Backyard Cider Press Licensing Bureau Announces Annual Inspection Window for Home Orchards

PRESSMAN’S GLEN — The Backyard Cider Press Licensing Bureau announced its annual inspection window Monday: October 6 through October 24, during which all 1,400 registered home cider presses in the county must be inspected, sanitized, and affixed with a tamper-proof “PRESS APPROVED” sticker.

The bureau was created after the Great Cider Incident of 2022, in which an uninspected press produced 40 gallons of cider “with notes of rust and regret,” sickening no one but “deeply disappointing” 60 guests at a harvest party. “Cider is trust,” said bureau director Alan Fiske, himself a former press owner whose own unit failed inspection in 2023 for “excessive squeak.” “You hand someone a cup of your cider, you are handing them your reputation in liquid form.”

Inspectors check for cracked wooden slats, frayed pressing cloths, and what the bureau’s checklist calls “mystery residue.” Presses are graded on a 100-point scale; anything below 70 requires re-inspection, and anything below 50 is “condemned to ornamental status,” meaning it may be displayed but never again squeezed.

Home pressers have 18 days to book appointments through the bureau’s website, which Fiske acknowledged “crashes every year on day one, like the leaves falling, but for servers.” Walk-ins are accepted but “placed in the Squeeze Queue,” a waiting list named by Fiske’s predecessor that the current director calls “my cross to bear.”

The bureau reminds press owners that selling cider requires a separate vendor permit, and that giving it away to neighbors “in exchange for ‘donations’” is, legally, selling. “We know about the donation jar, Kevin,” Fiske said, declining to specify which Kevin.

The bureau’s 40-point inspection checklist has produced its own folklore. Item 17, “mystery residue,” has ended three inspections on the spot — “if neither of us can identify it, the press is done,” Fiske said — while item 31, the “squeak test,” requires the press to operate “without sounds suggestive of structural complaint.” Fiske’s own press failed on squeak in 2023, a fact he discloses to every applicant. “It builds trust,” he said. “The director’s press squeaked. We’re all in this together.”

As for Kevin — the bureau declined to confirm which of the county’s 14 Kevins owns a donation jar, but Fiske’s warning stands: “A jar labeled ‘donations’ next to a cider tap is a cash register with plausible deniability.” Licensed vendors, meanwhile, report brisk business, with one farm’s “Press Approved” sticker becoming such a draw that customers photograph it. “It’s a sticker,” Fiske said. “But it’s a sticker that means the cider won’t taste like a hardware store.”