Cider is made in northern climes by pressing the juice from ground apples. It is a very ancient drink made famous by the French of Northwestern France. These Frenchmen make the apple brandy drink calvados from their hard cider that is world famous. Cider was also made in medieval England from which it found its way to America where it developed into a farm made drink and was considered to be part of life. It was even treated as a temperance drink that could be drunk by anyone. In the US and Canada the term cider is applied to the unfermented juice of apples either pasteurized or not. Cider that has fermented is called “Hard Cider” in the US and Canada. The type we buy at the supermarket has been stabilized to prevent fermentation usually with sodium benzoate. This prevents one of the most enjoyable drinks that is slightly fermented cider with just enough bubbles in it called “Little Devils” to give it a tang. Unless you make your own cider most of it now is treated with sodium benzoate to prevent the spread of ecoli bacteria and you no longer will enjoy the partially fermented soft cider, nor will the cider ever become hard with the passage of time.

Modern sanitation laws have robbed of much that is good, and the author doesn’t like people with iodine colored eyes and mercuchrome colored blood interfering with his life.

Properly made cider is perfectly safe to drink as long as the apples are thoroughly washed, and not made of garbage apples that are scraped up from the ground as windfalls. To be done right the soundest and firmest apples are pick directly from the tree or as windfalls in the same day they fell. They should not be allowed to lie around on the ground for no more than a day as they pick up an earthen taste from the soil that will spoil the cider. The apples should be washed thoroughly cleaning off all accumulated dirt before they are pressed into cider.

In colonial times and later the making of cider was one of the first industries that was practiced by the colonists. The farmers of those days raised special apples whose sole purpose was to be pressed into cider. For the most part these were not eating apples at most of the varieties alone making excellent cider just plain didn’t taste good. It is still possible to find many of these old varieties growing in out-of-the-way places in the Eastern United States. In the mid-1800s it was estimated that there were over a thousand varieties of apples raised in New England most of which were called “cider berries.”

As a child the author lived in a house that was built in 1772 and it was surrounded with an orchard of the cider berries. We had the following varieties of apples such as Baldwin, Greening, Sheep Nose, Hubbard Stripes, a yellow globular sweet apple and Crabapples. Every fall we carefully gathered these apples and took them to a cider mill to be custom pressed into our own cider. The barrel of cider that we brought back from the cider mill was absolutely delicious. As this site are fermented, and you could tell it was fermenting in the bubbles coming out of the bunghole on the barrel. It was necessary to periodically transfer of the cider to a fresh clean barrel that had thoroughly been washed with a solution of sodium bicarbonate that in turn was rinsed away. This process is called “racking.” Barrels be used were all charred whiskey barrels that we bought used from the local hardware store. These are the best barrels for making cider.

The barrel of cider remained in our cellar for the winter at a temperature ranging from 40 to 50°F. Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas the cider would become hard and stay in that condition until spring when the temperature in the cellar rolls to above 50°F, and the cider turned into vinegar. The longer the vinegar stayed in the barrel the stronger it became.

In the early part of winter the author’s mother with models some of hard cider drawn from the barrel down cellar. Into each quart bottle she would place a quarter teaspoon of sugar to make the cider referment in the sealed bottles. The bottles were sealed with a wine bottle corks that were held down with a twisted wire seal. After the bottles were sealed they were placed on their sides in a cool dry place down cellar with their next slightly down to keep the corks wet. The cider that came out of these bottles was clear and sparkling just like a fine champagne. Many of the people who drank this treat actually thought it was champagne.

At the cider mill the apples we brought to them were thoroughly washed and then ran through a powered hammer mill that reduce the apples to a product called pommace that fell out of the bottom of the mill onto a 4×4 foot cart. On the cart there was a square heavy cloth upon which the pommace fell into a square box with 5 inch sides. The pommace was leveled off at the top of this box whereupon the box was removed and the sides of the fabric square were folded up around the pommace. A wooden pallet was placed on top of the pommace and the first step was repeated again and again until there are eight layers of pommace one on top of the other. This actually functioned as a primitive filter press.

The cart with its layers of pommace was then pushed so that it was positioned under the cider mill that was actually a large hydraulic press. Pressure was applied to the press so that apple juice was expressed from the pommace where it flowed into a channel that direct it away from the press and into a filter that removed most of the pommace from the sweet cider. From the filter the cider was carried by pump directly into our waiting barrels.

For a full explanation of modern cider making consult:

Apple Cider, Wikipedia the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_cider