How We Make Our Vermont Apple Cider
Making fresh Vermont apple cider is the core of what we do at Cold Hollow Cider Mill. We're a cider mill, after all.
People often assume the secret is our press. It's not. The secret is the apples.
It's the Apples, Not the Press
For years, our story leaned hard on our vintage rack and cloth cider press, the one built back in the 1920s. It's a great story, and it's true: we did run cider through that old press for decades, and it's a genuine piece of Vermont cider-making history.
But if you asked us what actually makes Cold Hollow cider taste like Cold Hollow cider, the honest answer isn't the equipment. It's the fruit.
Our cider gets its flavor from the specific apples we choose and the blend we build from them. McIntosh apples make up about 80% of our Vermont apple cider, with Cortland, Honeycrisp, and Empire mixed in to round it out. That blend, sourced from local orchards in the Champlain Valley and picked by hand right off the branch, is where the sweetness, tartness, and that distinctive apple "snap" actually come from. Change the apples, and you change the cider, no matter what you press them with.
We wanted to say that plainly, because we're in the middle of a change we think is worth being straightforward about.
We're Moving to a GoodNature Maximizer Press
Our old 1920s rack and cloth press has served us well, but it's also old. We put a lot of time and money into keeping it running, and eventually that math stops making sense. So we're transitioning to a GoodNature Maximizer press, a modern rack-and-cloth-style press built with the same basic principle as the original: mash is layered in cloth on racks and pressed once, cleanly, with nothing added.
This isn't actually new territory for us. Back in the 1990s, we ran an earlier version of a GoodNature Maximizer press that handled the majority of our juice production. So in a way, we're not introducing something foreign, we're bringing back a press style that's already part of our own history, built with several decades of improvements since then.
What's changing is the machinery. What's not changing is the process that actually matters for taste and quality:
- We still single-press. No adding water and pressing the mash a second or third time to squeeze out extra volume. One press, same as always.
- We still skip press aids. No rice hulls or other additives to boost yield.
- We still use the same apple sourcing and blend. This is the part doing the real work.
The new press is more efficient and easier to maintain, which means less downtime and more consistency. It's not a downgrade in tradition. It's the same rack-and-cloth method, updated so we can keep doing it well for another hundred years instead of fighting century-old equipment to make it happen.
How We Make Our Cider
There are five main steps to making our Vermont apple cider:
- Source fresh apples
- Grind the apples into a mash
- Layer the mash onto the racks
- Press the apple mash
- Pasteurize and bottle the cider
Step 1: Source Fresh Apples
A great product starts with great ingredients, so where our apples come from matters. We use apples grown locally in the Champlain Valley, hand-picked right from the branch rather than gathered off the ground, which gives us fruit at peak flavor.
Each year we use between four and six million pounds of apples, arriving in 20-bushel bins by the truckload. In the fall, that can mean two tractor-trailer loads a day. Every load is inspected and washed before it goes anywhere near the mash.
Step 2: Grind the Apples Into a Mash
Clean apples travel up an elevator to a high-speed grinder, which turns them into mash, seeds, stems, skins, and all. Those parts add natural pectins and fiber that carry a lot of the cider's flavor.
Step 3: Layer the Mash on the Racks
A screw pump pushes the mash onto the first layer of cloth-covered rack. We fold the cloth over, stack another rack and fresh cloth on top, and repeat until we've built up multiple layers, each holding about five bushels of apples.
Step 4: Press the Apple Mash
This is the part visitors love watching. A hydraulic piston presses down on the stacked layers, and cider starts flowing out the sides into the catch basin below. We press slowly, once, with nothing added, because we'd rather have less juice with the right flavor than more juice diluted to get there.
Each press yields roughly 230 gallons of fresh cider, and nothing goes to waste when it's done. The pressed mash becomes compost or livestock feed for local farms.
Step 5: Pasteurize and Bottle
Fresh cider is perishable, so it goes straight into refrigerated bulk tanks, then gets flash pasteurized for safety before bottling. Flash pasteurization is standard for fresh cider and doesn't change the taste. We don't add anything else. What comes off the press is what ends up in the bottle.
Come Watch
The pressing process is still one of the best things to see when you visit, old press or new. Walk to the back of the mill and you can watch fresh apples turn into cider through the window, same as always.
What makes it Cold Hollow cider was never really about the machine doing the pressing. It's the apples we start with. The press is how we get out of the way and let them do the talking.
If seeing the press in action is the whole reason for your visit, give us a call before you come. We press several days a week and nearly every day in the fall, but timing can shift, and we'd rather you catch it live than miss it by an hour.