Cider is a spirit distilled from the expressed juice of apples.

The best apples for cider are not those used at dessert, or for cooking, but rough apples which have a light colour with a maze of red streaks on the sunny side.

The apples used for cider must be thoroughly ripe, or the cider will be harsh, rough, and unpleasant. The branches of the orchard trees are shaken, and the perfectly ripe fruit falls; the rest is gathered when ready; the last ripe is used for inferior cider.

The fruit should be separated; as the yellow apple mixed with red, or all yellow, is the one to use for the best cider; the green apples make an inferior kind. Each sort must be collected separately, and kept till mellow. This is done by piling the apples in heaps about a foot high, and exposing them to the sun and air. As the fruit matures, it gets of a deeper yellow. Every heap is examined before grinding, and the decayed or green fruit is removed.

The fruit, when ready, is placed in a circular stone trough with a bruising-stone, or in an apple-mill. In the trough the apples are crushed by the stone, put in motion by a horse, and this way is thought in Devonshire the best, as the acids of the apple or pear, acting on the metal of the iron cider mill, produce a disagreeable taste, and a brown colour. The trough stands in a shed, roofed, but open at the sides so that a draught of air may pass over it.

The mess produced by the grinding is called pommage. This pommage is removed, as it is ready, to the press, so that part is pressed while the rest is grinding, though some persons think it ought to remain twenty-four hours in the trough before it is taken to the press. Hair cloths are spread, and the pommage in large cakes is laid in the press with perfect evenness. Upon the whole a strong board is placed, wider than the pile on which the blocks rest.

The hair cloths must be perfectly clean and fresh, or they will communicate a bad taste to the cider.

The cakes are then squeezed by lowering the screw of the press, and increasing the pressure as the cakes become drier, till the must or juice is quite squeezed out. This is completed by the long lever and windlass. The juice is received in a tub.

It is then strained through a coarse hair sieve into the fermenting vats or casks - generally into the casks. The juice of the apple before fermentation consists of sugar, mucilage, acid, water, essential oil, and astringent matter.

Of these constituents only sugar produces ardent spirits.

The ciderists of Herefordshire attribute much of the strength of cider to the rind and kernels, and are particular in grinding them with the pulp.

Fermentation of apple juice should not be conducted with too much heat, or the fermentation would be too rapid; neither must the temperature be too low. The degree of heat should be between 400 and 500 Fahrenheit.

Cider ferments with a violent ebullition; the bubbles rise and form a scum or crust over the surface of the liquor; the ascent of additional fixed air breaks this crust; another is formed and again broken, and thus it proceeds till the ebullition gradually ceases, and the fermentation is less brisk. If then a hissing sound is heard in the liquor the room is too warm, and the external air must be admitted.

All fermentation must be stopped as soon as the liquor is clear. To do this it must be racked off into open vessels, and kept cool for a day or two.

Then it must be barrelled and stored in a cool place for winter. In Herefordshire the casks are placed in open sheds for the winter, and early in spring racked again, and put into the cellar.

The cider must be racked in a small stream and the receiving tub must be close to the tap, to avoid another fermentation.

Cider casks should be thoroughly clean and dry when filled, and they should not be filled within a gallon or two. The casks should be filled up every two or three weeks, to supply the waste by insensible fermentation, until the beginning of the next March.

If the cider should be dull it may be improved by putting lump sugar into it - two pounds to one hogshead.

If the colour be bad a little essentia vina will give it any tint it may require.

Cider should be bottled in April, when the barometer is high and the wind northerly. It must be strongly corked and waxed over, and secured with small string or wire.

It is said that half a hogshead of cider may be expected from one well-covered apple tree.