Cider mill

“ A very few of our readers may know how they made cider in those days in the new settlements, and a good many may not even know how it is made now. We will describe his cider mill and press. At the end of his orchard was a large white oak tree, more than four feet through; under this he had placed a large trough, dug out of a log; in this he put the apples. He then took an oak log about six feet in length, and six inches through, in the middle of which a hole was bored, and a round66 stick put through for a handle. ”

“ Peggy and Katherine exchanged glances with deep sighs, and trudged down the steps, and slowly back toward the mill.
The cider mill was an important institution to Hampton girls—and to Amherst boys, if they cared to walk so far. The man who owned it seemed to feel an especial responsibility toward college girls—as every one does near a college town—and so he kept a counter in the entrance hall over which he sold as much cider as a girl wanted to drink, for five cents. One of his stalwart young helpers would fill her glass as many times as she wished, for the single first payment. ”

“ As I sat gazing on the opposite woods, dark in the shadows of moonlight, I thought upon how very slight a circumstance often depends the fate of individuals and the destiny of nations. In the autumn of 1780, a farmer chanced to be making cider at a mill on the east bank of the Hudson, near that part of Haverstraw Bay called 'Mother's Lap.' Two young men, carrying muskets, as usual in those troubled times, stopped for a draught of sweet cider, and seated themselves on a log to wait for it. ”

“ The cider-making of New England is far more picturesque; the great heap of golden or rosy apples under the trees, and the cider-mill worked by a circumgyratory horse, and all agush with sweet juice. Indeed, nothing connected with the grape-culture and the vintage here has been picturesque, except the large inverted pyramids in which the clusters hang; those great bunches, white or purple, really satisfy my idea both as to aspect and taste. We can buy a large basketful for less than a paul ”

“ They are very expeditious, and do very well for a second-class cider, but if you would have the best, they are very objectionable, because the different sorts of fruit very rarely get ripe at once in sufficient quantities to enable you to make much at a time. Much cider is therefore spoiled, the fruit being ground when too green, by those who are impatient to finish the process. I think that each farm or holding should have a mill of its own, even if it be only a small hand-mill. ”

“ The cider mill commenced business in earnest that afternoon with a full roster of hands. And they soon demonstrated their sufficiency, for apples were delivered at the press faster than the proprietors could dispose of them. When they had picked up all the apples on the ground they threshed the tree until hardly an apple was left on it; and they even [Pg 235] went so far as to pick a bushel of crabapples for their employers. ”

“ It is very slow in growth, but, when it attains a fair size, is strikingly pretty in winter when the tree is otherwise bare, for its peculiar shade of faded green, with its white and glistening berries, makes an unusual effect—quite different from that of any other green thing. It is rare on the oak, and, possibly for that reason, the Druids regarded the oak upon which it grew as sacred.
The transition from apples to cider is a natural one, and cider is a great institution in Worcestershire. On all the larger farms, and in every village, an ancient cider-mill can be found. ”

“ But a little modicum of knowledge learned by costly experience will stick to one through life, while that which costs nothing is rarely laid up as worth having. It ought to be known, also, that there is no better plan of grafting a tree than that which our ancestors followed a hundred years ago, when, with a little moist clay and top-tow, every scion inserted lived. Then the cider mill was an orthodox institution in every neighborhood. ”

“ It is unusual to find a farmer with an old-fashioned hand press, as it was found that these did not extract all the cider. They now have cider mills, to which the farmers take their apples to be ground and pressed by powerful machinery. ”

“ The stone mill has been superseded to some extent by the steam "scratter"; but the cider is not considered so good, as the kernels are left uncrushed, an important omission, as they add largely to the flavour of the finished product. After a hot dry summer, cider is unusually strong, because the sugar in the apples is much more fully developed. It is recognized that these hot summers produce what are known as vintage years for cider, just as, on the Continent, they produce vintage wines. ”

“ Down in the heart of the apple country nearly every farmer kept up a cider-making apparatus and wring-house for his own use, building up the pomace in great straw "cheeses," as they were called; but here, on the margin of Pomona's plain, was a debatable land neither orchard nor sylvan exclusively, where the apple produce was hardly sufficient to warrant each proprietor in keeping a mill of his own. This was the field of the travelling cider-maker. His press and mill were fixed to wheels instead of being set up in a cider-house ”

“ Many of the planters developed their own facilities of one kind or another. Colonel Bridger had a malt-mill, and John Fisher a still. Cider was the established drink for family use and, as is known, gathered a good deal of strength as it aged. In addition, as trade between the Colony and the West Indies became brisk, quantities of rum (made from molasses) was brought in from that source. It became a common drink, was distributed especially for the use of servants, and was generally available in taverns, as was brandy distilled from peaches and apples. ”

“ Unripe fruit should be made by itself, as the cider never keeps.—Large cider mills will make from 100 to 150 gallons in a day, according to the difference in the quality of fruit, some sorts of apples being more tough and less juicy than others, consequently requiring more grinding. ”

“ ART. III. The following is a very highly approved American mode of making Cider.
Take care to have every necessary utensil to be made use of in the whole process, perfectly clean and free from every foreign smell. For this purpose, before you begin your work, let your mill, trough and press be made perfectly clean, by thoroughly washing, and if necessary, with scalding water. The casks are another material object, and if musty, or any other bad smell, one end should be taken out, and with shavings burn the inside ”

“ In autumn the whole country-side was scented with the sour, fruity smell from these cider mills; and the gift of a draught of sweet cider to any passer-by was as ample and free as of water from the brookside. The cider when barrelled and stored for winter was equally free to all comers, as well it might [Pg 204] be, when many families stored a hundred barrels for winter use. ”

