Hard Blood Orange Cider Bottled with Honey
A delicious hazy and tart hard orange cider made with sweet orange juice and blood orange juice. This recipe includes directions for bottling the cider with honey to create a sparkling blood orange cider.
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 45 minutes
- Yield: 2 liters
- Category: Cider
- Method: Fermentation
Ingredients
- 32 fl oz organic orange juice
- 8 fl oz organic blood orange juice
- 16 fl oz apple juice
- 8 fl oz filtered water
- 75 grams organic sugar
- 2 grams cider yeast
Instructions
- Clean and sanitize all of your equipment. I like to wash the jug with soap and water, allow it to air dry a bit, then rinse the jug with cheap vodka, and allow it to fully air dry.
- Once your equipment is prepped, add 1 cup of boiling water to the 1/2 gallon jug.
- Add the sugar to the jug and swirl it around to dissolve. Allow it to cool to room temperature.
- Add in the cider yeast and mix gently by swirling. Wait about 30 minutes for the yeast to get frothy and active.
- In the meantime, heat the orange, apple, and blood orange juice until simmering. Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperature.
- Carefully using a funnel, add the juice mix to the jug leaving two inches of headspace (see pictures above).
- Cap the jug and swirl it around for about a minute.
- Remove the cap and place the airlock and stopper in the jug (see pictures above).
- After a few hours, you should notice a lot of bubbling in the cider and activity in the airlock.
- Allow the cider to ferment for 7 to 14 days until the bubbling completely stops, and you no longer see any activity in the airlock. At this point, you should see a lot of sediment in the bottom of the jug.
- Racking the cider: Remove the airlock and, using a funnel, transfer the cider to a new, clean jug for aging. Be careful pouring; pour gently and in one stead pour, leaving the sediment in the bottom of the original jug.*
- Cap the jug with a regular lid. Allow the cider to age at a cool room temperature or in the fridge for four weeks.
- After aging, you can rack the cider again with more aging time or move on to bottling.
- To Bottle the cider with honey: Clean and sterilize two 1-liter carbonation-safe bottles. Add one tablespoon of honey to each 1 Liter bottle. Using a funnel, transfer the cider from the aging jug into the carbonation-safe bottles, leaving any sediment in the bottom of the jug. Cap the bottles and invert gently twice to mix the honey with the cider.
- Allow to ferment in the bottles at a cool room temperature for five days, then immediately store in the fridge. (check the carbonation by carefully opening a bottle over the sink, if it is not carbonated enough you can leave it at room temperature for a few more days and check the carbonation again.)
- You can age the cider for 3 more weeks in the bottles in the fridge before enjoying it chilled. Keep refrigerated.
Notes
- You can use wild yeast in this recipe. You only need about two tablespoons of wild yeast starter in place of the packaged yeast in the recipe. Click here to learn how to make a wild yeast starter.
- be sure to open the bottles to release the pressure occasionally when storing in the fridge for long periods. Don’t worry, though; Bottling 1 liter with only one tablespoon of honey is not enough sugar to excessively carbonate. It’s just enough to produce a pleasant level of carbonation.
