When the fruit is collected, it should be put in a dry airy place, to await the process of grinding. For this we adopt the plan of spreading it in sheds or outhouses on wattled hurdles. This keeps it from the rain, by which it becomes sodden when in exposed heaps: then the wind will only partially dry it, and the result will be a general heating of the mass, which results, if not in quick decay amounting to absolute rottenness, yet in that state, technically called “moisey,”[31] or dead, in which the juices are nearly dried up and the fruit flavourless.
[31] Apple moise, or apple moce, was an old dish made of pressed apples. In cider counties apples are called moisey when they are juiceless, dry, and without flavour—dead. (See Archaic Dictionaries.)
We have seen heaps of apples, consisting of many waggon-loads, in the orchard at Christmas, when wet and frost had so preyed upon them that none of their proper juices remained. This is certain to make a cider which will be of inferior quality; and though some of our friends boast of the good quality of their cider which has been made in the roughest manner, yet one cannot help thinking how much better it might have been with the fruit carefully collected, and kept until it could be ground. Still, with all our care in this matter, disappointment is sometimes the result; for it is with cider as with wine, the season will have a great deal to do with it, though with both, the manner of making and storing will be all-important matters, to which we shall advert in the next chapter.
We much object to the gathering of fruit for any purpose in the wet. Were it not for the expense, it would be better to take advantage of dry weather, and to collect even cider-fruit by hand-picking before it has become dead ripe, and so let the ripening process be completed in some dry storing-place. In our own experience of cider-making, the two or three casks made for home consumption from carefully picked and well-kept fruit are usually of the best quality, and so made we believe cider to be a most agreeable and very wholesome beverage,—to paraphrase Isaac Walton, only fit for farmers or very honest men. As long, however, as rough people are about who never know when they have had enough, the rougher cider made by a ruder process is quite good enough.
It must be obvious to all that if a man can drink as much as four gallons of good cider in a day’s mowing, he would be better off with a less quantity of an inferior sort, supplemented with tea or coffee.
[CHAPTER L.]
ON CIDER-MAKING AND ITS MANAGEMENT.
In making cider or perry it is well not to begin unless the weather be moderately cool, as in hot weather the changes in the fluid become too rapid, and it consequently does not keep well.