Cider Pressing!

Our neighborhood is full of people who have apple trees. We even have two that are very prolific, and it troubled us to see so many going to waste. So I put a posting up on a school bulletin board looking for a cider press to borrow. Our friends and neighbors, Carol and Kirby, responded that they had a press and wanted to make some cider too, so we agreed to get together on Saturday and smash some apples!


So the day before, Frank and I picked all the apples off of our one tree that was ripe already, and also picked apples at two of our neighbor's too (with their permission, of course!). You want a wide variety of apples for the best flavor, and we did a good job filling the van, that's for sure!


Once we got to the site, we dumped apples into a big copper tub and swirled them around to clean them. Then we grabbed each one, inspected it for bad bruises or worms and cut them out if needed. We made sure to get all the apples out of the water before we put more in, as Carol said we didn't want any 'waterloggers'! When we had a full bucket, Frank would take it over to the grinder and press.


The grinder was aptly named as that was the only job it did (other than maul Carol's dad's arm many years ago, but we didn't really want to hear about that!) and it did it well. Once ground up, the apples fell into kind of a bucket made out of slats of wood. This is where the apples would be pressed and the juice would come out.


You can see from this view that there are two receptacles for the crushed apples. When the back one was full, it was scooted forward into the position for pressing. While there was a motor on the grinder, the pressing was done with human power. As the apples were pressed, the juice ran out and into a bucket lined with a screen and cheesecloth.


Once all the juice was out, the press was opened and then the apple squishings were dumped out into the wheelbarrow to get dumped in the woods. Too bad we didn't have any cows or pigs to give them to!


Now the only part of the process I didn't get on film was the 2nd filtering and then getting the cider into the milk jugs. Carol was able to buy some from a local dairy, which was great as it saved us a ton of time and work finding and cleaning our own containers. We ended up with 38 gallons! After setting aside cider for people who gave us apples, we each were able to bring home 10 gallons to freeze (we left the containers looking less than full so they would have room to expand when they froze). It will be so nice to have this wonderful cider all fall and winter, some for cold drinking and some to put into the crock pot with a cinnamon stick or mulling spices!


Lastly, here's our happy but tired Frank after a long day moving apples around until we had sweet cider. The bins are finally empty, the farm van at least 500 pounds lighter, and not only did we bring home lots of cider, but also the satisfaction of doing a job using our own fruit and our own power (for the most part) just like our families have done for 100's of years. Big thanks to Carol and Kirby and Bonnie for including us in their family tradition.