Hard Apple Cider & Fruit Wine Alcohol Yeast

Fermented food and beverages are natural, healthy, and full of Vitamin B and other probiotic nutrients. They are good for those on a strict diet especially a ketogenic diet or digestive problems. Fermented food help restore the gut bacteria and natural fauna of the digestive system making us healthier, stronger, and with a stronger immune system.

Unlike packaged food, fermentation adds to the taste without any oil, sugar, food colors, preservatives, or chemical essence or any unhealthy additives. This makes homebrew healthier than its commercial equivalent.

During fermentation, the yeast eats away the sugar and adds to the taste. Hence reducing calorie intake and tackling hunger pangs. India is the Diabetic country of the world, and a lot of diabetics are switching over to homemade apple cider vinegar and kombucha as an alternative to soft drinks.

If you have a pre-existing condition or allergies, it is best to consult with your doctor. Fermentation often results in drastically altering the food properties. You can also read about how 8 different types of ayurvedic preparations can be made at home.

Unlike Europe or the US, India has no annual quota or limits on the quantity of alcohol (wine, beers, ciders, and undistilled beverages) you can home-brew. Instead, the Indian Excise Department has put restrictions on the quantity that can be stocked at any given point of time.

Each state has its limits on what is constituted as commercial quantity. As long as you are brewing/stocking below this threshold and don’t reside in a Dry state, you should be safe. I am yet to encounter any law/ government memo limiting the number of batches or number of home-brew parties one can throw, but checking with the local officials is always advisable before you start taking this hobby seriously. Permissible limit to stock as per some state laws are:

• Karnataka: 18.5 liters of beer or 9 liters of wine.
• Tamil Nadu: 12 bottles of beer 650ml or 12 bottles of wine 750ml (It is governed by Tamil Nadu Alcohol (Possession for Personal Consumption) Rules, 1996)
• Delhi: 18 liters of wine, beer or cider
• Punjab: 1 case of beer (more with an L-50 permit issued lifetime or annually.
• Haryana: 12 bottles of beer or wine (more with L-50 permit)
• Rajasthan: 12 bottles of beer or wine
• Himachal Pradesh: 48 bottles of beer or wine
• Goa: 24 bottles of beer

No state in India has legalized home distillery or home alcohol distillation kit. Possession, operating, or dealing with distillation equipment without a license is illegal. However, you can obtain exceptions for medical purposes, herbal extracts, perfumes, and Ayurveda medicines. If you are planning to get a distillation license, then buy a stainless steel distillation kit. Modifying pressure cookers to make crude makeshift stills can land you in trouble.

Watery/ Thin: It lacks the body and mouth feel. In wine, it is a result of not using enough fruits. In beers, it is a result of using too little malt or too many enzymes. Adding a bit of specialty malt like caramel/ crystal malts will rectify it. The mashing temperatures can also be altered to produce more sugars that are unfermentable.

Hooch is a crude American term for any unfinished, freshly fermented wine or alcoholic beverage. It has a negative connotation because the product is often homemade with primitive fermentation techniques and hence equivalent to Desi Daru (देसी दारू) As per excise department, it is also categorized under the same category.

Toddy is the Indian term for Indian country/village wines which are not made from a traditional recipe i.e. not following a European grape wine recipe or a British/American apple cider recipe. This Indian traditional alcoholic beverage has a variety of medical, religious, psychological, and even psychedelic effects. Like the Native American Indian culture, Toddy making is acceptable (or overlooked by authorities) as part of a traditional religious and cultural practices. We tried to map a few on this map of India.

Wine, on the other hand, is a more refined sophisticated beverage that can be bottled and stored. Hooch and Toddy need to be consumed within a day or two or it will become too sour and dry for consumption. They typically take 4-8 weeks to make compared to 2-3 days for toddy. Most wines are aged for 6 months to two years before it is ready for serving while country beer/hooch/toddy is served fresh.

Some people confuse Toddy with Feni (Cashew Fruit Alcohol), Mahua (Mahua Flower/cake Alcohol) and Handia (Rice Alcohol). The sugar and starch source for all these 4 traditional Indian Beverages are different. Today fermentation techniques are made more sophisticated. As a result more and more people are consuming them in beer or wine form rather than distilled spirit. Rice Wine is also hazy white, so it is often sold as Toddy. However distilled spirits from these fruits and flowers are closer to Indian Mezcal or Tequila.

