When it comes to apple cider, this is as fresh as it gets.
Every year visitors crowd inside the Ralston Cider Mill for their pressing day. About 4,000 pounds, or 100 bushels, of apples are pressed on a Saturday every October. It’s then sampled by thirsty guests.
Ralston is an operational cider mill museum. There, volunteers demonstrate how cider was made in the early twentieth century using original equipment. Constructed in 1848, the building was used as a grist mill. A businessman eventually converted it into a distillery in 1910.
“He knew prohibition was coming, and he knew if he did it right and could hide the operation he would make a lot of money,” said the president of the board of trustees Raymond Nadaskay. “This is where the applejack was produced, it was then put in boxes, taken out on trucks, and shipped into New York, Newark and places all over during prohibition.”
Since the museum conducts lots of school tours, they leave that part of the story out and focus on apples and the pressing to produce sweet cider. First, volunteers wash the apples, which are donated from a local farm. Next, the fruit makes it way up a wooden conveyor to the third floor of the mill.
“On the third floor they are chopped up in a machine called a grater, similar to what cooks have in their kitchens to grate vegetables and so forth except that this thing turns at 2,000 RPM,” said Nadaskay. “Once it’s grated, it falls into a large hopper. When the person down below opens the lever, the pumice drops into a flat bed container below that’s covered with filter cloth. When it gets fairly full, they fold the filter cloth over to make what we call a cheese.”
They need a minimum of three or four layers of cheese to place in the presses. From there, the juice flows from a pipe into a large vat.
“The simple fact of the matter is that depending upon where we are in the pressing or where it’s coming down, the character and the taste of the cider changes a little bit as you go along. And it’s also different from year to year,” said volunteer Frank Lemire.
Although today the process ends here, years ago the cider eventually became hard cider and applejack.
“Most history covers stuff way back, or at least back far enough when there is almost nobody around,” said Nadaskay. “I call this recent history because there are people around who knew about this and who saw it operate.”
It’s something Nufri Fornaro remembers. He’s known as ‘Sammy’ and he sold the property to the township.
“I guess I most have been 7 or 8 years old and they still were pressing cider here,” he said.
Volunteers began restoring the property in 2004. Four years later, Ralston Cider Mill began operating as a museum. Although they only press once a year, they’re already looking forward to next October.