Apples
Contrary to popular belief, lore, or old wives' tales, it takes great apples to make great apple cider. We never use any drops or old rotten apples with worms in them. All of our fruit istree-picked, hand-selected and usually comes to us from the orchards and packing houses with thelittle sticker on them. They don't quite make store quality because they may have a little cut orbruise on them.

The apples are packed in large 20 bushel bins (800 pounds). Tractor trailer trucks with 48 binspull up to the Mill and the bins are taken off by fork lift and promptly put into our cold storagearea. During the busy Fall time period, we will go through two tractor trailer loads a day in our cider making operation.

Champlain Valley is "Mac" country
People always ask us what type of apples we use. Cold Hollow Cider is made up of a blend of many types, but the main variety is Macintosh.

In fact, we stick to a time-proven blend of 80% Macs, and 20% other varieties, depending on what's coming out of the orchards. Cortland, Empire, Delicious, Rome, Spartan, and Niagra are just a few of the different types blended.

But there's something about the soil and the climate in the Champlain Valley that gives the Macintosh a real "snap" that has become the characteristic Cold Hollow taste.

Inspection
The apples are inspected, bin by bin, to make sure they meet our standards. The orchards love tosell their apples to Cold Hollow, because we buy them year round. Therefore, we have been gettinggreat fruit from the same suppliers for over 28 years. If they don't meet our standards, they aresent back.

Grinding Apples into Pomace
After inspection, the apples are dumped into a hopper, then they are washed one final time as they head up the elevator to the grinder. The high speed grinder mashes the apples into a pulp called pomace. Pomace is all the parts of the apple all ground up. Stems, seeds, skins, and little stickers are all part of the pomace waiting in the vat.

A powerful screw pump pushes the pomace through a tube where it comes out on the press cloth, which is like a heavy-duty cheese cloth laid over a square form lying in a press cart.

Forming a Batch
Once the form is filled up, the cloth is folded over like a burrito, and a plastic rack is laid on top. The process is repeated 18 times, until the batch resembles a huge wedding cake. The cart is then rolled in place over the hydraulic piston, which is then brought up from the bottom to begin the press.

Each batch contains 2500 pounds of chopped up apples, and when fully pressed out, will yield about 250 gallons of cider.

The Rack and Cloth Press
This pressing method is known as the "Rack and Cloth" method of making cider. The process is literally hundreds of years old. Our main press was built in 1920, and has pressed out millions of gallons in its lifetime, and is still going strong.

In July of 2000 we bought another rack and cloth press from a couple in Wisconsin, because we liked ours so much, and because we needed the extra capacity. Each press can do two batches per hour, which means Cold Hollow can produce 1000 gallons per hour. That's alot of Apple Cider!

Pasteurizing
Pasteurized cider is cider that has been heat treated to kill any potential bacteria that may be in the juice. The purpose is to make sure that it is safe for the consumers. Cold Hollow has many large supermarket accounts that will not take cider unless it is pasteurized. Pasteurized cider has a refrigerated shelf life of 6 weeks.

Our machine is a special juice pasteurizer which "flash" pasteurizes the cider. This means it is heated very rapidly to 172 degrees, then cooled very rapidly back down to 36 degrees. This makes the cider safe without adversely affecting the taste.

Tanks Alot
Once the cider has gone through the pasteurizer, we pump it into one of several refridgerated bulk tanks. Cold Hollow has tanks ranging in size from 800 gallons to a 10,000 gallon silo!

There's always fresh cider available to jug up and ship all over New England!