“ The wood for these beneficent noon-house fires was given by the farmers of the congregation, a load by each well-to-do land-owner, if it were a "society-house," and occasionally an apple-growing farmer gave a barrel of "cyder" to supply internal instead of external warmth. Cider sold in 1782 for six shillings "Old Tenor" a barrel, so it was worth about the same as the wood both in money value and calorific qualities. A hundred years previously--in 1679--cider was worth ten shillings a barrel. In 1650, when first made in America, it was a costly luxury, selling for £4 4s. ”

“ A really Bacchanalian presence is the only one that should be tolerated in a cider-maker; the lean and hungry character is quite out of place amidst the fragrance of the crushed apples, and the generous liquor running from the press.
The cider-maker is always allowed a liberal quantity of last year's produce, on the principle of "thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn"—a principle that should always be recognized in the labourer's hire, and one which is too often forgotten by the public in its estimate of the necessities of the farmer himself. ”

“ If such fruit be not good enough to send to market, neither will the cider made from it be good enough to place before the public. Nevertheless, it may furnish a sufficiently palatable drink for home consumption, and may therefore be so utilized. But when, as happens from time to time in fruit-growing districts, there is a glut, and even the best table fruit is not saleable at a profit, then, indeed, cider-making is a means of storing in a liquid form what would otherwise be left to rot on the ground ”

“ The practice which formerly prevailed in England of making cider on the farm from the produce of the home orchards has within the last few years been to a large extent given up, and, as in Germany and many parts of France, farmers now sell their fruit to owners of factories where the making of cider and perry is carried on as a business of itself. ”

“ In Germany cider-making is a considerable and growing industry. Manufactories on a small scale exist in north Germany, as at Guben and Grünberg, but the centre of the industry is at Frankfort-on-Main, Sachsenhausen and the neighbourhood, where there are five large and twenty-five small factories employing upwards of 1000 hands. Large quantities of cider fruit are imported from foreign countries, as, speaking generally, the native-grown fruit used in Germany for cider-making consists of inferior and undersized table apples not worth marketing. ”

“ With three men at work, it will turn 800 lbs. of apples into 60 gallons of cider in about two hours. The old press was not so quick or clean, but was more picturesque.
Cider-making is not a very pleasant sight; and I have known people say that they would never touch cider again, having once seen how it was made. A crushed apple is not a pretty thing at any time, and is none the prettier for being in company with several thousand others. However, cider-making is not quite as bad as wine-making in Southern Italy and Sicily. ”

“ In a tour I made last autumn in the south of Devonshire, I visited several farms in the neighbourhood of Totnes and Paignton, and amongst a great number of sorts that I there saw, I could in no instance recognize either an apple or tree as being like those I had seen before in Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, or Worcestershire.
In selecting for producing cider or perry it is very important, not only to get those kinds which suit the district, but to get a variety in their character, especially for making good cider. ”

“ But thanks to the increased demand for cider—largely, no doubt, to be drunk as cider, also, it is more than suspected, to be drunk under another name—the farmers in Somersetshire, Devonshire, Hereford, and Worcestershire have begun to cultivate apple trees, and care for them, as a means of revenue.
In former days there were many more orchards than at present; every gentleman's house, every farmhouse had its well-stocked, carefully pruned orchard. Beer ran cider hard, and nearly beat it out of the field, and overthrew the apple trees, but the trees are having their good times again. ”

“ Those who drink your beer will not fill drunkards' graves. They will close their career and march out of this life with perforated stomachs and a look of intense anguish.
Your method of making cider without apples is also frugal and ingenious. Thousands of innocent apple worms annually lose their lives in the manufacture of cider. They are also, in most instances, wholly unprepared to die. By your method, a style of wormless cider is constructed that would not fool anyone. ”

“ It is whispered that some people add a bushel of white wheat to every barrelful—which ought to make a fairly husky brew. But let us talk of apple butter. This is made by boiling down the cider to one-third the original quantity and adding enough sound apples to make a thick "sass." It is a "nippy" preserve that is appetising and satisfying. Some cider is boiled slightly and put away in sealers to be used for drinking purposes and to make Thanksgiving and Christmas mince pies. Cider-making, like almost everything else, has undergone a change. ”

“ If any other person has a mind to work part of the mine himself, he bargains with the proprietor for a particular vein. All that such a one digs out is his own, paying the king’s duty, which is for gold a 20th part, and for silver a 5th: And some landlords are so well satisfyd with letting out their ground and their mills, that they live upon the profit.
The mill for grinding and separating the gold from the ore is made after the manner of our cyder mills. There is first a round stone cistern about ten foot diameter, with a deep orbicular chanel at the bottom. ”

“ After Judge Hammond broke down, the distillery apparatus and cotton spinning machinery were all sold and removed from Cedarville. The purchaser of what remained, having something of the fear of God, as well as regard for man, in his heart, set himself to the restoration of the old order of things, and in due time the revolving mill-wheel was at its old and better work of grinding corn and wheat for bread. The only two men in Cedarville competent to take charge of the mill were Simon Slade and Joe Morgan. ”

“ To make good cider, fruit should be ripe, (but not rotten) and when the apples are ground, if the juice is left in the pummice twenty-four hours, the cider will be richer, softer, and higher coloured; if fruit is all of the same kind, it is generally thought that the cider will be better; as the fermentation will certainly be more regular, which is of importance. The gathering and grinding of the apples, the pressing out of the juice, is a mere manual labour, performed with very little skill in the operation; but here the great art of making good cider commences ”