a mature garden tree: 30-80kg
Advanced options
Real cider is just apple juice + time: wild yeasts on the skins will ferment it unaided (though a packet of cider yeast is 2 quid of insurance). Mix eaters and cookers for balance (pure eating apples make thin cider): the classic blend is 2 parts sweet, 1 part sharp. Cleanliness beats equipment: sterilise everything that touches juice: vinegar is what happens to lazy cider. Drink responsibly: garden cider comes out 5-7% and doesn't taste like it.
What The Cider Making Calculator Works Out
- Juice yield: apple weight x the extraction rate for your kit. A proper scratter and press gets 55-60% of the weight as juice; freezing, pulping and pressing through muslin under kitchen weights lands at 40-50%. A 20kg crate gives 9-11 litres.
- Finished cider: the juice less about 5% lost to fermentation, sediment and racking, converted into 500ml bottles. A mature garden tree's 30-80kg autumn becomes 20-40 litres of drink.
- The timeline: press in autumn, two to four weeks of visible fermentation, rack off the sediment, then wait until spring. Christmas cider tastes of impatience; Easter cider is why orchards exist.
- Custom extraction (advanced): type your own percentage if you know your press. Community pressing days with a hydraulic press can reach 65%.
- Losses and bottle size (advanced): adjust the 5% racking loss and switch to 330ml, 750ml or 1-litre bottles; the bottle count updates.
- Cost of the apples and sundries (advanced): windfalls are free by definition and often by doorstep sign, but bought apples at GBP 0.50-1.50 a kg change the sums. Sundries cover a GBP 2 yeast packet, steriliser and caps; the press and buckets amortise over a decade.
- Cost per bottle and shop value (advanced): the batch cost divided by bottles, and what the same volume costs at around GBP 2.20 a 500ml bottle in the supermarket, which prices a single tree's glut at GBP 80-150.
- Apples per bottle (advanced): the kilos, and roughly how many 150g apples, pressed into each bottle.
- Units of alcohol (advanced): litres x a typical 6% ABV. Garden cider finishes at 5-7% and drinks dangerously softer than it is; home fermenting for your own use is duty-free, home distilling is not.