Making Cider
Like wine and beer making, cider making is on the increase to such an extent that there are now available small cider presses for home operators. Since this can be used also for crushing and pressing large amounts of fruit for making wines it would soon pay for itself. I believe one firm of home wine and home brew supplies, retails an ‘assemble it yourself press’ for about $358.
Where it is planned to make large amounts of cider a press will be an essential, but where just an occasional gallon is to be made, a press - though useful - is not essential. Most home operators ‘knock up’ quite a nice drop of cider without a press and do it very often, merely by making small amounts - two or three gallons frequently - instead of twenty or so. Any apples may be made into a cider of sorts, but for true cider, only true cider apples are suitable and these do not grow in all districts. And, as with wines, the quality of the cider depends on the quality of the apples used. Since weather, soil, situation, the amount of rain or sunshine during the growing and harvesting affects the quality of the apple - mainly in sugar and acid content - it follows that cider made in one year will be better than in another, depending on the weather. Skill and knowledge which can only come from experience will assist amateur cider makers to blend apples and to make allowances for deficiencies of one sort or another. But all this need not bother beginners who will not be so fastidious as to insist on the very best at the first attempt. They will know better than to expect to be able to make a cider to satisfy connoisseurs the first time and will be satisfied with jolly good second-class or ‘everyday’ sort of cider.
Whether cider making is going to be an attractive proposition will depend on whether cider is the favorite drink of the operator or not. There is little point in someone making cider just because this book explains how to do it unless he knows in advance that he likes cider. Not everybody does; I like it sometimes as a long refreshing drink, but I prefer a good commercial or home produced beer. In winter, I drink a lot of my own wines.
As a child I remember the traveling cider press that clanked to a standstill at the gate of my grandfather’s cottage, and I can vaguely recall the urgency with which every local child was commandeered to help collect the apples. And I remember helping him with the pressing, though I cannot remember exactly how it was done. Then there was the transporting of the juice to the converted pig-sty he used for making the juice of the apple into the drink of the countryman. Some pretty good cider came out of that unlikely building, according to stories my late father told me - stories about men with reputations for having cast-iron intestines being flattened by just a couple of pints of ‘old Dad’s’ concoctions.
The principle of cider making today is the same as in my grandfather’s day and is, in fact, the same as it always has been. Cider making can be traced back to before the Norman conquest of this country. Before the first “World War, cider was made in almost every country cottage; every farmer made it for his laborers and in almost all ‘gentleman’s houses’ those nearly forgotten places where the illiterate sons and daughters of the working classes were employed for a pittance, and who, incidentally, had to appear, or actually were, grateful for the opportunity - beer was made on quite a large scale.
When I was very young, one heard of the generosity of the ‘gentry’ who might concede to their under-paid employees drinking half a pint of the cider or beer they had spent hours of sweat-labor to produce for their master. I recall hearing of how one young lad - obviously a budding scoundrel- had drunk the accumulated drips from a barrel of beer. He was dismissed on the spot with the loss of his ten shillings - one month’s wages. And according to remarks at the time, this ‘young criminal’ was fortunate indeed in having such a generous master, for he had lain himself open to a month in jail. But I suspect he escaped this, for the master feared he might be dubbed as mean if he had handed the lad over to the police. Such were the good old days and like a lot of other things from the past, you can keep ‘em. But not beer and cider; we’ll have as much of these as we can make.
There are over twenty million gallons of cider made in factories in this country and probably as much made in odd lots by home operators every year; quite an intoxicating thought. God knows how many apples are needed for that lot!
If cider making were not worthwhile for the amateur, production of commercial cider would double. This may be the reason for the commercial producers making such a variety of splendid ciders and advertising their goods on such a large scale they are doubtless trying to capture the market for that other twenty million gallons. They won’t do it, for not only can the amateur make a worthwhile cider, he can do it for half the price of commercially produced cider. If he grows apples, the cost is reduced by half again - he has only sugar to buy.
Those who live in cider-apple growing districts will know this well enough as those who live in cherry growing areas know well enough, so there is no point in attempting to bring the fact home to them. Those who live in such areas, would do well to find a grower and arrange for buying some of the crop annually. In some areas, growers will express the juice from an amateur cider-maker’s apples for him. In others, a commercial cider producer will often sell juice expressed from the firm’s cider apples to enable an amateur to make his cider with readily expressed juice.
