Apple cider anyone?

[tcreeley]

We have about 21 wild apple trees growing about the place. They look like Joyce apples- a cross of Macintosh and Liveland raspberry (1923 Ontario). Being wild- there are a few trees that may be original, but the majority are volunteers. For the most part they are delicious, tart, good green or ripe.
We bought a cider press last June and a grinder of sorts to turn them into pulp. All hand labor. I'm finding that 2 1/2 five gallon pails of apples gives us about 2 gallons of cider.
We use them from the tree and drops as well. We don't spray so I'm using a knife to clean up any I don't like if I don't discard it.
Tomorrow I'm doing some more- have two pails waiting for me. While I'm at it I have 3-5 bees zipping around attracted by the sweetness. They aren't a problem. They are not bothered by what I do - just want the apples.
I've always been a cider lover and making my own is great. Tastes very good. It keeps in the refrigerator 10 days without a problem. The taste changes but gets almost deeper and tastier.
I used a quart of cider in a crockpot of cut apples (sugar, cinnamon) to make some apple butter. Two days of cooking. Only got 2 1/2 pints. Two I canned and the left over I am eating on bread.
I much prefer this over what I can buy!
I don't pasteurize the cider. I don't use preservatives. All organic and good!
Anybody else making cider?

 

[4570Man]

We have made some before. We froze most of it to prevent it from fermenting.

 

[Garandman]

Whadja get for a press and grinder? We've got two well established trees and one coming in.

 

[DFB]

Interesting you can freeze fresh cider (but you can't use frozen apples to make cider )

At my outdoor market the old fellow set up next to me deals in all kind of collectibles and each time he has a cider press to sell, it always does and usually quick too.

There is a good friend of mine that I went to high school with and he heads one of the municipal departments here in town. He throws a Fall party every year and does fresh cider for the folks that come. Usually gets ten 40lb bushels at time.

Cider apples used to be pretty cheap but we now get big bucks for them down at the orchard. They are normally the culls from the commercial sorting operation that don't meet grade (usually just size or color though some bruising is ok) . We don't use cut or otherwise damaged ones for cider apples. People always ask to pick up drops as we have thousands of them under 50 acres of trees at this time of year. But the GAP program we adhere to does not allow ground picking of dropped apples because of the risk of e coli contamination thru animal feces.

There has been a lot of fresh cider promotion in culinary and agricultural circles lately. Different apples especially heirloom varieties can make ciders with interesting tastes.

This year we have had to take apples straight from the trees beyond our sorting operation for cider pressing because the demand has been so high for cider. We are having to press more than one day a week now to keep up with that too.


Heat pasteurization is like old tech, most places are using a UV treatment process now. We switched over last year to UV.

Cider can still ferment with UV it seems.

 

[Jstpssng]

Have you tried running your apples through a meat grinder before pressing? , I haven't had any yet this year, I need to go down to Conant's in Etna before they close. Enough for the freezer, and also to attempt a couple gallons of hard cider.
It's been a good year for apples, I had planned to haul a bunch down to Albian where they will press them, but it's too far.

Pasturization is to kill off the E.Coli and other bugs, you need to add a preservative (ascorbic acid) to keep it from fermenting.
Trouble is that it also affects the taste.

 

[tcreeley]

I pressed two buckets of our wild apples today, Close to two gallon- haven't done anything with it yet - just clean up. I have a sold bucket of pulp left after pressing. I filled the slatted wood hopper right to the top with pulp to start with. Pressed down just below the 1/2 way point.

I am new to all of this. I wanted a wooden vintage press- but too pricey. I bought through Amazon and Ebay. I like the screw press. Everything is screwed down to the bench so I can exert pressure without tipping anything.

Frozen cider is good. I even have 4 quarts I canned in September - cooking or drinking- we'll see.

 

[DFB]

I was always under the impression that you couldn't use a pasteurized cider to create hard cider. Most people that come to us would only buy the fresh. We did cider both ways before, now it is all UV treated. I would need to double check to see if we added any ascorbic acid with our old pasteurization setup...I do know we are not adding anything to cider now.

Untreated stuff would blow up in the bottle in 2 weeks even in the apple coolers at work and faster it was warmer, like being left out on the truck all day.
The supermarket stuff and our hot water pasteurized never did that.
Just went bad with taste after while usually after month or so.

