Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

making apple juice/cider

C

campanula

diminished responsibilty
Has anyone done this? I have half a dozen apple cordons and a large tree...but many apples end up on the ground or in the compost because they are lovely apples but not good keepers. However, the same parentage(Discovery/Katy) which determines their woeful storage possibilities, offers great juice and cider making potential.
So, I want to make an apple press (probably the easiest part of this project) and either bottle the juice for drinking or make cider. While I have made countless preserves, juicing and brewing is a whole new adventure so any advice/suggestions welcome.
BTW, the apple is the awfully named 'Scrumptious' - a lovely crisp apple with a bit more depth and complexity than Discovery.
 
Me. I've made gallons of cider from ours and neighbours' apple trees.

There are plenty of on-line resources for home cider making and quite a few approaches to making it too.

My personal advice is:
  • You need to add proper cider apples - eaters make much too sweet a cider. Find Crab Apple trees growing wild and pick their fruit.
  • Ask neighbours with apple trees if you can have their apples or pick up their fallers.
  • Drive/ride/walk around: if you see apple trees growing in someone's garden ask them for apples too! I offer a bottle of cider made from their apples as a token payment.
  • Using juice from fallers is fine; I cut away any rotten parts but not all cider makers do.
  • Don't try a home juicer to extract the apple juice - it will only extract a tiny amount of juice. You need a proper scratter and a press.
  • Look to see if you can borrow a scratter and press: they are bloody expensive to buy. In Worcester we have a group who look after community orchards and they have open days where you can bring your apples for them to crush'n'press. The remains of properly pressed apples are as dry as cardboard!
  • Try hard to forget that you're almost certainly juicing grubs and maggots too!
  • All the usual wine/beer making precautions apply.
  • Entirely up to you whether you use Campden tablets and/or pasteurise your cider. I don't.
  • Yeast naturally lives on apple skins, so your juice will start to ferment with no further action from you. However you will end up with very weak cider (2% ish) You can buy cider-specific yeast which can result in some Very Strong cider!
  • Cider can be ready to drink in a few weeks or you can leave it to mature. I've had some lovely 18 month old cider in the past.

Off the top of my head, that's all I can think of. Like I said at the start - there are some excellent on-line resources which give proper information. They sometimes make it sound very complex; it isn't. Freshly-juiced apples will make cider all on their own with no intervention from you.

Have fun!
 
Calamity1971 said:
I know these guys and have tried their apple juice, they use a mix of bitter apples and sweet. They've set up in the walled garden where I live so will have a chat with them. Probably catch them tomorrow or the weekend.
Fruitful Durham (@FruitfulDurham) on Twitter
Click to expand...
Oooh, yes please.

Thank you, a_chap - excellent stuff. As it happens, there are 3 cider apples on the edge of my wood (Dabinet, I think) and an odd little apple called a catshead (which has lovely, tart but rich juice)...and I also have a John Downie crab. The cordons are a mixture.
Years ago, you could hire a press from a couple of outlets but everyone wants to hire than in the same 2 weeks so they are booked by mid spring. I am less worried about pressing and more concerned with the bottling and storage. Sterilising water baths are a massive faff in my home oven (I make shitloads of ketchup)...and there is enough sugar in preserves to...preserve them, but I definitely recall an episode exploding elderflower wine (all over the shed).
 
campanula said:
I am less worried about pressing and more concerned with the bottling and storage.
Click to expand...

I never bottled my cider :)

I ferment cider in a collection of demi-johns and plastic buckets (with sealable lids, specifically for fermenting) and leave them to mature. When I decide to open one I either pour directly from the demi-john or use a ladle with the buckets. Much easier IMO.
 
a_chap said:
I never bottled my cider :)

I ferment cider in a collection of demi-johns and plastic buckets (with sealable lids, specifically for fermenting) and leave them to mature. When I decide to open one I either pour directly from the demi-john or use a ladle with the buckets. Much easier IMO.
Click to expand...

Back in the 70s, I was living in a squat which had a heap of old apple trees out the back so we borrowed a press and made cider. Net curtains were an integral part of the process and I recall using 2 x 40 gallon (I think) dustbins...and drinking it after 3 weeks or so. We had all been in Devon for Hood Fair so were well up for home brewing.
It was poky and generally drinkable after the first pint (when discernment had vanished)...but I am thinking of a more...refined version, not something quaffed by ruffians from dustbins. 25 litre water containers might be doabole though.
 
Spoke to the fruitful Durham guy today campanula
He was fairly busy so got a little info.
Firstly the apples for juice have to be cut as finely as poss.
If you don't want the faff of sterilising bottles and you're not making huge quantities then freeze it.
I told him you were fairly tooled up and he suggested a car jack, two boards and some Muslin cloth. You probs knew most of this anyway but here is an example he explained to me.
Homemade apple press.

b8e497061bd00b8b7998afccba940ab1 (1).jpg
They travel local with their press and people bring their apples to be pressed.
 
Calamity1971 said:
Firstly the apples for juice have to be cut as finely as poss.
Click to expand...

Cutting apples into teeny weeny chunks would be fine except it takes FOREVER.

Halve the apples and stick them in a blender / food processor. It'll still take forever (or maybe a little less) but you'll juice the apples better than slicing them up by hand.

However, you could use "made from individually hand-cut artisan apple cube-ettes" as a unique selling point at the start of your cider empire.
 
Definitely going to try the centrifuge method - I am planning modifications by including specially sewn muslin pouches to line the drum.Should help with clarity - not convinced the spindryer would yield a totally clear juice...which is fine for drinking fresh...but not for cider.
 
Irrespective of the cloudiness of the apple juice used cider will clarify itself given enough time. All of my ciders over 12 months old have been crystal clear.

