them an interesting option for producing a dry cider that doesn’t taste overly austere.

Optionally, you can also back-sweeten or flavor the cider after fermentation. Notably, when fermenting cider, these saison yeasts—without maltose to chew on—don’t produce as much of the clove-like or spicy phenols usually expected of them. Fermentation at ambient temperatures, ideally supported by nutrients, can take a few days up to few weeks.

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