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[Aelfwyn@aol.com]

"brandu" offered many good tips for the novice cider-maker.  Follow his 
advice and you should have better luck.  The most important advice is to 
make sure that everything that touches the cider is sterile, and the second 
most important is to exclude air from the cider once fermentation starts.

At the risk of confusing things a little, I will offer some alternative 
approaches:

First, about sterilizing or sulfiting to kill off the "bad" wild yeasts and 
bacteria:  This has been the subject of much controversy among cider 
makers.  The advantage is that the outcome is much more predictable; 
nothing will happen until you pitch yeast, and then you will get only the 
results from the yeast variety that you selected.  If you have had previous 
bad experience, this may be a good way to restore confidence.

OTOH, if you use sterile containers and good-quality juice (don't press any 
rotten apples), I think sterilizing the juice is not necessary.  It 
certainly isn't period.  Pasteurized apple juice does not taste the same - 
it loses the "fresh" apple taste - and the fermented cider will not taste 
the same either.  Pasteurizing pear juice is really a bad idea (speaking 
from experience) because, in addition to the taste effect, it will cause a 
thick brown haze in the fermented product that cannot be cleared.

The important thing is to have a really active yeast "starter" to pitch 
into your cider.  Make this by mixing yeast with some warm water, then add 
that to a pint or so of cider.  Cover it (but don't cap it!!) and leave 
somewhere warm (75 to 90 degrees works well) for a few hours.  It will 
begin to foam up as the yeast gets going.  Then pitch this into your 
cider.  The yeast will take over and you won't have to worry about mold or 
wild yeasts.  (I have actually done this with a cider where mold began 
growing on the surface - just skimmed off the colonies, pitched yeast, and 
voila!  No more mold growth.)

The period way to do this is to make cider with the same equipment for 
several years.  A natural yeast culture will build up on the press, etc., 
and inoculate the juice as it is pressed; fermentation will take off with a 
day or two, before anything else really has a chance.  You still have the 
chance of vinegar bacterial contamination, and a few other nasty bacterial 
effects, which were probably very common in period ciders.

Second, how do you know when to bottle?  Again, this is a complex topic 
that is repeatedly discussed among cider makers.  The simplest approach is 
to allow the yeast to ferment all the sugar, i.e. until the cider is 
completely "dry" without any residual sweetness.  The modern way to confirm 
this is with a hydrometer; dry cider has a specific gravity very close to 
that of water, 1.00.  Another way is to ferment in a clear glass container; 
when the sugar is gone, the yeast goes dormant and falls to the bottom, 
"clearing" the cider.  This is very dramatic!  Alternatively, with 
experience you could probably go by taste; this is the most likely period 
method.

If you do this, then as brandu points out you will need to wait several 
months after bottling and hope for a good malo-lactic fermentation.  This 
will make the cider fizzy, and will reduce the "sharpness" of the young 
cider, making it much more pleasant to drink.  It's probably not period, 
however, as bottling methods weren't available until the late 17th century, 
and trying for a malo-lactic fermentation in medieval containers sounds 
like a great recipe for vinegar.  Medieval cider was almost undoubtedly 
"still," that is, not effervescent.

The alternative approaches are to stop fermentation by killing the yeast, 
or to use the procedure known as "degorgement" from the champagne 
process.   I have not done this yet, so cannot recommend it.  It's also 
clearly not period.

Hope this helps,
Colin