You can, of course, use finings to clarify cider quickly.
 
*subscribes*

I have a small mountain of mainly bramley fallers currently - this could be useful way, and the remains will end up in the compost ...
 
A friend had a proper press and I helped them press apples.

The good news is that juice fresh from the press tastes just awesome!

The bad news is that once made into cider it tastes well pretty unimpressive if I am honest!
 
campanula said:
Definitely going to try the centrifuge method - I am planning modifications by including specially sewn muslin pouches to line the drum.Should help with clarity - not convinced the spindryer would yield a totally clear juice...which is fine for drinking fresh...but not for cider.
Click to expand...

I can see that working very well for when you take out the pomace (I've got all the good words!) and the machine hasn't been all clogged up.

It would probably not impede that second extraction described in the link:

"2nd pressing.
Put dried pulp in a bucket and just cover with water and soak for about 10 minutes, until most of the water has soaked in, a stir helps. Then spin this. Whilst that's spinning soak your next batch.

Keep doing this until you either reach your desired sugar content, checking with a hydrometer (of course) or you have collected the required amount of juice.

You may not need to do a second pressing, it depends on your apples. I left mine a bit too long and were past their best."

In fact giving the muslin bag a good massage in the water with a wooden ladle would also be fairly unmessy, like getting a second or third cup from a tea-bag.

You could keep the cider made from that second spin separate from the the first and blend them if needed later. I don't know that the second run wouldn't be watery and tannic; Though that might be exactly what's needed if the first batch is too sweet and thick

Batch blending is called 'coupage', or 'batch blending'.

Spin-dryer drums are stainless steel, right? I don't think that causes any issues at all. The fermentation vats round here are stainless steel and fermenting red wine is more acidic than apple-juice, I guess.

Rough calvados is made from that pomace wash, if you want to do a bit of moonshining as your next project. It is however dangerous and illegal.

But so are a lot of things.
 
Forget buying a still. All you need is a second-hand pressure cooker, some copper tubing and a bit of ingenuity.

There's no pressure involved - you're only raising the temperature to 78 Centigrade - the pressure cooker just provides a simple sealed lid-with-a-hole. And remember, you're only using it to distil water... :p
 
a_chap said:
you're only using it to distil water
Click to expand...

...in a hide-out in the hills, holding a shotgun in one hand and smoking a corncob pipe with the other.

images
 
a_chap said:
Forget buying a still. All you need is a second-hand pressure cooker, some copper tubing and a bit of ingenuity.

There's no pressure involved - you're only raising the temperature to 78 Centigrade - the pressure cooker just provides a simple sealed lid-with-a-hole. And remember, you're only using it to distil water... :p
Click to expand...
You do need a condenser, too...
 
The ethanol vapour has to cool sufficiently to condense. So the vapour has either to flow through a short(ish) length of cooled tubing or a longer length of un-cooled tubing.

So, yes, some pipework engineering is required (hence me saying "a bit of ingenuity") but this can range from coils of tubes in a container of cold water (clever but unnecessary) or straight lengths of air-cooled tubing. Or something in between.
 
a_chap said:
The ethanol vapour has to cool sufficiently to condense. So the vapour has either to flow through a short(ish) length of cooled tubing or a longer length of un-cooled tubing.

So, yes, some pipework engineering is required (hence me saying "a bit of ingenuity") but this can range from coils of tubes in a container of cold water (clever but unnecessary) or straight lengths of air-cooled tubing. Or something in between.
Click to expand...
Ah, OK. In my head, I was probably overengineering things. I usually do.
 
OMG a still. I am transported back to juvenile delinquency involving pipe-bombs (back when you could get most of your 'ingredients' from the local pharmacy (alum) or hardware shops (sodium chlorate) and even the chimney (soot)...and slightly older adventures involving various tinctures, ferments and such - the cannabis vaping oil was the last experiment...and given my offspring's propensity for off-grid tech - rocket stoves, geo-thermal cool stores, solar showers, water pumps - not that we are 'preppers' or anything.

Pipework engineering is no problem whatsoever now youngest is a metalworker/fabricator. Will post pics of his home-made woodstove - a cyberpunk item of some beauty.
 
A further supply of applelets have arrived. Will poddle around collecting them tomorrow. Then have a look at pressing ...
 
I am now concerned that a chipper (which I have) is not the same as a shredder (has a flail as well as blades for shredding fibrous leafage)...and think the chopping will be the most crucial part of extracting juice, especially by centrifugal force...so looking at cheapo used woodshredder on Ebay (I got the spin dryer for 99p). Was considering a self build...but the press is considerably easier to make than a grinder...so might also end up buying a grinder and making a press if the spindryer doesn't extract enough juice.
The first windfalls are lying about the plot so time is of the essence.
 
I really don't remember what our machine did exactly, but it made everything dry into chips or moist into mulch for the garden and that spun quite successfully but must depend on the liquid content of apple varieties etc.

Thinking aloud, what about something like a waste disposal, that must grind pretty finely:
Insinkerator Kitchen Food Waste Disposal Unit Model 55 | eBay

One second hand with the sink still attached sounds hygienic and adaptable.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

dessiato
Cider/Perry making
Replies
17
Views
676
dessiato
dessiato
story
Coffee making accessories for the coffee wanker in your life
2 3 4
Replies
104
Views
3K
Happy Tree
Happy Tree
Maggot
Making your own kefir
Replies
14
Views
628
Maggot
Maggot
Riklet
Making a pork pie
Replies
8
Views
706
Riklet
Riklet
gentlegreen
Cheap label maker ?
Replies
4
Views
139
gentlegreen
gentlegreen
Back
Top Bottom