YES, it is completely legal to make wine and hard apple cider at home in India for personal use except in states where it is banned like Bihar, Gujarat, Lakshadweep, Manipur, and Nagaland. Just remember the following 4 golden rules:

• Do not sell alcohol or engage in commercial activity without license permits and tax approvals.
• Do not try to distill into brandy, vodka, whiskey, rum, gin, etc.
• Keep your batch size small (below state-specific restrictions on how much alcohol you can ferment or store under your roof).
• Also, don’t try to ship alcohol or cross state boundaries.

No law states in India that you cannot brew beer or make wine at home but this is only for personal use and not for commercial purposes. For a detailed list of regulations refer here.

Yeast is essential for winemaking, without yeast you will have only sweet juice and not wine. Yeast will convert sugar into ethanol alcohol and CO2. Some traditional winemakers don’t add yeast, but that does not mean that they made wine without yeast. What they did use was the natural yeast from the skin of the grapes for their fermentation. This technique is called wild fermentation and requires a biome to be established so that the right strains of microorganisms dominate the white deposits on your grape skin.

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Winemaking is like any fermentation or curd making. If you add too much jaman (curd starter culture), then your milk will turn into curd faster, but there will be no other perceivable change in your final product. However, if you don’t add enough starter culture, then the milk will spoil. Similarly, wines require a dosage of yeast. If the active yeast cell count is too low, you will be prone to spoilage. However, adding too much yeast will only lead to faster fermentation and no other change. The yeast will finish their job fast, settle at the bottom, and will be raked off.

Adding too much yeast nutrients or DAP is serious. It is a chemical and usage of more than 1gm per liter is banned in the USA.

Typically 4-12 days but it depends on a lot of factors:

1. Fermentation temperature. Higher the temperature faster the fermentation is (but beware of the off-flavors produced in yeast fermented at above 25 degrees Celsius)
2. Yeast dosage. although 1gm/liter is recommended. Increasing it to 3gm/liter can produce wine in 2-3 days (50% reduction in time)
3. Availability of yeast nutrients. Grape and fruit juices don’t have enough natural proteins for the yeast to multiply fast. Adding 0.5-1gm per liter of yeast nutrient is sufficient to establish a healthy yeast colony and fast fermentation. Mead is notorious for being slow to ferment and produce nail polish like off-notes because of a lack of nutrients.
4. Sugar concentration: 18-25% w/v of sugar concentration is ideal for fermenting with wine yeast. However higher the concentration, the more time it will take for the yeast to finish its job and produce ethanol.

Raisins are dried grapes. If grapes had enough ammonia, phosphorus, zinc, and vitamin Bs then we would not be adding nutrients in the first place. So short answer is that raisins are a good source of glucose and cellulose (skin). It is not a good source of nutrients. The raisins do help in improving the flavor and ABV of your homebrew, but apart from that, it has little impact on the health of your yeast colony.

Yes, you can ferment homebrew wine and beer without yeast nutrient as well. However, it helps because of the following reasons:

1. yeast nutrients have YAN (yeast assimilable nitrogen) which is needed to establish a healthy yeast colony. Healthy yeast = faster fermentation, lesser chances of infection (which means safer ethanol production), lesser yeast mutation (better flavor consistency).
2. It prevents stuck fermentation
3. Better flavor profile. Nutrients reduce the stress on yeast and prevent the off-flavor production in homebrew beer and wine

Yes, they need lots of yeast nutrients (0.5-1gm per liter compared to 0.25gm per liter in case of homebrew beer). The reason is that honey and apple/fruit juice don’t have enough proteins and nitrogen. With a low YAN (simply put nitrogen that yeast can use) the fermentation tends to get stuck and is prone to infection. To compensate that we use 2-4 times more yeast nutrient. This helps establish a healthy yeast colony, prevent infection, stuck fermentation and off-flavors

Yeast is the single-celled microorganisms that are responsible for fermenting sugar (maltose, glucose, fructose, sucrose, etc.) to ethanol. In the absence of oxygen, these yeasts do the transformation which converts your grain/fruit into a beverage. Yeast nutrients, on the other hand, are food for the yeast. On their own nutrients achieve nothing more than making a comfortable home for the yeast to function at its best capacity. Yeast energizer, on the other hand, is an SOS remedy needed to recover from stuck fermentation or incomplete fermentation or excessively low-temperature fermentation which can make yeast sluggish.

