There is an abundance of information available to the budding cidermaker these days. There are several courses, a good range of informative books, and of course, countless online articles on the subject of making cider.
So let’s assume you’ve done your research, made a bunch of cider, and it’s come out tasting pretty good. What next?
Well, at some point you may wish to turn your cider hobby into something bigger. You might want to be the next Henry Weston (good luck to you), or maybe, like me, you just found yourself one year with more cider than you and your friends could sensibly get through and you thought of selling off the excess to your local pub.
This is my attempt at explaining what you’d need to do in order to do that. There’s a 10-step checklist at the end if you’re in a hurry.
Step 1: The Paperwork (Companies House & HMRC)
Firstly, you might want to register your company with Companies House. This is pretty easy to do, only costs a few pounds, and will give you a good opportunity to start referring to yourself as the MD of Such and Such Cider.
Once you’ve got your business registered, the next thing you’ll need to do is register with HMRC as a cidermaker. Again, this is pretty easy so long as you’re going to produce less than 500 litres of pure alcohol in a year. (Don’t panic—under the new Small Producer Relief rules, that works out to about 7,000 litres of a 7% cider). Anything over this amount and you’ll be due to start paying duty on your cider, which brings with it a few extra complications which I’ll not go into here.
Once you get confirmation back from HMRC, you’ll be the MD of an official cidery, which is awesome—but there are still a couple more things to attend to. HMRC are very helpful with this sort of thing, so if you get stuck just give them a phone (it’s in their interests to get you going, after all).
The other thing you might want to sort out with HMRC is a letter of exemption from the AWRS (Alcohol Wholesaler Registration Scheme). This is used to stop drinks made by unlicensed producers from getting into the marketplace. As a small cidermaker, you’ll be exempt from registration, although somewhat counter-intuitively, you’ll need to register so HMRC have a record that you don’t need to register…
Step 2: The Council & The EHO
Next, you need to let your local council know that you are starting a food business. Now, this can frequently be the trickiest bit for a lot of future ciderists.
This is the bit where your premises will be visited by an Environmental Health Officer (EHO). The EHO will usually try to help you get where you need to be to start running as safely as possible. There are always tales of EHOs making unrealistic demands, but on the whole, they will be supportive.
Before they come, spend a bit of time writing out what you do. They don’t care about details such as yeast variety or anything like that; they’re primarily interested in safety, so they’ll be wanting to see you’ve taken all the risks into consideration and put a plan in place to minimise them.
Step 3: Your HACCP Plan
This is where your HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) plan comes in. The good news is that cider is considered a low-risk food (unlike milk or chicken, for example), so your HACCP plan can be nice and simple. Here’s a straightforward example:
| Process Step | Food Safety Hazard & Cause | Control Measure | Critical Limit (Y/N) | Monitoring Procedure | Corrective Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Incoming Fruit | Contamination with orchard debris | Wash, and remove excessively rotten fruit | Is fruit of near edible quality? | Visual | Repeat washing / grading |
| 2. Pre-Fermentation | Inadequate amount of sugar to generate sufficient alcohol to destroy pathogens | Ensure sufficient sugar to ferment to ABV > 3% | ABV > 3% (i.e. original SG to exceed 1.030) | Hydrometer | Add sugar prior to fermentation if needed |
| 3. Fermentation | Sufficient alcohol generated to destroy pathogens | Ensure fermentation progresses beyond 3% ABV | SG must drop by at least 30 degrees during course of fermentation | Hydrometer | Allow extra time if needed for fermentation to run to completion |
| 4. Storage | Tanks inadequately sealed against external contamination | Ensure tanks are properly sealed or with airlocks | Presence of any physical contaminants | Visual | Rack into clean vessel and treat with Sulphur |
| 5. Packing | Presence of foreign material | Inspect. Wash and remove if necessary | Absence of foreign bodies | Visual | Repeat cleaning until satisfactory |
If you use sulphite, then you should probably think about adding the legal limit of 200mg/l as one of your Critical Control Points, as it’s a recognised allergen. Also, if you don’t already have one, it’s very likely that you will be asked to complete a basic food safety course. There are lots of these online and they’re relatively quick, simple, and inexpensive.
Step 4: Trading Standards & Labels
Assuming your EHO visit went well, that’s you very nearly there. The last couple of things to think about will be labels and Trading Standards.
Trading Standards again seem to have a reputation for bad news, but actually, they are generally very helpful, and if you’re willing to try to work with them, they’ll keep you right. It would be a good idea to buy a set of scales to check that the volume you state on the label matches the contents. If you’ve not got the equipment to test alcohol levels, then make sure your records are nice and tidy and you can demonstrate that you’ve calculated the ABV with a reasonable level of accuracy.
(Here’s a simple formula that I use to predict ABV: (Starting SG - Final SG) x 127.5 = % ABV. So, as an example: (1.060 - 1.004) x 127.5 = 7.1% ABV. It’s fairly easy to put that into a simple spreadsheet, which will probably be fine for the first year or two).
The 10-Step Checklist
As a recap, here’s a list of the 10 things required to sell cider to retailers:
- Register the company with Companies House.
- Register as a cidermaker with HMRC (ask for a letter proving exemption from AWRS; it’s not essential but you’ll likely be asked for it by retailers).
- Register as a food premises with your local council.
- Write an outline of your process (e.g., pick fruit, store fruit here, then press fruit here).
- Write a HACCP plan (or amend the one above to suit your process).
- Complete an online food safety course (takes about 10 mins).
- Meet your EHO (listen to what they say and let them help you).
- Make sure your labels are legal.
- Ensure your records are fit for purpose and can be used to trace batches, ideally from bottle back to the apple source.
- Ensure that you’re selling what you say you’re selling by investing in some scales to weigh a representative proportion of your products.
These steps should get you to the point where you can legally sell cider to your local pub. If you want to start selling to people direct, then that’s a much, much more complicated thing, and not one that I’ve got nearly enough experience in to be able to guide you through in any respectable way.
Good luck, future cidermakers!
Cheers,
Ryan.
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