Prep School: Simple Cider Homebrew

By Ash Bauer

Copyright 2012 Ash Bauer

Kindle Edition

Kindle Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

JOHNNY APPLESEED

APPLE PICKING

HOME MADE YEAST

WORLD’S SIMPLEST CIDER

SPARKLING CIDER

APPLEJACK

CONCLUSION

Welcome to Prep School!

It’s easy to be intimidated by a hardcore prepper with 30 years of food stores, multiple bug-out locations, and an off-the-grid power system. Prep School exists to let you in on three big prepping secrets.

SECRET ONE: Nobody starts perfect.

When those prepping powerhouses first started they were just as clueless as you are. Even Navy Seals had things to learn.

Nobody expects you to become a prepping expert overnight. Prep School is for people who are interested in prepping for a crisis or disaster but aren’t really sure where to start. Each article tackles a specific topic such as making primitive weapons, preserving meat without power, and the special survival needs of ladies.

If you’re an advanced prepper who could use a quick refresher on a specific topic you can spend $1.49 on a single essay. There’s no need to waste your money or make you wade past information you could teach in search of the good stuff you need. If you’re just getting started, you can pick up individual books or save a little cash and pick up our $2.99 Theme Packs where we bundle related articles into a single book. Only buy what you need. Spend the rest on your preps.

SECRET TWO: Prepping is fun.

Stockpiling food and ammo may sound grim and intimidating, but you know what most preppers do in real life on a daily basis? Sports and crafting. It’s the same stuff millions of ordinary Americans do every day for fun. On the sport side you’ll find people who love archery, shooting, and martial arts - all things kids do at summer camp for the sheer joy of it. As for crafters, you can find entire suburban stores dedicated to cranking out supplies for beer making, knitting, canning, soap making, and sewing. Etsy exists just to give crafters a way to get rid of all the fun stuff they make. People create things because it’s fun. Preppers are normal people with a cause.

The difference between mainstream sports and crafting versus prepping is focus. Sure, the skills are fun, but they’ll also help keep you alive if the stuff hits the fan.

You’ll find people in prepper communities are thrilled to make friends (and future allies). The thing people forget about hardcore preppers who are ready to survive whatever the world throws at them is they got that way because they honestly enjoyed the process.

SECRET THREE: Prepping isn’t just for The End Of The World As We Know It.

Natural disasters happen. Hurricane Katrina is the most extreme example in recent American history, but there are countless smaller tornadoes, floods, blizzards, and locally relevant disasters which result in the power going out for anywhere from a day to a week. When that happens, a well prepared person doesn’t have to be afraid. Instead of hunger, fear, and violence a prepper has food, security and safety.

Getting started with prepping is all about baby steps that won’t interfere with your real life.

In this article, you’ll learn how to simple and fast it is to make your own homebrew cider.

JOHNNY APPLESEED

The only thing better than kicking back and enjoying a cold drink with your friends is pouring that drink from a bottle you brewed yourself. Homebrew is a great stealth prepper skill. No one needs to know you’re doing this to make sure your family is fed and provided for in case of a crisis. Instead, your friends will know you as the fun person who brews their own tasty booze. It’s the best possible win-win situation.

Unlike a lot of hard preps, everything about homebrewing is fun. Picking your fruit, brewing it up, and most of all drinking the finished result. Once you get good at it, showing off to your friends is an added bonus.

There are plenty of excellent guides for brewing beer. However, if you’re not already an avid beer homebrewer, in a crisis or emergency situation, you probably won’t have access to wheat, hops, barley, yeast, and all the equipment needed to make a drinkable batch of beer. You see, beer is one of your more complicated alcohols. Luckily, you can make some darn tasty crisis booze out of apples.

In fact, expansion into the American west was made possible in great part by cider. Johnny Appleseed was a real historical figure. By today’s standards he was a total nutjob. He’d show up in a small, settler town long haired, barefoot, with ragged clothes and a suspicious bag full of seeds. Respectable people familiar with his reputation would try to drive him out, but more often than not a few kind farmers would take him in for a night here and there. In exchange, he’d germinate apple seeds, teach them how to plant the saplings, and most dangerously of all, leave them with detailed instructions on how to make cider once those trees bore fruit.

Planting apples from seeds is like spinning a roulette wheel. Due to the way apple trees reproduce, the seeds in a familiar Macintosh apple could grow anything from hard, bitter green apples to mealy sweet red ones to crisp, tart pie apples. Modern orchards achieve row upon row of trees with identical fruit by grafting. Planting trees from seeds was seen as more proof that Johnny Appleseed was crazy. No sane person planted from seed. After all, if your trees grow a dozen different varieties of apples, the only thing you can reasonably do with them is make cider. Respectable town elders saw him as a degenerate who was there to whittle away people’s morals.

Settlers, on the other hand, loved Johnny Appleseed. Food gets scarce starting in the fall. Apples preserve well for a couple of months after harvest. Pressing the apples into cider is a way of preserving the fruit for months to come, giving you access to valuable calories and vitamins in the cold, dark winter months. Best of all, unlike beer, which required a full scale farm, a family could plant a tree or two in their yard and be set for generations.

