Apple Cider using real apples and cider press - help needed.

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Peapodmaster

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I have been making turbo cider for a few weeks now and have decided to make cider from scratch. Apples and a press. but i am encountering a few problems.

1. i have little ammount of apples but i am getting some off a friend. am i able to use apples and a little bit of apple juice (from supermarkets)
2. i don't have a press (which is obviously one of the biggest problems). is there any substitute i can use for it ?
3. i dont have a pulper.

i have thought of something but i'm not sure if it'll work. could i pulp apples in a juice untill its all just juice. then use that ? will that work ? if not could i blend the apples untill its pulpy. then put a slab of plastic ontop and put weights ontop of it/stand on it ?

Cheers

Andy
 
you could use a normal kitchen juicer - but if you've got a lot of apples it'd take ages, and you do tend to have to squeeze more juice from the leftover pulp (wring out through a clean tea towel).
You can pulp them quite easily the following way: wash apples to remove mud, dirt, leaves, etc. cut into halves or quarters, discard any rotten parts. place in a large bucket. bash with a length of wood (for a small bucket a rolling pin might work, for a larger one, something like a small diameter fence post).
juice extraction from pulp can be tricky without a juicer. people have used spin driers, with good effect. ideally you need to do it quickly enough to avoid excess oxidation, so you could make several 'cheeses' (a layer of apple pulp wrapped in muslin, or net curtain) on top of each other seperated by a layer of laticed wood (to allow juice to flow), with some really heavy weights on top (3 people), all this on top of a suitably sturdy container to capture the liquid, and the ability to transfer to a DJ/FV fairly easily.

as you can tell, if you're doing a large enough quantity, it's definitely worth investing in (or making) a scratter and press.

I've nearly finished making my own, and I intend to lend/hire it out to people in the local area, who have apples/pears that normally just go to waste.

hope this helps.

[edit to add] - if you have a few friends interested, you can obtain more apples, and hire a scratter and press for a day, make a larger amount of juice to share the cost, and fun amongst the friends.
 
Cheers for the reply so fast! so, if i blend my apples then use the juice i get and put it in my bucket, and then any big bits i got left i can smash up in a bucket with a piece of wood/weight of a few people (could using my feet and stamping on it work (if i was my feet very well ;) ))

how much would a scatterer and a press cost though to hire? i live in cornwall (pretty remote) and not near devon, right down the bottom in penzance (to make it worse!)

Cheers

Andy
 
I did not have any apples, but have a press, So I put a Wanted ad on Freecycle and got 3 people offering me apples. So I went and collected em all :)
I purchased a pulpmaster £30 , I think someone with a welding rod could bang these out for a couple £s, But I got it now.
I ended up with 5 gallons of the stuff :thumb:

and today got an email of one of the nice people telling me they have a load more for me :clap:
 
i live in the middle of brum a millon miles away from any cider orchards. what we do is when we are given the nod we have a day out to grandmas house which is right next door to someone we know with a proper field sized orchard full of lots of lovely trees with tons of fruit that rots away unused
we normaly take our small trailer with us its four foot long three foot wide and three foot tall and after filling it up to the very top we then fill the car boot with other buckets of soft fruits, mostly plums and pears and elderberries

now dont forget you should realy use only cider apples for cider as they have a stronger acid content to them but a 40% of eaters and a 50% cookers and 10% crabs will get you on your way if there are no cider trees near by, try asking around at the local farms, some ones grand dad has normaly planted one once some where.

to proccess the apples when we get home its a simple case of buckets to carry them around to the back of the house a hose pipe in the buckets to wash the muck off and then whole they are fed into my brought from new sole use garden tree branch shredder, just make sure you have a rcd fitted for safety reasons.

once out and in the bucket it is them taken via the bucket to the son with a large electric drill with a tool station plasterers paddle mixer in it, this turns the apple chips into mush like a big blender, half a bucket load at a time goes into home made course hessian bags like pillow cases, the drill will blend apples from whole but it takes a lot longer to do .

from there they are dropped into my home made apple press this is a large gas cylinder with the top cut off, this has two upright one each side made from metal with a very strong cross piece, each bag is seperated with a ply wood disk and when full a 15 ton hydraulic bottle jack is stuffed up its backside and right old rodgering goes off,, 10 mins later we have 5 gallon of apple juice, a third goes for wine, another third for cider and the last third goes in the freezer for the family as apple juice, we save it in empty milk containers, i would up load some pictures but it means having to be forced to jion another website thingy to upload pictures etc etc etc and i cant be botherd
 
Some very good advice, thankyou! there is an apple orchid near my old School, i think i'll be allowed to get some if i ask the school for permission.. they only ever get used for food fights!! i believe that i will be making myself a pulp press at home, and can make myself a machine to pulp the apples.

Cheers for the advice

Andy.
 

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