Anyone have the book The Art of Cidermaking?

[general_gravity]

I would love to find a copy of this book to either borrow or purchase. I bought a copy off Amazon for $35, though it was lost in the mail. The rest of the copies are in the $115 to $250 range, which is just not realistic. I am sure the book has some good information, but I am not interested in supporting this price gouging mindset that so many used book sellers are using these days. Just because a $9.95 book is out of print, it is not suddenly worth a fortune.

I am happy to pay a reasonable price for it or even a fee to borrow it for a few weeks to read. If anyone is willing to help out another amateur cider maker, I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks,
Dave

 

[Soilworker]

Geeze, I can't imagine it's that good to be worth that much money. You could get all the nice equipment and plenty of cider for quite a few batches for the price of one book. You'd be better off just learning yourself and using online resources. Still it would be a cool book to checkout but the price is ridiculous. If it were me I would checkout some of the other books that are on amazon for making cider instead of this one. Good luck finding a copy of this one though...please report back if you find it anywhere. Cheers!

 

[bottlebomber]

Well, it's not really gouging because it isn't something that you are relying on as a necessity. It's an out of print book and so it's worth exactly as much as people are willing to pay for it. I have Andrew Lea's Craft Cider Making myself, and it's an excellent book, very complete. I highly recommend it.

 

[general_gravity]

I did pick up several other good cider books by McKie, Prolux and Lea. Sites like this are also a great resource for information and recipes. I am still hoping to find The Art of Cidermaking at some point though, since it apparently has some valuable information and good recipes.

Regardless of how you want to term it, pricing the books way beyond what the free market will bear is not doing anyone any good. That is why I am hoping that someone here has a copy which is just collecting dust, and would be interested in passing it along to another cider enthusiast.

Thanks!
Dave

 

[RachmaelBenApplebaum]

I acquired a copy recently and to entirely honest, it's a good book for someone who's never fermented ANYTHING. It's kinda like "the compleat meadmaker" by schraam, it's got good information for the neophyte and some helpful style guidelines etc, but it makes the assumption you have easy access to fresh-pressed cider or press it yourself. It has some info on apple varietal qualities but nothing on growing them or blending them yourself. It's also a pretty short read and just has a few recipes for style guidelines and one "apple beer" recipe which seems to predate the graf craze? seeing as it's out of print as well there's some mildly outdated information (such as recommending the easier practice of starting a siphon hose for racking with your MOUTH!)

 

[general_gravity]

Thanks for the feedback on the book. I guess I'll still keep an eye out for it, but not spend much time or money on obtaining a copy.

Dave

 

[maestro_wu]

It's in Google Books, if that helps at all.

I'm not sure if you can read the whole thing on-line or not, but even if you can only read a fraction at a time, it'd be a lot cheaper than those other options.

 

[general_gravity]

I looked it up in Google Books, though I could not find a way to read any of it. Perhaps I am just not understanding how it works, but I suspect it is not available to read there.

However, my missing copy finally surfaced after a 40-day adventure with the usps. Now having read it, I agree with RachmaelBenApplebaum in that there is nothing in this book that is not in the other cider books out there. If you can find it for less than $10 I would add it to your collection, otherwise I would pick any of the other, more current books available.