5 50 CIDER. 



crease the fermentation beyond our control. It must 

 therefore be removed before this effect be produced. 

 Soon after the fermention begins, the covering on the 

 top of the must cracks and separates, when there is 

 not a moment to be lost before you draw it into your 

 casks, leaving the pulp behind. In this cask it under- 

 goes the first of the fermentation for eight or ten 

 days ; but before this most difficult part of the art of 

 making the best cider can be well understood, there 

 are so many points to be considered of, that I have 

 always hesitated to give my opinion of it, from a cer- 

 tainty that the subject would become tedious beyond 

 sufferance. There are, however, a few obvious prin- 

 ciples of great importance, which maybe borne with. 

 " Cider requires a very gentle fermentation, and 

 ought to be confined between forty-four and forty- 

 eight degrees of heat (by Fahrenheit's thermometer.) 

 Musts, of all kinds, increase their heat by fermenta- 

 tion. Liquors, of all kinds, will not be colder than 

 the air in which they stand. It is easy to compre- 

 hend, if these are facts, the impossibility of making 

 good cider, when the medium heat of the day exceeds 

 forty-eight degrees. I say the medium heat of the day, 

 because our best cellars being fifty degrees of heat in 

 the latter end of October, renders them, generally, 

 unfit for fermenting cider, and involves a necessity of 

 having your first fermentation above ground, where 

 the heat of the day will have its effect. Hence the 

 known fact that cider ferments most kindly in the 

 shade, on the north side of your buildings, wherever 

 the cool nights of the fall reduce the medium heat of 

 the day below forty-eight degrees. During the first 

 fermentation abovementioned, attention must be giv- 

 en to it, that, in case of rising above forty-eight de- 

 grees, it should be racked off early in the morning, 

 (before sunrise, if the weather be warm for the sea- 

 son ;) this racking checks the increase of heat occa- 



