This is the time of twelvemonth when I start reconnoiter for apple Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree . disregard , venerable trees full of fruit that nobody wants . Not shiny , red , and flawless , ready to be bolt down into a lunch box . Nor even the large , sweet fruits engender for baking . The Malus pumila I require can be jolting - coated , knotty , and even a piffling scabby . They ’re tart and tannic , puckering your mouth at the first bite . Powerfully saporous . Perfect , in other words , for make grueling cyder .
That – hard cyder fashioning – used to be a custom in my part of the existence , southern New England . From Virginia north , but especially in the northeast states , heavy cider was thevin de remuneration , the local boozing with a definite regional fiber . In part that was a reflection of the regional nature of Malus pumila growing . Virginia , for example , was ‘ Hewe ’s Crab ’ country when it fall to cider qualification ; in New Jersey , the apples of choice were ‘ Winesap ’ and ‘ Harrison ’ . New England boasted many o.k. cider apples ; the standards included ‘ Roxbury Russet , ’ ‘ Golden Russet ’ and also ‘ Baldwin ’ .
I had get word mentions in passing of hard cyder from my Father of the Church , a Connecticut native who associate it with haying prison term on relatives ’ farm . But my first real encounter with it come in the subroutine library of the New York Botanical Garden . One day , while prowl the stacks , I came on a book published in 1911 : The cider makers ’ hired man book : a complete guide for make and keeping pure ciderby J.M. Trowbridge . This volume not only told the lecturer every contingent of how to make hard cider , it made well-defined why you should need to :
“ A pure article of cider , skilfully made from select fruit in perfect condition , should have pure lucidness and smartness , even to sparkling in the drinking glass … It should be fragrant so that when a bottle is freshly open and poured into glasses an conformable , fruity fragrance will arise and diffuse itself though the flat … It should have balmy bite , and feel warm and grateful to the belly , the glow permeate itself gradually and agreeably throughout the whole system , and communicating itself to the spirits … and it should leave in the mouth an abiding agreeable flavor of some considerable continuance , as of rarefied fruits and flowers . ”
I began collecting apple , and with an old-hat cyder press rescue from a friend ’s barn , I pressed my first batch , fermenting it down to dryness in glass carboys . I siphon off it into nursing bottle and cork them . Six months later the cider was straw aureate , clear , sparkling , and smelling and savoring of the apples ’ very core .
I ’ve since updated my equipment , purchase an electric - power , Italian yield crusher which I share with a granger in westerly Massachusetts . The farmer , in comeback , give up me to use his hydraulic cyder press . With these machine , I get far more juice from a bushel of fruit , which is full because appropriate fruit is harder and heavy to retrieve as the honest-to-goodness tree die off and are replace by less intensely flavour advanced cultivars . Every year I have to travel further afield to find my fruit . What good excuse , though , for exploring back roads while enjoy the downslope leaf ?
