I'm not sure if it is because I'm cheap or because when I make something from scratch, I go all out. An example: making pizza sauce means I plant and grow a garden full of tomatoes. And as it turns out that making hard cider starts with making a cider press. Finished it tonight. I've got two bushels of apples straight from a local orchard and I can't wait to give it a go this weekend.

Then it's just heating, cooling, fermenting, clarifying, bottling and waiting. And in 3-7 weeks I'll hopefully have tasty alcoholic apple juice.