Cider mill

Lore & Background

Historically, the types of structure and machinery have varied greatly—including horse-powered, water-driven, and machine-operated mills. The presses can be fixed or portable. In 19th-century New England, apple farmers paid a mill owner a fee to crush apples into juice.

A typical cider mill would look like many other small barns and sheds, with a set of large doors in the center of the longer side. Most cider mills were 20–30 feet long by 20–25 feet in width. At Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, 19th-century cider mill equipment is still used to make cider.

The earliest and most basic form of cider mill consists of little more than an enclosed area where apples are pounded by large wooden pestles. In England, Jersey, and northern France, the traditional form was a 'horse-mill' or 'stone mill'—a circular trough made of stone, in which is set either one or two large stone wheels called 'runners'.

A horse harnessed to the outside of the wheel slowly grinds the apples to a pulpy mass called pommage. Through the early 19th century, this was the dominant form in England, but by the early 20th century in Britain, stone mills had largely fallen out of fashion, increasingly replaced by roller mills, though they continued to be the primary form in France. In Germany, apples were traditionally grated by hand rather than crushed.

A later innovation was the toothed roller-mill, using toothed cylinders made of stone or metal to grind apples into pomace. Such mills are portable and produce a finer pomace than large horse-mills. It was first introduced to England in 1689 by agriculturalist John Worlidge, who adapted it from sugar-cane crushers used in the West Indies. Yet as of the beginning of the 19th century, such mills could not handle the same quantity in bulk as the horse-driven mills.

Reader's Guide

Cider mills have played a central role in the production of apple-based beverages and products across numerous countries and regions. The techniques used in milling and pressing apples vary with each cider-making tradition. In most traditions, cider milling traditionally takes place in two stages: first, milling or grinding the apples into a pulpy mass called pulp, and a second stage, pressing the pulp to release the juice or 'must'. The remaining solids after juice extraction is 'pomace' or 'pommage'.

Some mills provide custom pressing of a farmer's apples, allowing apple varieties to be blended to make a cider of mixed juice types, such as a combination of sweet and aromatic juices. Cider is stored and fermented in wooden barrels, carboys, stainless tanks, or glass jugs. After the juices have been extracted, the leftover pressings—variously known as pomace, 'math', 'cake', 'powz', 'mure', or 'pommage'—might either be watered and pressed again to produce a weak cider known as ciderkin, or when still fresh, used as animal feed.

Cider mills were subject to legal proceedings in New York state in the 1800s over whether they were 'fixed to freeholds' and other cases addressing legal designation as to what kind of property a cider mill is. The legacy of these mills is preserved in structures like the Apple Press Monument in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, and in the continued operation of historic equipment at sites such as Old Sturbridge Village.

Did You Know?

• The Apple Press Monument in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, is a relic of the Mid-Winter Fair of 1894, still in its original location.
• Nathaniel Hawthorne contrasted wine-making in Italy with the cider-making process of 'New England vintages' in his work The Marble Faun.