Today, if you have space in your yard, apple trees are a good investment. Apples store well in a cool, dark root cellar. Just as it did for the settlers, the fruit provides calories and vitamins for months after harvest. Turning the fruit into cider can make a couple months of edible apples stretch into next spring, when the new crops are ready. Cider was often the closest thing people had to fruit for five months out of the year.

In case of a long term crisis or severe disaster, being able to provide both alcohol and calories can be an incredibly valuable trade skill.

APPLE PICKING

You can make hard apple cider from any apples, but your best results come from a blend. Mixing multiple types gives you the best possible combination of sweetness, tartness, and heartiness.

Your best common varieties for cider are Golden Delicious, Jonathan, and McIntosh. Remember, always get organic, unwaxed apples. Pesticides will kill off all the good stuff that turns your apples into cider. Orchards or farmers markets often offer a variety box specifically designed for juicing.

If planting your own tree, you might want to pick a less common variety which can be used for cider, pies, applesauce, and just plain eating. Try Empire, Mutsu, Newtown Pippin, Albemarle Pippin or Roxbury Russet.

Regardless of whether you pick up a crate of apples at an orchard or pick apples straight from your own tree, your best cider will come from ripe apples. Ones that have fallen but aren’t seriously bruised and don’t have any rotten spots are perfect. Crisp, young apples may be great for snacking, but mature, ripe apples have the highest sugar content. Yeast eats sugar and turns it into alcohol, so the more sugar in your cider the better it’ll turn out.

HOME MADE YEAST

Since this is a book for preppers, we went out looking for the easiest, most time tested recipes. You see, one of the great things about making cider is its simplicity. All you really need is a crate of apples, something to juice them with, and yeast to trigger fermentation.

Yeast occurs naturally on a wide variety of plants, including apples. Natural yeast isn’t as strong as brewer’s yeast, but it is something you can make yourself. You’ll need:

- 1 organic apple

- ½ gallon organic apple juice

- 1 bag of balloons (or a store bought fermentation lock)

You want an organic apple and organic apple juice because pesticides will kill the naturally occurring yeast you’re trying to cultivate.

Step 1: Drink half your apple juice.

Step 2: Peel your organic apple. Shove the peel in the apple juice bottle. Make sure your apple peel is completely submerged.

Step 3: Poke a hole in a children’s party balloon and wrap it around the top of the juice bottle.

Store your starter in a cool, dark place. Check on it once a day. You want to make sure the balloon hasn’t come off (if so, replace it with a new balloon.) The balloon acts as a cheap, easy fermentation lock. It keeps outside bacteria and mold from getting in while letting gas buildup safely escape.

If you already have experience with homebrew, just put your apple peel and apple juice into a small glass container of your choice and seal it up with the fermentation lock. Don’t worry if you have no idea what that last sentence meant. You’ll get almost equal results creating yeast either way. The goal here is to keep cider homebrew as cheap and easy as possible for preppers, not to impress homebrewers with your equipment.

In 2-3 weeks your yeast starter should start bubbling enthusiastically. You have now made a natural yeast cider starter. Congratulations! At that point, you’re ready to make your first batch of cider.

A few words of caution - natural yeast can be tricky, especially the first few times you give it a whirl. Try making 3-4 batches using different apples. That way you have a good chance of success with at least one of them. When you do your daily check to make sure the balloon is still in place and look for bubbles, give the air a good sniff. It should smell like apples with a hint of wine. If it smells skunky or spoiled, your yeast didn’t take. Clean out your containers and start over.

You can use this natural yeast to make bread. However, this yeast is weaker than the usual bread yeast. You’ll need to let your bread rise for at least 4-6 hours and even then, it’ll be a little flatter than you’re used to from store bought baker’s yeast. It’ll also give the final bread a nice, sweet flavor. Some people swear by it - especially in cinnamon rolls and other baked goods.

After you make your first batch of cider you’ll find a thick sludge at the bottom of the bottle. Save it. That stuff is valuable. It’s a combination of apple sediment, juice, and precious yeast. Mix it with your remaining apple peel based starter.

Keep this mix in a cool, dark place. From now on, this yeast is your cider starter. Every time you use a half cup of starter, replace it with half a cup of unpasteurized, organic apple juice. Give it a week and your starter will be ready to go again.

A regularly used starter tends to be good for up to six months. After that, the yeast goes skunky, becomes less effective, or both. The best way to make sure you always have starter ready is to start a new batch every month.

WORLD’S SIMPLEST CIDER

One of the great things about cider is that it practically makes itself.

Either juice your own apples or buy some fresh, unpasteurized organic apple juice from a local orchard or farmer’s market. You can turn the whole day into a fun but affordable family outing if you go apple picking together then have the orchard owners juice your haul.

For each gallon of cider, add 1/2 cup of starter. Put the cider/starter mix in a large, sterile container. This is where large, sturdy glass bottles, such as a carboy, come in handy. Experienced homebrewers probably have a glass carboy and a fermentation lock (both inexpensive and easy to find at homebrew shops both online or in person.) If you have those on hand, use them.

