Recipe for a winter day: Apple cider and good friends.

Byline: Fresh Approach by Jan Roberts-Dominguez For The Register-Guard

THIS TIME of year, a vast selection of local apples always tempt my palate. This is when it hits me. Summer is over. The apple is here.

For you see, its time is now - when the air has an entirely different feel to it, and the smell of freshly pressed cider rekindles the senses.

For the apple cider aficionado, the only way to enjoy a really good glass of cider - cider that stands up on your palate and says `Apple! Apple! Apple!' - is to make it yourself.

Romans were doing it in 55 B.C., and by the mid-19th century, it had become a popular American pastime as well.

These days, however, it's a select few who are willing to devote themselves to obtaining the pure, unadulterated juice from the autumn apple crop.

Granted, there is a significant amount of time and energy involved, but making cider doesn't have to be a chore. Gather apples and friends together for a day or evening of apple pressing and send everyone home with jugs of homemade cider.

If you hit on the right social mix, then good times will roll, and if it adds up to the right mix of apples, the cider will be great.

The reason for a combination of apple varieties is for a well-balanced flavor; not too tart, not too sweet. Most experts agree that such a blend is about two-thirds sweet to one-third tart.

If you're hooked on homemade cider, this might be the year you decide to buy your own press. But they aren't cheap, and renting is a simple and relatively inexpensive alternative.

Check your local equipment rental outlets, which is where I've always had luck.

The average cost for an electric/manual cider press (the electric portion powers the apple grinder, while the press is usually manually operated) is about $14 per day. You might also check restaurant supply shops.

The steps involved in making cider are simple:

1. For food safety considerations, it's highly recommended that you get your apples directly from the tree, rather than picking them up off the ground.

From a flavor standpoint, if you have a choice, shoot for a blend of apples that is two-thirds sweet/mildly acid/aromatic and one-third tart.

However, I've always found that no matter what variety of apples people bring, the resulting cider is heavenly. But if you really want to fine-tune your results, the following descriptions may help.

Some of the sweet varieties: Rome Beauty, Stark, Delicious, Grimes, Cortland.

Aromatic: Golden Delicious, Fuji, Winter Banana, Ribston's Pippin, Transcendent, Martha.

Mildly acid to slightly tart: Winesap, Jonathan, Stayman, Northern Spy, York Imperial, Wealthy, Rhode Island Greening, Newton-Pippin.

Very tart: Crab apples.

(Note: Apples that are very tart are rich in tannin. The tannin helps destroy the bacteria that cause cider to go bad. A little tannin, therefore, acts as an inhibitor of enzymes and makes cider keep longer and better.)

2. Wash the apples in a large tub of water to remove dust, chemicals and stray bugs.

3. Halve or quarter apples. Remove any horribly bruised areas and visible worms (if you have the energy, that is; I've been at cider gatherings where this step has been mostly winked at). Cores, stems and seeds are left alone.

4. Place the quartered apples into the grinder portion of the cider press and chop the apples into pommace.

This is the necessary step before pressing. The finer the pommace, the more cider you'll obtain.

5. The pommace is poured into the container of the press, a crank is turned, and cider begins to stream out below into a waiting tub.

Next, funnel the cider through cheesecloth into clean jugs.

(No jugs? Consider buying gallon jugs of water at the supermarket. They're cheap, usually about 59 cents, and they're clean. Water your houseplants, keep the jugs).

6. Here's where things get a little dicey, because the temptation is to immediately drink this delectable cider (with copious amounts of fresh doughnuts, perhaps!) on the spot.

But these days, we've learned that this can be dangerous because of the risk of E.coli bacterial contamination.

The risk is greatest for those people who are more vulnerable to food poisoning (the elderly, the very young, the pregnant, and those people who have been weakened by serious illness or whose immune systems are compromised).

To avoid the risk of E.coli poisoning, you would need to gently heat the freshly pressed cider to 160 degrees (just below boiling). This is called pasteurization.

However, if you're planning to heat your cider before serving, then you would accomplish this same goal.

7. How much cider can you get from your apples? Figure on 4 gallons of cider from 50 pounds of apples.

Apple Butter in the Oven

Here's another approach to using up the late autumn harvest of delicious, local apples. This recipe makes about 8 or 9 pints.

8 pounds apples, quartered and cored

2 cups cider

1/2 cup cider vinegar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon ground cloves

3/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg

2 1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar

2 1/2 cups granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place the apples in a large pot.

Add cider and cider vinegar and cook slowly over medium heat until the apples are soft.

Press the fruit through a colander, food mill, or strainer. Stir in the spices and sugars, then pour into a deep, non-aluminum, oven-proof pan. Cover and put into preheated oven.

Once the mixture boils, turn the heat down to 250 degrees and bake for 5 hours, or until the mixture is quite thick.

When a rim of liquid does not separate around the edge of the butter, it is ready for canning.

Alternatively, for stovetop cooking: In a heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat, bring mixture to a boil, reduce heat and cook, uncovered, for about 45 minutes or until thickened.

To prevent sticking, stir frequently as mixture begins to thicken.

For added flavor, add a teaspoon of grated lemon zest.

For short-term storage (2 months or less), ladle the hot apple butter into clean jars, attach lids and refrigerate.

For long-term storage at room temperature, wash 9 pint-size jars (or a combination of half-pints and pints of that equivalent).

Prepare lids as manufacturer directs.

Ladle the hot butter into 1 hot jar at a time, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Wipe jar rim with a clean, damp cloth. Attach lid. Fill and close remaining jars.

Process pints and half-pints in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes (at 1,000 to 6,000 feet, process for 15 minutes).

Adapted from "Complete Guide to Home Canning" by the United States Department of Agriculture.

Jan Roberts-Dominguez is a food writer and artist who lives in Corvallis. Her e-mail address is [e-mail].