Extensive investigations have been made in the preservation of cider, especially in the Department of

Agriculture, where under my supervision Mr. Gore conducted experiments to keep the cider from fermenting and to exclude all added preservative substances. At the same time we tried to preserve the taste and flavor of the cider, which often are impaired by heating to a sterilizing temperature. The most effective methods employed were as follows: The cider, as soon as it was expressed, was carried to a clarifier, something like an ordinary cream separator. It was passed through this instrument at a high rate of speed, some 6 or 7 thousand revolutions a minute. The cider, treated in this way, deposited its gummy and other solid substances upon the walls of the separator and discharged a limpid, brilliant liquid from which practically the yeasts had been removed together with other solid matter. This mechanical treatment vastly improved the character of the product. Enough successful work was done to show that this method of clarification, even on a large scale, would be entirely feasible.

After the cider was clarified in the way above described it was conducted to a pasteurizing apparatus and kept at a temperature of from 140 to 145o for 30 minutes. It was then drawn off into a barrel which had been thoroughly sterilized by steaming, first passing through a cooling apparatus without coming into contact with the air, and passing down into the barrel through a tube surrounded at the bung hole with sterilized cotton. In this way the pasteurized cider was conducted without coming into contact with the air into a sterilized barrel, which, as it was filled, drove the air out through the cotton at the bung. When the barrel was full the delivery tube and the sterilized cotton were removed from the bung and the barrel stoppered with a sterilized bung. Cider prepared in this way and kept in a cool place, not necessarily in a refrigerator, keeps indefinitely and has no bad or objectionable taste. Instead of conveying the cider into barrels for keeping, it can also be placed in bottles, which, if exposed in any way, should be re-sterilized after the corks are inserted. If cider is made late in November, after the weather has grown cool, and placed in well-sterilized barrels it will keep even if not sterilized well into the winter if the weather does not become too warm, but will eventually set up a slow fermentation and become hard.

I feel sure that the objection which is usually urged against sterilized cider, namely, that its taste is impaired, could be removed were cider treated as described above. In this way I feel certain that a cider could be obtained which, in every respect as regards excellence of flavor, would be quite comparable with the cider of Normandy.