68 THE AFPLE. 



Apples are frequently kept by farmers in pits or ridges in the 

 ground, covered with straw and a layer of earth, in the same 

 manner as potatoes, but it is an inferiour method, and the fruit 

 very speedily decays when opened to the air. The English 

 apple growers lay their fruit in heaps, in cool dry cellars, and 

 cover them with straw. 



When apples are exported, each fruit in the barrel should be 

 wrapped in clean coarse paper, and the barrels should be placed 

 in a dry, airy place, between decks. 



CIDER. To make the finest cider, apples should be chosen 

 which are especially suited to this purpose. The fruit should 

 be gathered about the first of November, and coarse cloths or 

 straw should be laid under the tree to secure them against 

 bruising when they are shaken from the tree. If the weather is 

 fine the fruit is allowed to lie in heaps in the open air, or in airy 

 sheds or lofts for some time, till it is thoroughly ripened. All 

 immature and rotten fruit should then be rejected, and the re- 

 mainder ground in the mill as nearly as possible to an uniform 

 mass. This pulp should now remain in the vat from 24 to 48 

 hours, or even longer if the weather is cool, in order to heighten 

 the colour and increase the saccharine principle. It is then 

 put into the press (without wetting the straw,) from whence the 

 liquor is strained through hair cloth or sieves, into perfectly 

 clean, sweet, sound casks. The casks, with the bung out, are then 

 placed in a cool cellar, or in a sheltered place in the open air. 

 Here the fermentation commences, and as the pomace and froth 

 work out of the bung-hole, the casks must be filled up every 

 day with some of the same pressing, kept in a cask for this pur- 

 pose. In two or three weeks this rising will cease, when the 

 first fermentation is over, and the bung should, at first, be put 

 in loosely then, in a day or two, driven in tight leaving a 

 small vent hole near it, which may also be stopped in a few days 

 after. If the casks are in a cool airy cellar, the fermentation 

 will cease in a day or two, and this state may be known by the 

 liquor becoming clear and bright, by the cessation of the dis- 

 charge of fixed air, and by the thick crust which has collected 

 on the surface. The clear cider should now be drawn off and 

 placed in a clean cask. If the cider, which must be carefully 

 watched in this state to prevent the fermentation going too far, 

 remains quiet, it may be allowed to stand till spring, and the 

 addition at first of about a gill of finely powdered charcoal to a 

 barrel will secure this end ; but if a scum collects on the sur- 

 face, and the fermentation seems inclined to proceed further, it 

 must be immediately racked again. The vent-spile may now 

 be driven tight but examined occasionally. In the beginning of 

 March a final racking should take place, when, should the cider 

 not be perfectly fine, about three fourths of an ounce of Isin- 

 glass should be dissolved in the cider and poured in each barrel, 