Although Yeast Energizers are types of nutrient blends, they also contain components such as vitamin B, diammonium phosphate, tricalcium phosphate, magnesium sulfate, and yeast hulls. Yeast energizers are particularly useful to restart a Stuck Fermentation, as it allows yeast populations to increase in a batch of beer or wine which likely has been depleted of these components due to an earlier yeast population growth. The additional components included in Yeast Energizers are most effective when for high gravity fermentation (high sugar high alcohol), low-temperature lagering, excessively low pH, high ash content (molasses) and other extreme fermentation styles.

While beer brewers add just 8gm of sugar per liter of beer, sparkling wines, cider, and champagne need 16 to 25gm of sugar to create that loud distinct pop sound when you uncork a fully pressurized bottle.

Note: Be careful to use only stainless steel kegs or extra thick glass bottles. Normal glass bottles and water bottles are not meant to withstand this pressure and tend to burst.

Campden a.k.a. potassium metabisulfite is an antioxidant/ preservative, commonly called “sulfites”. Most commercial wine labels will have listed it as one of its ingredients. It inhibits the bacteria activity but does not impact the yeast so much.

Potassium sorbate on the other hand is a preservative designed specifically to inhibit yeast reproduction. It’s used in white wine, cider, and mead which we want to be sweetened. Sorbate will prevent the yeast from fermenting off these residual sugars and prevent the wine from becoming dry and too alcoholic.

Add about 0.1 gm of Campden powder to fresh grape or apple or fruit juice to inhibit the bacteria, mold, and wild microbial activity in it. Cover the juice and let it rest overnight for the Campden to dissipate before adding any yeast and nutrients to it. This way the wild fermentation is prevented, and acetobacter, which turns alcohol into vinegar, is inhibited.

Wild yeast in fruit and grapes are often killed using Campden. However, once you have finished wine a stronger wine stabilizer is used when bottling sweet wine.

Typically bottled home brew beer has a shelf life of 6 months. However, most home-brew beer is consumed within a week to a month of bottling or kegging. However, some people regularly store homebrew beer for up to 6 months successfully. Beyond this, the beer is still safe for consumption, just that it will not taste fresh. However, a couple of factors need to be taken into account to determine the shelf life.

1. Storage temperature: Beer is like wine, higher the temperature the faster is the degradation in flavors.
2. UV light: Even a couple of hours in direct sunlight can ruin a perfectly fresh beer
3. Packaging: Microbrewery Growlers don’t last 2 days because the beer was oxidized during filling. If you see packaging in proper crown sealed glass bottles or stainless steel kegs, 6-12 months life is easy
4. Oxidation: Once you open the bottle, drink within an hour.

Technically any alcoholic beverage made from the fruit is called Wine. However, apple wine is called hard cider. Pear wine is called Hard Perry. Honey or flower wine is called Mead.

Rice is technically a grain. Hence any alcoholic beverage made from rice should be called rice beer. However, most people call it rice wine or sake.

Apple Cider can be turn out bitter because of a variety of reasons. Here are some to help you out:

1. Low Residual sugar. Sweetness is the best mask for bitterness (for example coffee and chocolate). Try using some wine stabilizer and back-sweeten your cider.
2. Excess Tannin: Adding too much oak chips, fruit skins, and other sources of natural tannin can introduce astringency, woody feel, or bitterness in your wine/cider. The best way to reduce is by using a fining agent. Isinglass, Bentonite, and Gelatin can help you control excess tannin.
3. Aging: Time mellows down all harsh flavors in cider/wine. Try aging your cider/white wine by 1-6 months and red wine by 1-3 years. With time the complex biochemical reactions will make your beverage more flavorful and amazing.
4. Problem with the fruit: Although you can make cider/wine from any fruit, some fruits are not that flavorful. When you take the sweetness out (by converting it to alcohol/vinegar), the residual flavors start emerging. Try to experiment with a different harvest or fruit type. Mixing two or three different fruit also helps.

For more details refer to our off-flavors guide.

Fruit wine is full of aromas and flavors from the natural fruit it is made of. They are often infused with spices (especially cinnamon, ginger, star anise) which add to the complex boutique flavors that we recognize with a good cider. They taste very similar to a dry white wine but can be back sweetened to taste. If you carbonate your cider, it will taste and feel like champagne.

Unlike cider vinegar, your alcoholic hard cider should not taste sour or burn your nostrils (acetic acid). They are also not supposed to taste bitter.

