Allen Heist (1836 -1906) was the sheriff of Bucks County as well as proprietor of the Monument House Hotel (on Doylestown’s Monument Square). In 1881, Heist purchased 9 acres, which today overlook the Doylestown Country Club golf course, and there he built a cider mill. His 2½ story stone mill produced apple cider and apple jack for sale to the surrounding countryside.
In 1884 50,000 bushels of apples were juiced. “The mill was run by a steam engine. There were four presses in the mill, and each would press 90 bushels of apples at a time. We ran the mill 24 hours a day in season. During the nighttime hours we worked by oil lanterns. All apples were shoveled into a chute, which took them to a large wooden vat, where they were washed. An elevator then took them to the third floor of the mill where they went into a large hopper to be ground up for pressing.
We bought the apples and also did customer grinding for anyone and only charged 1 cent a gallon to make their cider. There was a large tank house. The building housed 12 tanks that held a little over 5,000 gallons of cider. It was stored there until it was ready to be made into apple jack. ... We made 16 32-gallon barrels of apple jack a day.”
The distillery was closed in 1920 during Prohibition, and in 1922 the property was sold to Charles McKinstry. He converted the mill to a residence, adding dormers in colonial design and removing outbuildings. Along the lane to the former distillery, McKinstry divided the property into building lots, adjoining his home at 16 Golfview Road.
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