Sunday, October 9, 2011

Cider Pressing 2011


 The apple season this year was amazing!!! There were loads of apples on trees that usually don't produce any! We were able to pick from some friends trees untreated apples for cider making.






The cider press was built after doing lots of online research on how to build your own. There are LOTS of plans out there but we really liked the simplicity of this one. It uses a  jack as the pressing power!








 The first time we gave it a try it was inside... the kids were in charge of washing!




The box was lined with a thin piece of cotton fabric.









Then the apples were ground in the food processor just to chunk them up a little and dumped into the fabric. We then wrapped the excess fabric around the pulp to form a square "bag". This process was repeated 4 times. Each bag was piled on the last and then the pressing began.





This video is of the press in action, it was taken on our second day of pressing. We are outside this time and instead of using the food processor to chunk the apple we crushed them in a 5 gallon bucket using some serious "man power"! Check it out:

Next year a must have for cider pressing is an apple grinder!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please leave us a comment, we love feedback!