General Rules for Making Cider
Always choose perfectly ripe and sound fruit. Pick the apples by hand. (An active boy with the bag slung over his shoulder will soon clear a tree. Apples that have lain any time on the soil contract an earthy taste, which will always be found in the cider.)
After sweating, and before being ground, wipe them dry, and if any are found bruised or rotten, put them in a heap by themselves, for an inferior cider to make vinegar.
Always use hair cloths, instead of straw, to place between the layers of pomace. The straw when heated, gives a disagreeable taste to the cider.
As the cider runs from the press, let it pass through a hair sieve into a large open vessel that will hold as much juice as can be expressed in one day. In a day, or sometimes less, the pomace will rise to the top, and in a short time grow very thick. When little white bubbles break through it, draw off the liquor by a spigot, placed about three inches from the bottom, so that the lees may be left quietly behind.
The cider must be drawn off into very clean, sweet casks and closely watched. The moment the white bubbles before mentioned are perceived rising at the bung-hole, rack it again. When the fermentation is completely at an end, fill up the cask with cider, in all respects like that already contained in it, and bung it up tight, previous to which a tumbler of sweet oil may be poured into the bung-hole.
After being made and barrelled it should be allowed to ferment until it acquires the desired flavor, for perfectly sweet cider is not desirable. In the meantime clean barrels for its reception should be prepared thus: Some clean strips of rag are dipped into melted sulphur, lighted and hung in the bung-hole, and the bung laid loosely on the end of the rag. This is to allow the sulphur vapor to well fill the barrel. Tie up a half-pint of mustard-seed in a coarse muslin rag and put it into the barrel, then put your cider in. Now add the isinglass, which “fines” the cider but does not help to keep it sweet. This is the old-fashioned way, and will keep cider in the same condition as it went into the barrel, if kept in a cool place, for a year. The sulphur vapor checks the fermentation, and the sulphur in the mustard-seed keeps it checked. We hear that professional cider dealers are now using the bisulphite of lime instead of the mustard-seed and the sulphur vapor. This bisulphite of lime is the same as the “preserving powder.” It is only another form of using the sulphur, but it is more convenient and perhaps more effectual. Another method is to add sugar, one and a half pounds sugar to a gallon of the cider, and let it ferment. This makes a fermented, clear, good cider, but sweet. It lasts sweet about six months, if kept in a cool situation.
Preparatory to bottling cider it should be examined, to see whether it be clear and sparkling. If not, it should be clarified in a similar way to beer, and left for a fortnight. The night before it is intended to put it into bottles, the bung should be taken out of the cask, and left so until the next day, when it may be bottled, but not corked down until the day after, as, if this be done at once, many of the bottles will burst by keeping. The best corks and champagne bottles should be used, and it is usual to wire and cover the corks with tinfoil, after the manner of champagne. A few bottles may be kept in a warm place to ripen, or a small piece of lump sugar may be put into each bottle before corking, if the cider be wanted for immediate use, or for consumption during the cooler portion of the year, but for warm weather and for long keeping this is inadmissible. The bottled stock should be stored in a cool cellar, when the quality will be greatly improved by age.