Get Ready for Cider Pressin'!

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Freezing is not only easier than canning, but preserves the cider's fresh-pressed flavor better (which is why we load our freezer with as many jugs of juice as we can fit in). When you fill your jugs for freezing — and, by the way, recycled plastic one-gallon milk jugs work just fine — be sure to allow ample room for the liquid to expand as it freezes (at least four inches at the top), unless you want a sticky mess inside your icebox. (If — after the first filling has frozen — you find there's still some air left in the jugs, you can "top them off" with more cider ... but again, allow a little room for expansion.)

When there's no more space in our freezer, we can whatever juice we have left over. Here, plastic containers won't do: glass is a must. It's possible to put up cider in regular one-quart canning jars, but unless you've been stockpiling them for decades you'll probably run out of jars, lids, and patience well before putting up your last quart of juice. A better idea is to use half-gallon or one-gallon glass jugs (the kind that you buy vinegar or cider in at the supermarket).

If you don't already have a fair quantity of these containers, you might check with local orchards that market their own cider to see if they'll either sell you the number of jugs you need or direct you to their supplier of containers. Or look in the Yellow Pages under "Bottles". Once you've obtained some glass jugs, of course, you can re-use them for years.

You'll also need some rubber-lined lids to cap the filled containers.

Canning the cider is simplicity itself once you've rounded up your jugs and caps. All you do is [1] empty the juice into a large pot, [2] heat the liquid almost to boiling, [3] rinse out your glass jugs and warm them in a low oven (to prevent the glass from cracking during the next step), and [4] ladle the steaming cider into the jugs. (Hint: A sterilized funnel might make the last step a little easier.) To seal the jugs, simply screw the lids firmly into place before the batch of juice has a chance to cool, then set your containers in a dark place and leave 'em. That's all there is to it!

This procedure can also be used, by the way, to put up large amounts of tomato, grape, and other juices.

Heating will lighten the color of your cider and take away some of its tang. The slight change in taste will hardly be noticeable, however, if you serve the juice well chilled.

...And How to Serve It

With ten or twenty (or forty or fifty) gallons of apple squeezin's in storage, a tantalizingly sweet-tart thirst quencher is only as far away as your cellar or refrigerator. Which means that on a hot Indian summer afternoon you can cool off with a tall cider-on-the-rocks. Or — on a crisp winter evening — you can heat some juice with a stick of cinnamon and a few cloves for 15 minutes and enjoy hot, mulled cider.

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