In the eighteenth century, the most common cider press was the two-screw press, in which two men turned large wooden screws to lower the roof onto apple pulp until increasing pressure made the cider flow. The process began by grinding hundreds of bushels of apples into pulp known in dialect as "dreschter." To ensure the best cider, a combination of sweet and tart apples was ground into dreschter and placed in layers of rye straw in the bed of the press, where the lowered roof forced the apples to surrender their nectar.