CIDER, an alcoholic beverage obtained by the fermentation of the juice of apples. The manufacture is chiefly carried on by the cultivators of the fruit, and it has been conducted from very remote times in Hereford, Worcester, Gloucester, Somerset, and Devonshire in England, and in Normandy in France. Cider is also largely prepared and consumed in Upper Austria, Wurtemberg, in the districts of the Maine and the Moselle, and in Holland; and it is besides a common beverage in the New England and Western States of America. In the south-west of England the most esteemed varieties of apple cultivated for cidermaking are the Royal Wilding, the Foxwhelp, White Normandy Beech, Yellow Sty re, Handsome Mandy, and Skyrme’s Kernel. For a superior quality of cider the large well matured apples of several varieties are selected, and are ground up to a fine pulp either in an old-fashioned cider mill, or in one of several newer machines which have been introduced for pulping the fruit. The old form of mill consists of a circular trough around which a huge heavy stone wheel or runner, weighing about a ton, is drawn by a horse. Into the trough a charge of apples, to the amount of from 8 to 10 bushels, is thrown, and the mill is kept in motion till the whole mass is reduced to a fine uniform pulp, which is technically called “the cheese.” The old-fashioned mills are now generally superseded by modem inventions, of which Coleman’s cider press may be taken as the type. It consists of two pairs of rollers mounted in a strong wooden frame. The first and upper pair are of hard wood, studded with iron teeth or knives, set immediately under a hopper into which the fruit is fed. In passing between the first pair the fruit is sliced into small pieces which fall between the second pair of ...