Making the Best Cider
from the American Horticulturist, 1870
[Try Some of Our Old-Time Apple Recipes]
Cider making in the olden time was reckoned one of the important parts of farm labor. A goodly row of cider barrels must be ranged beside those of beef and pork, and the majority of farmers would almost as readily have dispensed with one as the other. The cider pitcher stood regularly upon the table at meal times, and the jug was a constant field companion.
To make good cider, the apples for each pressing should be nearly as possible of one kind, free from rot, leaves, and all foreign substances, that the fermentation may be complete and uniform.
Apples should be selected, the juice of which has the greatest specific gravity, as such juice contains the most sugar, and makes the richest cider.
They should be ground and pressed with scrupulous cleanliness, and every step of the process, from the gathering of the fruit to the barreling and bottling the liquid, should be conducted in the same careful and unexceptional manner.
Apples differ not only in their flavor, color, and time of ripening, but in the proportions of their constituent parts. The characteristics of a good cider apple are: a red skin; yellow and often tough and fibrous pulp; astringency; dryness and ripeness at the cider season.
When the rind or pulp is green, the cider will be thin, weak and colorless; and when these are deeply tinged with yellow, it will almost always possess color, with neither strength nor richness.
The apple, like the grape, must attain perfect maturity before its juices develop all its excellence. In a dry apple, the essential elements of cider are generally more concentrated, or are accompanied with a less proportion of water than in a juicy one. Of course, the liquid of the former is stronger than that of the latter.
Of our best cider apples, from ten to twelve bushels of fruit are required for a barrel of cider, while of the ordinary juicy kinds, eight bushels generally suffice.
The apples should ripen upon the tree, be gathered when dry, and spread in an airy, covered situation for a time to induce any evaporation of aqueous matter, which will increase the strength of the liquid. Finally, they should be separated from rotten fruit and every kind of filth before they are ground.
The apples should be reduced by an apple mill to a uniform mass. To give it color, the pomace may be exposed to the air from twelve to twenty-four hours till it becomes red. Then press out the juice slowly; put it in casks; bung it up and immediately place it in the cellar, leaving out the bung. Fill up the cask to the bung, in order to let the impurities flow over.
Before the fermentation ceases, insert a flexible tube through the bung (block tin will answer) and bend the other end, like a siphon, into a cup of cider or water placed on the cask near the bung, to allow bubbles to escape.ape.
Cider Vinegar
The requisites for making good cider vinegar are few. Sound apples free from dirt, ground fine will yield the staple.
It is well to arrange for two sorts of vinegar, "extra" and good. The former is made from the first pressings of the pomace, by which is obtained all the juice possible to be extracted without watering.
After this first pomace is removed from the press, pour an few pailfuls of water upon it, and shovel it over occasionally for a few days. Then press it again, and add two or three quarts of inferior molasses to a barrel of the juice. Keep in a warm situation, and it will ferment into fair vinegar - far better than much of the trash sold under that name.
Vinegar is usually produced by simply allowing cider to stand in barrels with the bung hole open, until the second or third acetous fermentation is completed. It requires several months for the process to be finished, the time varying considerably with the degree of temperature.
American Agriculturist was a popular journal in the mid to late 1800s devoted to delivering even the most scientific agricultural information "in terms any reader could understand." As stated in the journal's about-the-publisher section, "The Editors and Contributors are all practical, WORKING MEN" (original emphasis).
APPLE CIDER FACTS from Cold Hollow Cider Mill
One bushel of apples (40 pounds) yields about 3-1/2 gallons of cider.
Cider has a refrigerated shelf life of about 2 to 3 weeks at 32-36 degrees F.
McIntosh is the main cider apple used in Vermont. Most modern cider is made with a blend of varieties.
Apple cider may be frozen for up to a year without loss of quality. (Fill containers to about 80-90 percent capacity.)
Apple cider is a good source of pectin.