The Acquisitions Table: The Cider Maker’s Manual

Buell, Jonathan S.The Cider Makers’ Manual:a Practical Hand-Book, Which Embodies Treatises on the Apple; Construction of Cider Mills, Cider-Presses, Seed-Washers, and Cider Mill Machinery in General; Cider Making; Fermentation; Improved Processes in Refining Cider, and its Conversion into Wine & Champagne. Revised edition with additions.Buffalo:Published by Haas, Nauert& Co., 1874.

Perhaps the best of 19th-century American cider manuals, Buell’s is an important reference for all interested in reviving this most American of thirst quenchers. Coming home dragging at the end of a hard workday? Buell has the solution: “Cider is exactly the food suited to a tired condition” as “it satisfies the more interior parts of the system.” But beware misnomers: Buell very carefully distinguishes between the various liquid products that can be derived from apples, including cider, cider vinegar, apple wine, apple Champaign, and apple juice. Makes you thirsty, doesn’t it? Fortunately, Buell includes practical discussion and diagrams for “The Grater Mill,” “Portable Mill,” “Buell’s Improved Screw-press” and finally “The Model Cider Mill, and how it should be constructed.”

Published by

Elizabeth Watts Pope

Curator of Books, American Antiquarian Society

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