Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1885 — How to Keep Cider. [ARTICLE]

How to Keep Cider.

A Pennsylvania paper states that an air-tight bung will not keep apple juice from “working” into a likely liquid. The unregeperate possessor of a barrel of cider usually knocks out the bung and keeps the barrel even full, in a cool place. When the fluid gets “hard” enough to suit liia depraved taste he bungs it tightly up. It still keeps on fermenting and deteriorating until it is too sour to swallow. Temperance people should avoid cider of this coarse quality. There are many good people who offer no strong protest against a glass of cider as the moist of a winter evening’s entertainment if it is not too “hard,” and nobody discusses the percentage of alcohol it contains. “Hard cider” has a bar-room flavor that does not fit such a home. To produce cider suited to their taste the bung is not knocked put. It is tightly fitted to the stave, but there is a hole in it to which is fitted a tube of tin, rubber, or glass. A few inches above the barrel the tube is bent to a horizontal direction and again bent down, and the end is inserted in a bowl of water. As the carbonic acid forms it passes through the tube and escapes in bubbles, while water excludes the air. Fermentation thus slowly proceeds, until the material for the chemical changes is exhausted. It is true that there is alcohol in such cider, but it is brutal to call it “hard." It sends out an aroma so rich with suggestions of autumn ripeness that a temperance man could hardly look at it without feeling a longing at his heart. If the cider is bottled just at this stage it will foam and sparkle like champagne..