CIDER, the pressed fermented juice of apples; a beverage, the quality of which de pends principally on the following particulars: kind of fruit, condition of the fruit when ground, manner of grinding and pressing, method of producing fermentation, and precau tions to be taken against its excess.
The Kind of characteristics of a good cider apple are a red skin, yellow and often tough and fibrous pulp, astringency, dry ness, and ripeness at the cider-making season. The only artificial criterion for ascertaining the quality of an apple for cider is the specific gravity of its must, or unfermented juice; or the weight compared with that of water. This indicates with very considerable accuracy the strength of the future cider. Its weight and consequent value are supposed to be increased in the ratio of the increase of saccharine mat ter. The strongest and most highly flavored cider which has been obtained from the apple was produced from fruit growing on a shallow loam, on a limestone basis. All the writers on the subject seem to agree that calcareous earth should form a component part of the soil of a cider orchard. A dry and somewhat loose soil is preferred.
Condition of the Fruit should be used when it has attained full maturity, and before it begins to decay. Each kind of apple should be manufactured separately, or at least those kinds only should be mixed which ripen about the same time. The longer the fruit remains on the tree without decay or being in jured by frost the better, for not only is the perfect maturity of the juice an important con sideration, but the colder the weather, short of actual frost, the more quiet and equable will be the fermentation. When gathered the apples should be carefully stored in some shady, cool room, and placed in heaps to undergo a further ripening, and acquire more saccharine matter while losing a considerable quantity of watery juice.
Grinding, This operation should be deferred till December, if possible. It is abso lutely essential that the weather should be cold, even slightly frosty, to counteract the tendency to rapid fermentation. The apples should be re duced by the mill as nearly as possible to a uni form mass, in which the rind and seeds are scarcely discoverable, and the pomace should be exposed to the air. It has been ascertained
that, by exposing the reduced pulp to the opera tion of the atmosphere for a few hours, the specific gravity of the juice increases from 1.064 to 1.078. For fine cider the fruit should be ground and pressed imperfectly, and the pulp then exposed 24 hours to the air, being spread and once or twice turned, to facilitate the ab sorption of oxygen; it should be then ground again, and the expressed juice added to it before it is again pressed. The best method of grind ing the apples is to employ cylindrical rollers placed so near each other as to crush them. • They are fed from a hopper above them, from which the apples pass between a pair of fluted or toothed cylinders, by which they are torn and partially crushed before reaching the more per fectly crushing apparatus below. The mass is then powerfully pressed, and the cider is run into casks.
Fermentation.— The vinous fermentation commences and terminates at different periods, according to the condition and quality of the fruit and the state of the weather. The best thing whereby to judge of the proper moment to draw the liquor from the scum and sediment is the brightness of the liquid which appears after the discharge of fixed air has ceased and a thick crust has collected on the surface. The clear liquor should then be drawn off into another cask. If it remains bright and quiet, nothing, more need be done to it till the succeed ing spring; but if a scum collects on the sur face it must imthediately be racked off again, as this would produce bad effects if suffered to sink. A. ong the precautions used to prevent excessive fermentation is stumming, which is fuming the cask with burning sulphur. This is done by burning a rag impregnated with sulphur in the cask in which the liquid is to be decanted, after it has been partly filled, and roiling it so as to incorporate the liquid with the gas. By distillation, a strongly fermented cider called cider brandy or applejack is produced, con taining a larger percentage of alcohol. A species of vinegar is also made from cider.
See VINEGAR.