By: Connor Barclay

Any fellow apple savants out there will know that the mid-to-late fall is the prime season for making fresh cider. Store-bought may work in a pinch, but there’s not much that can beat the cozy fall aesthetic of fresh homemade cider. So, with nothing better to do, I decided to give it an attempt myself.

Traditionally, cider is made using a press that forces the juice out of the fruit. The result is essentially unfiltered apple juice, with what most people think of as apple juice being filtered and further processed cider. While mechanical presses are still commonly used in commercial production, there are much simpler and more cost-effective ways of making cider at home without buying a $150 entry-level press. For instance, there are countless recipe blogs outlining a slow cooker recipe for making cider, which is as easy as throwing all the apples in and waiting for them to turn to mush. I was more than happy to throw all the ingredients into my crock pot and call it a day (or 8 hours), but I soon discovered that it had been requisitioned for dinner that night without my knowledge, so I was forced to improvise.

Without a press or an available slow cooker, I was beginning to think I had bought all those apples for nothing. But then I was struck with an idea, and it ended up working better than I had anticipated.
I’ll preface this by saying that this method takes significantly less time than the slow cooker recipe, but it’s also a lot more hands-on (literally). If you’re willing to get your hands covered in apple juice, here’s what you’ll need:

Possibly the most crucial step before you begin is to clean and sanitize your workspace. This includes washing your fruit and scrubbing your tools, any surface your apples will touch, and, of course, your hands. This will reduce the risk of bacteria finding their way into the cider.

Once you have everything together, you can start by cutting apples into small enough pieces to blend. I could only fit 2–3 apples in the blender at a time, but the goal is to render the apples down to a semi-fine pulp that juice can be squeezed out of. You also want to be sure you have some kind of masher to push the mixture down between pulse cycles (PLEASE NOTE: never put a mashing utensil into a running blender. Stop the blender and use the tamper or masher only when the blades have stopped, preferably with the blender switched off). If you need to, you can also add a small amount of water to loosen things up when blending. It isn’t necessary if the blender isn’t having trouble processing the apples, but if you do decide to add water, make sure not to add too much so as not to overly dilute the cider.

Start by wetting the cheesecloth first. This will ensure that the cloth itself absorbs minimal cider as you squeeze the pulp. Next, if your container size allows, drape the cloth over the top so that the edges wrap around the rim. Then, you can pour your apple pulp on top of the cheesecloth. Having wet cloth here also helps it adhere to the sides of the container. Once you have your entire pulp mixture on top of the cloth, gravity should cause some juice to start filtering through on its own. However, to get the most out of your apples, you’re going to need to wrap the rest of your cloth around the pulp and squeeze the juice out.

This is the most hands-on part of the process, both literally and figuratively. Twisting the cloth here to get a tighter squeeze on the pulp can also help extract more juice. Once you get all the juice out of a particular batch of pulp, you’ll end up with the dried-up remnants in the cheesecloth. If you’re wondering, yes, I did eat some, and it was (perhaps unsurprisingly) like eating dry applesauce. Instead of just tossing the dried pulp, I’d recommend adding some water back to make actual applesauce or otherwise composting it.

More importantly, after squeezing out the pulp, that dark, cloudy liquid is what we’re after. It won’t look like much after just one squeeze, but that’s genuine, homemade apple cider. Just rinse and repeat the above steps until you have an amount you can brag about.

Unfortunately, we’re still not finished. What we have here is raw juice, potentially containing whatever bacteria the apples picked up along their journey into your kitchen. To reduce the risk of foodborne illness, it’s important to treat your cider. To pasteurize your cider, Oregon State University Extension recommends heating it to at least 160 degrees Fahrenheit and holding it there for six seconds. Pour the cider out of your container and into a pot. Once it reaches the target temperature, maintain it for at least six seconds before removing it from the heat (I also added cinnamon sticks at this point, as the heat helps to distribute the flavor). Instead of letting it cool naturally, I opted to put my pot into an ice bath to minimize the chance for new bacteria to grow. Once it cooled enough, I poured it back into my glass pitcher (having re-washed and sanitized it) and put it in the fridge. It’s worth noting that even after pasteurizing, this product still contains zero preservatives, so it will spoil much faster than commercially processed cider. According to Oregon State University Extension, pasteurized cider should keep for approximately one week in the fridge.

It is a lot of work, no doubt, but the result is well worth the effort.

Connor Barclay is a senior English/Secondary Education major at Holy Family University, graduating in spring 2027. An avid reader and writer, he spends his free time (and not-so-free time) at punk/rock concerts or rock climbing.