Posted on 12/19/2006 7:18:06 PM PST by Coleus
Multimedia: Making apple cider
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Doris Heddy remembers when apple cider was the drink of choice each autumn. Years ago, it was the most popular drink, but now there are choices that are unbelievable," she said, referring to an ever-growing soda and bottled water market. Heddy owns Van Duyne's Cider Mill in Montville, the remnants of a large farm that dates back to the late 18th century. Every year, from late September until April, she sells thousands of gallons of fresh apple cider, pressed from apples trucked in from Mellick's Orchard in Oldwick. "Doris has a real loyal fan base," said Brian Cooke, who's helped her press cider for two decades. "A lot of them have been coming for generations. They can remember coming here with their father or their grandfather." Many remember penny cups at the mill: For a penny, you could buy a cup and sit as long as you wanted and get free refills. According to Cooke, the neighborhood kids used to compete to see who could drink the most cider.
| THE BASICS What: Van Duyne's Cider Mill Where: 160 Pine Brook Road in Montville Hours: Open weekdays 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Van Duyne's will be open on Thanksgiving Day from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. Cider usually is available until Easter. Phone: 973- 227-1464 |
The cider mill, established in 1898, is the oldest one Heddy knows of in the area. The only one older, Nettie Ochs in Livingston, closed last year after the death of the patriarch who ran it. Heddy, has seen some of Ochs' customers this season. The press she uses has been in the mill since the late 19th century. "It was steam engine powered, then gas," Cooke said. "Then, in 1970, we went modern and got electricity." Every Thursday or Friday, after pressing cider for three hours -- a yield of about 100 gallons -- Heddy and Cooke spend another three or four hours cleaning all the equipment, especially important because they don't pasteurize, so everything must be kept spotless. Federal law requires pasteurization for cider sold wholesale, or technically in another building than the one in which it was pressed, but Heddy sells all her cider direct to her customers at the mill.
The farm used to grow apples, but only 12 of the original 160 acres remain, six of which can't be used because they're too close to the Passaic River and have flooding issues. Heddy remembers when the farm grew raspberries, peaches, apples, corn and other vegetables that her father and grandfather would sell at a market. When she was young, they even had dairy cows and would send the milk to a nearby dairy farm for processing. 'Everyone that inherited the farm sold it off to development," Heddy said. "In my father's generation, there were eight children, and my grandmother split it up among the eight." It's the same story of most farms in the Garden State. They've been sold piecemeal to developers over the years as real estate has become increasingly valuable. Cider mills have an added burden: regulation, which began in the mid-1950s and closely monitors the production of cider.
"The stiffer regulations caused a lot to go out, plus farming in general is not as big as it used to be," said Bob Best of Best's Fruit Farms in Hackettstown, where his family has made cider since the early 1950s. "For example, the UV machine was $20,000, and a little guy can't afford that for a few hundred gallons of cider. So it forced the little guy out and the bigger guys were able to survive." That UV machine is what Best uses to kill any possible bacteria in his cider. Pasteurization kills bacteria with heat, which changes the taste of the cider; Best's machine uses UV rays, which kills microorganisms but doesn't alter flavor. Pasteurization gives the cider more of a cooked-apple taste, he said. It also extends shelf life. Unpasteurized cider stays good refrigerated for about a week; UV-treated cider will keep for two weeks. Heddy and Cooke still do it the old-fashioned way, mainly because they can't afford to update the equipment. Cider isn't as popular as it used to be, they said.
"Now you have 25 flavors of Pepsi and 30 bottled waters, so we're really just a novelty at this point," Cooke said. "You can still buy cider for less from a supermarket, but we're grateful that people still come here for it." Heddy and Cooke press cider from late September through April, when they shut down for the summer. The busiest time is around Thanksgiving, when they'll sell 400 to 500 gallons in two days. "We're just constantly pressing for two days straight," Cooke said. "Squeezing and pressing, that's all we do, but it's good. It's a nice thing. I enjoy it." Doris Heddy and Bob Best enjoy cider strictly as a drink; Best's wife, however, also uses it as a water substitute in several recipes, including doughnuts and applesauce, which he says are terrific. Here's a recipe given to Heddy by one of her customers. www.northjersey.com/foodblog.
Fresh pressed cider is so alive you feel you could live on it.
Let it ferment a little bit and then strain it.
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