All this being as it may it is not intended to explain how to make cider from readily expressed juice from a commercial press. Anyone with this God-sent facility at his elbow will also have neighbors with a relative working at the cider factory who will be able to tell him more about using the particular juice from the type of apple used than I could hope to. Each firm has a method to suit its particular apple, its retail trade and the people of the areas in which its products are mainly sold. And these will be a lot different to the next factory perhaps at the other end of the county or country.
My aim is to show the novice cider-maker how to use whatever types of apples are available to him. In this way he will make cider - not an imitation of some commercial product - but one peculiar to his particular needs. Furthermore, if he grows apples, he will be able to make a type or variety of cider quite unique. It will still be cider, but far and away different from the commercial product.
There is far too much of trying to ape the commercially produced these days. Wine makers, try to make wine (and do, incidentally) almost identical to commercial products. It’s the same now with beer and will, I expect, be the same later on with cider. But I hope not. And I hope copying the commercial will soon die a natural death.
A number of people will ask why I have said this when obviously if we can make wines and beers as good as commercial products it is a good thing. Up to a point it is a good thing and I for one have copied commercial methods and made wines identical to world-famous commercial products. But in doing so, we forget, or just overlook the fact that in making wines from ingredients found in the field and hedgerow we are making something quite unique compared with commercial products. Our ‘country wines’ while still being basically country wines are now so much like commercial products that they are no longer what they used to be country wines. They are better wines in every respect; higher in alcohol, of perfect clarity, full-bodied most of them, of good bouquet and splendid flavor. But I still feel that there is nothing to compare with the unusualness of the old country wines as I remember them as a youngster. And surely it was this unusualness that made country wines so different from the products we have turned them into. Anybody can go into the nearest pub and buy cider, but he will not be able to buy cider like the stuff he can make himself any more than a true country wine maker could buy a bottle of cowslip wine. So there it is. Copy the commercial and make something you can buy almost anywhere or stick to making something that cannot be bought anywhere or at any price.
Before making cider it should be borne in mind that to make it too strong is to make apple wine. Such would not be drinkable by the pint or half pint, but only by the wine glass. Cider is usually about 8%-9% of alcohol by volume, or around 14-15 degrees proof spirit, and this is plenty. A medium strength wine is only a little above this, so don’t spoil your cider and perhaps temper by making it stronger than this.
The safest means of making sure of not making it too strong is to use a hydrometer. The use of this is explained in the beer-making section. After the juice has been strained from the pulp, and water, if any is used, has been added, the reading is taken using the same kind of hydrometer as that used for beer making. The Specific Gravity and Alcohol Table, is quite suitable for cider. It will be seen from this that a reading of 1.070 will produce a cider of 9.2% of alcohol by volume - approximately 140 proof. This is plenty for cider. Anything stronger would be too strong. Indeed, a reading of 1.060 should be enough. If you want to make just a little drop of something stronger, take a look at the Specific Gravity and Alcohol Table in the chapter on mead making. This covers a wider range because mead is wine, which is, naturally a stronger drink.
It is unlikely that apple juice will contain enough sugar to make the amount of alcohol required, therefore, some will have to be added. Now, suppose you take the reading of the juice and it registers 1.040. You decide you want more alcohol than this figure will give you; all you have to do is to add sugar to give the reading you want which in turn will give the amount of alcohol you require. This will be readily seen by consulting the table already mentioned. Let us suppose you want to raise the gravity by twenty degrees on the hydrometer, all you have to do is to bear in mind that 2% ounces of sugar will raise the gravity of a gallon of juice by five degrees, 5 ounces being needed for 2 gallons, 10 ounces for 4 gallons and so on. Therefore, if you want to raise the gravity by twenty degrees in one gallon, you merely calculate thus: 2% ounces of sugar will raise it by five degrees, so to raise it by twenty, you must add four times 2% ounces - 9 ounces per gallon.
It will be seen then that a cider of any strength may be made merely by increasing the amount of sugar. But as already explained, over-strong ciders should not be the aim of anybody simply because, like beers, cider is for drinking in larger quantities than wines.