Preppers are notorious for storing things in five gallon plastic tubs. If you don’t have a sturdy glass jug, your basic five gallon bucket is a perfectly good place to ferment basic cider. Pick a tub with a lid that already has some kind of aeration holes on it. If none of your tubs have holes, poke a few. Cover the holes with plastic wrap, duct tape the plastic wrap in place, and poke a hole in the plastic wrap. This is a primitive fermentation lock, just like the balloon with a pinprick hole. You’re letting the fermentation gases escape while preventing any outside yeast, bacteria, mold, or other bad things from getting into your homebrewed cider.

Now wait five days.

It’s that simple.

The longer you let your cider ferment, the stronger and drier it’ll be. If you want something that is both sweet and only mildly alcoholic, you’ll have a drinkable product in five to seven days.

At this point, you can pour the cider liquid into clean, sterile glass bottles and store it for up to six months. The flavor will continue to mature - which mostly means it gets drier over time. Save the sludge at the bottom of your bucket. That gets mixed in with the yeast starter for your next batch.

Some people strain the cider to make it clearer and cleaner looking. For preppers, I recommend against this. Yes, the end product looks cleaner, but the stuff that makes your cider cloudy is full of vitamins. If you’ve had a hard winter, you’ll want that cloudy cider come February.

There are plenty of crisper, cleaner tasting cider recipes out there, but you’ll have a hard time finding one that’s easier or more designed for preppers.

SPARKLING CIDER

If you want to show off to your friends, it’s super simple to strain out the cloudy particles and add some fizz.

You’ll need:

- 1 Gallon of Homebrew Cider

- 4 1-Quart Resealable Glass Bottles or Canning Jars

- ¾ cup Honey or Sugar

- 1 cup Water

Step 1: Let your cider ferment for about 10 days. This will give you a crisper, drier cider. Don’t worry. We’re about to add sugar.

Step 2: Strain your cider twice. Add some cheesecloth to your strainer to help remove as much of the solid matter as possible.

Step 3: Mix the ¾ cup of honey or sugar with the cup of water. Stir until everything melts, then let it reduce down by ⅓. You’re producing a nice simple syrup here.

Step 4: Add ¼ of your simple syrup to each of the four 1-quart glass bottles. Wait until the syrup cools. Top the bottles off with your homebrewed cider. Make sure to leave 1-2 inches of air space at the top of each bottle.

Step 5: Swirl the bottles (don’t shake them!) until the simple syrup is well mixed with the cider.

Step 6: Put the bottles in a cool, dark place (or your refrigerator) for about 2 weeks. While they sit, the sugars will cause a secondary fermentation which will give your cider some nice bubbles.

Homebrewed sparkling cider is a great way to impress your friends. Be careful if you give it away as a present, though. People need to drink it within a couple of months. If you let sparkling cider sit for more than about 4 months you risk the bottle exploding from fermentation gas buildup.

Non-sparkling cider typically lasts a little longer, but it isn’t as much fun to show off.

APPLEJACK

Applejack is illegal. You can still find older people who joke about how their grandfather made applejack so strong you could clean floors with it. You don’t want applejack for drinking purposes, but if you’re out of rubbing alcohol and need something to sterilize wounds, applejack is a good candidate. It’s also dirt simple to make.

Instead of drinking your hard apple cider after five to seven days, let it keep fermenting for three to four weeks. At that point, it’ll be plenty strong. Assuming you have electricity put your applejack in the freezer. When you come back the next day you’ll find you have a big chunk of ice and a small amount of dangerously strong fluid. If you want, you can freeze the cider a second time to get as much of the water out of it as possible. The remaining liquid is applejack. You really don’t want to get drunk on this stuff. It’s way too strong. However, at 40 proof (higher proof if you freeze it a second time) it’s an excellent home brewed sterilizing agent.

CONCLUSION

Making hard cider is dirt simple. It’s a lot easier and cheaper than beer homebrew and is ready to drink a lot faster. This makes it a fun, low effort hobby for preppers which happens to result in something nice you can bring to parties or potlucks.

Remember, cider is not beer. Once you bottle beer, the flavor is frozen in place. Six months later, that beer will taste the same as it did a day after bottling. Cider, on the other hand, is more like wine. It changes flavor the longer it sits. Today’s sweet cider will be incredibly dry in four months.

Learning to homebrew hard cider is a great prepper skill. You need almost no special equipment, it’s ready to drink in a week, and in a crisis or emergency, it can be turned into applejack, which is a great replacement for rubbing alcohol. If your home or bug-out location is somewhere capable of supporting apple trees, they’re a great long term investment for your family. Plus, cider is fun and apples are tasty. You really can’t lose.

As far as the world is concerned, you’re not prepping for disaster. You’re a fun person with interesting hobbies. Both can be true.

If you enjoyed this, check out other Prep School lessons including:

Prep School: Preserving Meat Without Power

Prep School: Unarmed Self Defense

Prep School: Cooking Without Electricity

Or save money with our Guns and Weapons Theme Pack.

Have fun staying safe!