It’s that time of year again! The snap is in the air, the leaves are changing, and it’s time once again to make apple cider. For the past 3 years we’ve gotten together with my wife’s family to participate in making as much apple cider as we can with as many apples as we can get. It’s an all day event, which usually last into the dark of the evening. This year was no exception.

The Shredenator

We’ve also enjoyed some home brew craftsmanship ala my father in law. He’s put together a pretty awesome shredder to make quick work of cutting up the apples, and this year he tried his hand (along with my brother in law) at building our own press – something that will work faster and easier then the current press we already have.

Things have a way of never working out the way you think, and we got a full dose of it for making cider.

The New Press

We started out with the new press, seeing if we could get it to work right, the basic concept was to use a pot that you deep fry turkeys in, they added a drain plug to it to allow the juice to flow. My mother in law had sewn up some bags to use in the pot and the idea was to push up a hydrolic pump and have the press awaiting the apples and smoosh it all together and the juice would come out. Seemed plausible. As we found out, there were some design flaws.

First the plate that the pot sat on was fastened by a single screw, which would prove to be a weak spot, once there was any lateral movement it broke. So my father in law fashioned a different plate that had a sheath that would go over the pump – that worked much better.

It would start out pressing very good, but soon we noticed that it would just push all the juice up instead of down through the drain like we had planned. We realized that the bag was creating a water tight seal around the the plunger and the liquid wasn’t getting through.

We looked over the original press and decided that the idea behind it was a solid design, press the apples and let the juice run down the sides, so we tossed around some ideas, drilling holes in the pot vertically, or using the original press’s slatted container, etc…

We landed on using the original press’s container with the bags because it would be quicker, and I think my brother in law didn’t want to make the pot completely useless. So they took the plunger off to lathe it down and to get something to catch the juice.

While this was going on, guess who got stuck hand cranking the old press? Yeah that’s right – it was me.

Cranking Down the Press...

Very time consuming, and not very fun. I like the fun stuff, like shredding up the apples. Luckily not only did I get to press, I got to shred. My and my oldest boy set to shredding up some apples with the Shredenator. It’s got spinning blades, and a hunger that can’t be quinched.

Making Apple Slaw

But it seems like I’m going backwards here, so here’s the process. We work it in kind of a assembly line. You start with the apples, sort out the garbage and get the leaves and junk off them.

Sorting The Apples

Then it’s onto cleaning them, once they’re clean there’s a final process of cutting off the bad parts. Like bruising or anything else that makes for gross apples that would make the cider taste gross.

Cutting And Processing

Then the apples get shredded, and then pressed. Here’s a shot of the final version (for this year) of the set up we used to press the apples.

The Pressenator

Once we get the cider in the bucket, we pour it over some tea towels  into our water coolers – I would try to mix it as best as possible to avoid getting bad flavor batches.

The Juice

Then it was onto filling up containers. Last year we managed to get about 72 gallons or so, this year we beat that number by about 16 more gallons for a total of 88 gallons. This year the cider wasn’t as tart but it had a very nice mellow flavor.

The biggest problem we generally run into is storing all the juice initially – we went through a 9ft freezer like it was nothing – not to mention we ran out of half gallon jugs pretty quick too.

Full Freezer

Now it’s time to enjoy some of the final product, look at the rich color and natural foam head. Talk about vitamins and minerals – no pasteurizing going on here, so we get it all, including any hidden worms and other sources of protein…lol

The Final Product

So if you ever find yourself in need of fresh apple cider, we’re always looking for volunteers to help out – plus you get paid in cider!