Apple Cider?

This is making me homesick.  I want to visit the apple orchard and the corn maze and the pumpkin patch and eat candy corn and build a fire in the fireplace and crochet an afghan.   
And smell leaves burning and watch a high school football game and take a classful of pre-schoolers to the library and.....   

Dang, your post made me totally homesick.

I am so glad you asked about this! I've been asking my husband if there was apple cider here...I guess not. I was also thinking about using the cloudy apple juice and boiling it with some cinnamon, and cloves. I don't know what Fall will be with no cider!!!?

This is my first Fall living in the UK (actually I've only been here about 50 days so this is my first of EVERYTHING living in the UK). I am very excited to see how charming my neighborhood gets in the fall.

Hope the cider works out! Let me know if it does!
 

I haven't seen regular cider, but I have had hot apple cider on occasion in the UK. I think it is called "Hot Spiced Apple" here. It is not exactly the same, but pretty close!

I don't understand the despair.  Cider is super easy to make and tastes wonderful--you can tweak it however you like it.  You don't live without it--just make it yourself.  The juice may be slightly different to begin with, but it still comes out lovely in the end.

I mentioned this cider problem to my dad last year and he said that if they make "Hard" cider, it must be "Soft" cider first, before it ferments completely.  Now my dad is no expert on cider so I wasn't sure if this could really be true.  He advised me to call the local cider manufacturers and ask them if I could get some before it went "hard".  But we live in the Northwest, and all the cider manf. and apple orchards seem to be in the Southwest.  If we had a car it might be worth it to drive down for some but we don't, so it just wouldn't be possible.  However, I was wondering if anyone knew whether this could be true or not?

Well, I'm replying to my own post, while I should have just researched it to begin with and not posted at all!! 

Thank you Balmerhon for your link (http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-apple-cider) which gives a step-by-step process on how to make the cider with a blender and some cheesecloth.  By the way there is a small typo on the page when it says how many apples you need to make a gallon, but they provide a source link and on that site it says it is 36 apples to a gallon.  Though that may be with a press, I suppose by hand you would be hard pressed to get a gallon (lol at my silly pun!).

Apparently all you have to do is puree the apples and then squeeze out the juice.  The juice is cider.  So I looked up the difference between cider and apple juice, and it says apple juice has just been processed further to remove all the chunks and brown bits, and pasteurized to give a long shelf life.  Well!  It really is that easy then!  Thanks so much for the link and info.  It turns out Dad was right, and the juice from the hard cider is soft cider first, before they add the yeast to ferment it, but I can do it myself with a blender.  Maybe next year I will ask for a real press for my birthday to speed up the process! 

Finally got around to this today!  I went the lazy route and just bought some pressed apple juice.  When I had the time to sift through a bunch of recipes, I realized that's really all it is.  Apparently the flavor changes a bit depending on the apples you use, but it really does taste pretty much the same when you just get the pressed stuff. 

I poured it into a pan, dropped in 3 cloves, allspice, nutmeg, and cinnamon and heated it up until good and warm.  It tasted great.  Sure, it wasn't the stuff from the local orchard but it still hit the spot! 

I think there are some old threads about this in Food. IIRC, Copella brand apple juice is the best you're likely to find at the supermarket. I had luck buying pressed apple juice direct from orchards and farmers' markets now and then but they were never as dark and cloudy as US style cider. I also lived in apple counties (Somerset and Devon) so not sure how you'd fare in Glasgow.

You could try making it. Not sure what equipment it calls for but I found this:

http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-apple-cider

Copella is AMAZING! They use different apples depending on the season, and in fall, it's nice and crisp and tastes like a cup of autumn. I've heated it up and stirred with a cinnamon stick. Very tasty.