You can get various fining agents from your brew store or Amazon.

The gelatin acts a magnet and attracts the solids, which become heavy and fall out of suspension. The most common fining compound is gelatin. These fall to the bottom and clarify the hard cider. Fining:įining is a process where you add compounds into a hard cider that attract the suspended solids and pull them out of suspension. Remember if you are aging with an airlock in place, cold-crashing will create pull-back through the airlock. Known as cold-crashing, it’s another inexpensive way to make a clearer hard cider. Placing a hard cider that is aging into a refrigerator will help to drop suspended solids to the bottom of the container. If you are aging a hard cider to try to clarify it, you can also try cold-crashing it to further reduce the suspended solids. Generally, the better the hard cider will taste too. The longer you age it, the clearer the cider will get. Some yeast may never completely clear, which is a measure of flocculation. Aging has its own techniques and requirements, but the fundamental part for clarifying is that more yeast and solids will fall out of suspension the longer a hard cider ages. Ideally, you are aging in glass or stainless containers like carboys or kegs. Therefore, using this process to also clarify your hard cider is easy and will happen naturally. You should age every hard cider you make. Every hard cider recipe that I make includes at least one method of clarifying the cider. In order of ease and cost, these are aging, cold crashing, fining, and filtering. There are a number of ways a craft hard cider maker can clarify cider (explore The Shop for tools to help). I’m just using that as an analogy so you understand that you are removing elements from your hard cider.

Don’t worry, you are not going to convert your hard cider into water by doing any of these methods. The clearer you make it, the more “like” water it becomes. Remember that clarifying a hard cider does remove compounds that impart the aroma, taste, and flavors of a cider. I needed to clarify the cider and make it a little less bitter I could have blended it to reduce the bitterness, but that wouldn’t have addressed the cloudiness. My hard cider was very bitter and it was very cloudy. The first time I made a hopped hard cider, I used too much and I didn’t put the hops in a bag or mesh container. The second reason you might clear or clarify a hard cider is because you are trying to remove compounds in the cider.

Making clear gelatin