Everything you need to know to start lettering your local's specials board, from chalk types to fixing your inevitable mistakes.

Every autumn, someone in the village asks me the same question. They have a tree, or a neighbour with a tree, or a bag of windfalls from a walk, and they want to know if they can make cider. The answer is yes. The answer is always yes. It is one of the oldest and simplest things a person can do with fruit, and it has been dressed up in so much equipment and jargon over the years that most people never start.

I made my first cider in a plastic bucket with a potato masher and a clean tea towel. It was not good cider. It was, in fact, barely cider at all. But it was mine, and it taught me everything I needed to know for the second batch, which was better, and the third, which was actually quite nice.

The Only Equipment That Matters

You need a bucket. It should be food-grade, which is a fancy way of saying it should not have held paint or diesel. You need something to crush the apples. A potato masher works. A clean piece of timber works. A proper scratter, which is the mill that grinds the apples, is lovely but not necessary for a first go. You need a cloth to squeeze the pulp. A clean tea towel or a piece of muslin will do. You need a demijohn or a food-grade bucket with a lid for fermenting. And you need an airlock, which costs almost nothing and stops your cider turning to vinegar.

That is it. Everything else is refinement.

The Process, Stripped Back

Wash your apples. Do not worry about bruises or scabs, but cut out anything mouldy. Chop them roughly, skins, cores and all. The skins carry the wild yeast that will ferment your cider, so do not peel them. Crush them into a pulp. This is the messy part, and it is best done outdoors or in a garage with a radio on.

Wrap the pulp in your cloth and squeeze the juice into your bucket. Do not be gentle. The more juice you get, the more cider you get. Pour the juice into your fermenting vessel, leaving a good few inches of headspace, because it will foam. Fit the airlock. Put it somewhere cool and dark, and wait.

Here is where most beginners go wrong. They panic. They open the lid. They stir it. Do not. The wild yeast on the apple skins will do the work. It will take a week or two to get going properly, and another few weeks to finish. When the bubbles slow to almost nothing, the fermentation is done.

You can drink it now. It will be cloudy and sharp and taste of apples and autumn. If you want something clearer and softer, rack it into a clean vessel, leaving the sediment behind, and leave it for another month or two. It will improve. It always does.

The first batch is never the best batch. But it is the one you will remember, and it is the one that makes you plant a tree.