Fermentation takes away sugar leaving the goodness of fruit behind. Yeast and natural fermentation also add to Vitamin B-12 and other probiotics to your diet. These vitamins are otherwise very difficult for vegetarians to source. Hence fruit cider is more healthy for the gut and overall well-being of its consumer.

If you are conscious of weight loss, then ferment your apple cider dry (without residual sugar). Use a hydrometer and ensure the specific gravity reading is 1.000 or lower. This sugar management will help you if you are diabetic risk, on a keto diet or looking to lose weight.

Remember we added no colors, preservatives, artificial flavors, or chemicals in your homemade cider. Try using organic fruits with the skin to extract the maximum benefit of nature and improve your health.

There are plenty of fruits that can be poisonous and dangerous to our health if eaten improperly. Certain fruit peels are difficult to consume and at times are also inedible and poisonous. For example, peels of avocados, honeydews, melons, lychee, pineapple and the likes are considered as inedible. Talking about being poisonous, mostly it’s not the peels rather other aspects like seeds of the fruit, ripe or raw fruit, etc. that one needs to worry about. For instance, seeds of apples, apricots, cherries contain amygdalin, which after coming in contact with acids in human digestive system becomes cyanide. Similarly, cashew fruit, almonds, etc. should never be eaten in their raw form.

Mangrove Jack’s craft brewer’s yeast sold at arishtam.com is in the dry form. Dry yeast is easy to store, transport, and carry. The wet yeast on the other hand needs to be chilled at all times and has a shelf life of a few weeks (as compared to almost 2 years for dry yeast). As a result for a hobby brewer and even microbrewery dry yeast is much more convenient and easy to use.

Although most manufacturers recommend that you use the yeast directly, but rehydrating the yeast is always advisable for the following reasons:

1. When hydrated, the yeast forms spores and goes into inactive state. By hydrating it in a sugar/wort plus nutrient solution, you give it adequate time and jumpstart to become fully active again.
2. Yeast often dies when expired, mishandled, exposed to humidity or high temperaures during transportation or storage. If you pinch it directly in the wort, it will take 24-48 hours before you can detect yeast inactivity. By hydrating the yeast, you are always 100% sure the yeast is active.
3. Hydrated yeast have a jumpstart over any other contaminents or microbial infection. When the wort is cooled, it sometimes picks up infection from the fermenter or air. If the dry brewer’s yeast is hydrated (good yeast count) they are able to fend off infection by the mere fact that they are more in number and faster in activity.

Process:

1. Take 5-10X of sterlized water (boil the wort or water) (50ml)
2. If you are using water then add some priming sugar or table sugar to make a 5% solution (2.5gm or 1/2 teaspoon). DME or wort can be also used instead of sugar.
3. (optional) add nutrients 1/4gm per 50ml.
4. Boil and cool it to body temperature.
5. Once the solution has cooled to 25-35 degrees celsius then add your yeast (5gm)
6. Wait for 30 minutes to foaming to start and then add it to your beer wort or wine must.

If the foaming has not happened. Then wait for another 30 minutes. If not then the yeast is probably inactive and it might be best to use a backup sachet.

Ginger Wine and Rhodo Wine is Alcoholic. Most wines have an alcohol content between 10-13% but Arishtam Wine has up to 15% Alcohol Content. This means that a 200ml bottle of 15% Wine is equal to 70ml of Old Monk/Whiskey which typically has 42.5% ABV Alcohol. (more than one large peg or two small pegs)

Ginger Ale on the other hand is like Apple Cider. It can be alcoholic or non-alcoholic. By default, popular brands like Schweppes are non-alcoholic cold drinks. Similarly, most apple ciders are non-alcoholic and a lot of vinegar brands sell under Apple Cider.

Even the ginger ale that are alcoholic are typically based on beer recipes which means that it is 5% to 8% strong. Ginger wine on the other hand is 2-3X stronger alcohol.

Home-made wines are healthier and better alternatives to cold drinks and even packed fruit juices. This is because when consumed in moderation, wine has fewer calories and sugar than these sugar-laden drinks and beverages. Just remember to use a triple scale hydrometer to check how much sugar is eaten by your brewer’s yeast daily and how much residual sugar is left..

Here is a chart of the sugar content in various fruits.

However most of this sugar gets fermented and converted to Alcohol. So a Dry Wine made at home has <1gm sugar per 100ml drink. The chart below has information on how much alcohol does sugar (what is inside the fruit + what is added) will yield. You can also buy ready made wine Arishtam 15% from your nearest liquor store.