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How to Make Good Cider
the necessary use of water to wet the straw, which is equivalent to an addition of water to the juice: then, too, the straw always retains much of the juice. Small presses, which work without straw, yield a better article of cider. To judge of the quality of cider an apple will make, it is best to try an experiment, grinding a small quantity, letting the pomace stand half a day, stirring it occasionally, and then pressing it. The difference in the color and richness of flavor, and of sweetness, is quite remarkable. Sweet apples, though containing more sugar, are often watery and deficient in flavor, while many subacid, or even sour apples, contain as much sugar, and make a much richer cider. The juice, when first pressed, should be syrupy, clear, and the darker colored the better. Apples vary, also, greatly in the quantity of cider they will make; of many kinds, no more than eight bushels will make a barrel of cider, while some of the richer, finer kinds, it will take twelve bushels or more.
It is poor policy to grind and press at once. A bruised apple gains in sweetness, by some chemical change which takes place and so the pomace should lie several hours to sweeten in this way; and besides, it should be stirred up occasionally to let the air get to it, so as to impart a better color. The dark-red color is very desirable and cannot be gained in any other way, and at the same time there is a positive gain in the sweetness and richness of the cider.
As the juice runs from the press, it is best received directly into barrels, flowing through a straw strainer. The strainer is easily made by putting a tube through the bottom of a pail, which makes a funnel, and then stuffing the pail full of clean, sweet straw. Almost all the particles of apples, flies, etc., will be strained out, and a clear liquid alone will pass through. The barrels, large or small, are filled full, bunged up, and moved to a cool cellar, where the bungs should be removed and the cider left to ferment.
The fermentation goes on quite rapidly, and a considerable portion of scum overflows and is thus removed. When the active fermentation and frothing cease, and the bubbles crackle as they rise in the surface and break, the bung-hole should be closed by a large cork, through which a glass or leaden tube, bent twice at right angles, is thrust, which rises from the bung and dips below water in some convenient, small vessel, through which tube this gas will escape, but air cannot enter. When the fermentation is over, and no more bubbling at the end of this tube occurs, and the cider is clear, draw it off into clean, fumigated barrels, bung up tight, and keep in the coolest place.
This is the tail end of a longer cider-making article, picking up at the press and running through to the sealed barrel. The method is sound in outline — it is essentially wild-ferment cider — but several details need translating, and one needs discarding outright.
- Never use the lead tubeThe text offers "a glass or leaden tube" for the airlock. Use glass, plastic or stainless only. Lead in contact with acidic cider or its vapour was a genuine cause of chronic poisoning in cider districts.
- Bushels to barrelsA US bushel of apples is roughly 42-48 lb. If the barrel meant here is the 31.5-gallon US barrel — the text does not say — then eight to twelve bushels works out at roughly 11-17 lb of fruit per gallon, in the same broad range as a modern rack-and-cloth press.
- Pomace and sweatingPomace is the crushed apple pulp. Letting it stand several hours before pressing — "sweating" or maceration — genuinely increases yield and colour through enzymatic browning and pectin breakdown. Keep it cool and covered; a half day in a warm room invites acetic bacteria and fruit flies.
- The straw strainerStraw is not sanitary by current standards and carries its own yeasts and moulds. A coarse nylon mesh bag or a food-grade strainer does the same job. The author's own objection that press straw retains much of the juice applies to the strainer as well.
- Fumigated barrelsThis means burning a sulfur wick inside the empty cask, the nineteenth-century equivalent of adding sulfite. Modern practice uses potassium metabisulfite measured to the juice, which is far easier to control than guessing at a sulfur match.
- The airlockThe bent tube dipping below water is exactly a modern airlock, and the description of the crackling bubbles is a good practical cue that the vigorous phase is ending. Fitting a bought airlock and bung is simpler and less prone to sucking water back into the barrel if the cider cools.
- Wild fermentationNo yeast is added; the ferment relies on what is on the fruit and in the cellar. This works, and produces the character old cider was prized for, but it is slow and unpredictable. A cool cellar — 50-60F — is what keeps it from going rough.
- What you end up withFully fermented apple juice runs to roughly 5-7% alcohol depending on the fruit. This is hard cider, not the sweet unfermented juice sold under that name in the United States today.
Cider was the ordinary table drink of much of rural New England and the mid-Atlantic well into the nineteenth century, made in quantity on farms that had no market for their apples otherwise. The advice here reflects that world: whole barrels rather than bottles, a cellar rather than a temperature-controlled tank, and a frank preference for subacid and sour varieties over sweet eating apples — the old cider orchards were planted with fruit no one would want to eat out of hand. The recommendation of a leaden tube is a reminder of how little was settled: lead poisoning from cider made or stored in lead had been described by physicians in the eighteenth century, but the knowledge travelled slowly into print of this kind.