Real Cider Making on a Small Scale

Great little book for the price. As a novice I wanted hard copy guidance to have with me in the garden or kitchen to check what i was doing with my first cider making adventure. This little book has everything you need to set yourself up and is concise and clear in terms of the basic processes. Having my own source of apples I wanted to be clear on all of the steps from collecting, scratting, pressing through to fermentation and bottling. There are some fancy bits in between (testing and adjusting for sugar content, acidity and final finish - dry/sweet, still/sparkling). Most of this info is available in online blogs and there are great tips in the numerous brewing forums (fora?), and how to guides on youtube but there is no substitute to having it all in one place and nice and portable. A few tips I would offer (confession - not finished my first brew yet but bottled and waiting!) is that a basic garden shredder (I have a £60 Titan from screwfix) does the job of scratting brilliantly. Give it a good clean down first. I would also recommend a hydrometer to test sugar content and estimate final alcohol % (these are about £5-£10) and a ph meter (about £7) to check acidity. I have really enjoyed the basic chemistry side of the process and it at least gives you basic feedback on what you might end up with. The book sets out how all of these tools are used and will help you assess if you want them for your cider making. The other nice aspect to the book is the sense that the authors get a great deal out of making cider - this really comes across and adds a very nice tone to the advice - makes it feel like you are being helped by a very knowledgeable enthusiast.

Bought this along with a kit as a present for my husband who wanted to make cider from apples which had been put through a juicer. This book focuses on using a press and spends a good part of the book on how to build a press and then pressing apples, rather than the basic process of fermenting and what you need to get going. I would not recommend this book for those who just want to get started.

Bought this a couple of years ago after struggling with conflicting information on the Internet. I have found it to be excellent. It has a really good flowchart in to simplify it but enough text when you want to understand more and experiment a bit. I am on my third successful year of cider making.

It's okay, but I found myself skipping through it. It's written in a style that you'd expect from a book written in the early 1930's. I felt the whole book could have been half as thick and it is quite thin anyway. I haven't finished it because it isn't an enjoyable read and it's not concise enough to be used as a recipe would. It just goes on, a bit like this review trying to fill out space.

As a first time cider maker(november 2013) i can not really comment on the contents of this book, well not untill i have had a chance to try the product (cider), however i can say it is very helpful and easy to follow, there are drawings or plans on how to make a cider press, and i think the most useful section is the trouble shooting pages, there are a few recipies on using cider and what different ciders you can make. all in all i dont think you would need to buy any other book on cider making, oh and at just a tad over £4 its not expensive

Bought this but didn't realise that it was a book that I already had. It's just got a new cover on it. A bit basic and things have moved on a bit since it came out hence only 3 stars

Great. Informative and well written. Light-hearted approach for the novice cidermaker. Thoroughly enjoyable read all the way through. Well done.

I had been homebrewing wine for years but with the cost of commercial cider being ever higher and so many apples seeming to go to waste on the hedgerows i thought i would give it a go, several reviews on homebrewing sites mentioned this book so i bought it at a great price and it has been excellent, easy to read with the detail for those who really want to get into the nitty gritty but also the simplistic detail for those who have little of no knowledge of the craft.