Homemade Apple Cider Recipe – Ready In Just Minutes!

Every Autumn, as the weather begins to turn cooler and the apples are ready to be picked from the orchard, we find ourselves buying several gallons of apple cider to enjoy both hot and cold.

Over the years as we visited various local orchards, we have watched experts make apple cider by using a cider press. Because we didn’t have our own press, we never attempted to make our own apple cider.

However, we have made our own apple juice (see Recipe) which turned out terrific! So this year, we decided to forget the cider press and figure out a way to make our own apple cider.

It was way easier than we ever thought possible! No fancy press, no special ingredients, and using only 5 basic ingredients we were enjoying hot apple cider in less than 30 minutes!

The most important tip to make homemade apple cider is to use a variety of sweet apples. It is best to use 3 different sweet varieties – we used a mixture of Jonathan, McIntosh, and Gala apples.

Our recipe does not call for any additional sweeteners, but if you like your cider super sweet, you can add 1/2 – 1 cup of either white or brown sugar to the recipe.

Although you can make this on the stove top or in a Crock Pot, we made ours in our Instant Pot Pressure Cooker. Not only did it make it in a fraction of the time, it also prevented us from heating up the kitchen on an unusually hot September day.

But best of all it saved on the amount of energy required to make it.

We have included instructions for all three methods below so you can enjoy it however you decide to make it!

Homemade Apple Cider Recipe

INGREDIENTS

10 apples (must use a variety of apples)

1 orange

3 cinnamon sticks (or 1 TBSP ground cinnamon)

2 tsp ground cloves

water

 

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Core and cut apples into eight sections (leaving peels intact) and place in a pot.

2. Peel orange and place individual sections in pot with the apples.

3. Add cinnamon sticks and ground cloves.

4. Add enough water to cover the ingredients.

Instant Pot Pressure Cooker:

5. Place on manual pressure for 15 minutes. Natural Pressure release 10 minutes then Quick Pressure Release.

Crock Pot:

5. Place on Low for 6 hours, or High on 3 hours.

Stove Top:

5. Heat to boiling and reduce heat to simmer for 2 hours.

6. Mash mixture using a potato masher.

7. Strain in a fine mesh strainer.

8. Drink hot or refrigerate for later use.

Enjoy!
Mary and Jim

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