We had to buy a refrigerator van to meet GAP and local health code requirements for transporting UV treated cider to stores for our commercial accounts. Can't break the cold chain. Of course if a business customer personally picks up their sale from our cold storage it is out of our hands after that. Buyer beware

I still had a empty container untreated and labeled from before we switched over...then I found a jug from the supermarket I had gotten sometime after we shut down cider making. The market stuff was fully pasteurized and potassium sorbate was added as a freshness preservative only. I can get a current UV label when I go back to the orchard on Tuesday.

I find this all interesting making a hard cider is an art and it is all the new rage thru out many of Vermont's micro brewers now.

 

[CobyRupert]

Seems that UV treated would kill all live organisms, you would just have to add the right kind back in for them to eat the sugar and poop alcohol. No sterilizing preservative left behind.

I freeze a lot of it, just need to shake it up when you thaw it as the water can separate from the sugar and the fine pulp.

IMO, cider's best when there's still sugar in it yet some has started to turn to alcohol and carbonization.

I wonder if freezing kills any organisms, or do they just rejuvenate from some suspended animation when thawed?

 

[tcreeley]

-Both Amazon:

Amazon.com: Weston Apple and Fruit Crusher: Hand Juicers: Kitchen & Dining

Amazon.com: TSM Products TSM Harvest Fruit and Wine Press, 18-Liter: Home Brewing And Wine Making Equipment: Kitchen & Dining

Look at youtube to see cider being made.

 

[TomSeller]

I've made a lot of cider with an old fashioned press. The pulp goes to the cows and most of the cider goes in the freezer. Every time I crank down on the press, I keep thinking I should find a high strength bucket and use the vertical wood splitter to squeeze the pulp. May not even need to grind the apples if you pick when good and ripe.

 

[DuckSlayer1017]

There is an old dairy farmer near us that has a large scale press he operates for the public. I have seen people come with a pickup full of apples and they are in and out in a half hour. He will press your apples for $0.75/gallon and also will sell you new gallon milk jugs for a few cents if you need any. He has a great setup. There is a covered area where you drive up and unload your apples onto a conveyor that washes the apples before moving them into a grinder. After the grinder the apples are put into some heavy duty cloth on top of a large, heavy stainless steel pan and steel frame. The apples and cloth are layered between boards until the press is full or the customer runs out of apples. Each layer is about 10" thick and the press can handle a stack about 4' high and each layer is about 3'x3' square. Once the press is full they stack a few timbers on top of the stack of the ground apples and then a hydraulic ram presses the apples. The cider goes into a large stainless tank and then you fill your jugs. The farmer uses the apple mash to feed the cows so it's a win/win for everyone. He does require at least 5 bushels of apples, but that isn't really too hard to come by. We usually throw in a few pears for every bushel, they really make the cider sweet.

 

[Jstpssng]

You guys are right, I'm getting my terms confused here. the recipe I have for making hard cider says that if it isn't pastuerised you should heat it up to kill all of the wild yeast before adding your own.(I tried it without heating it last year, with disasterous results.) It's the potassium sorbate that adds a bitter flavor.

 

[MarkF48]

You guys are right, I'm getting my terms confused here. the recipe I have for making hard cider says that if it isn't pastuerised you should heat it up to kill all of the wild yeast before adding your own.(I tried it without heating it last year, with disasterous results.) It's the potassium sorbate that adds a bitter flavor.

Yeah, first year doing it and I did a batch without pasteurizing and it was a major fail. Next batch came out good and we froze a good bit of it. This was an excellent year for apples. We had so many just off one tree we were giving away bags of apples to friends.

 

[4570Man]

Whadja get for a press and grinder? We've got two well established trees and one coming in.

We used a electric wood chipper purchased from a thrift store for $30 We sterilized it before and after use. That was a few years ago and nobody got sick.

 

[mjarrels]

My moms family runs a cider mill, started back in about 1920 when a hail storm damaged the apple crop. Murray cider mill produces about a million gallons a year and is avaible at many fine grocrey stores.

mark

 

[dmccarty]

You guys are right, I'm getting my terms confused here. the recipe I have for making hard cider says that if it isn't pastuerised you should heat it up to kill all of the wild yeast before adding your own.(I tried it without heating it last year, with disasterous results.) It's the potassium sorbate that adds a bitter flavor.

If you just use what ever yeast happens to be in the air and/or on the fruit, you could get hard cider or apple vinegar. If you kill off the natural yeast with heat or UV you can then add the known yeast to produce hard cider. If you have to buy fresh cider and it has preservatives added, it is not likely to turn hard if you add yeast. The preservatives are added to keep the cider from turning to vinegar or alcohol.

Later,
Dan

 

[tcreeley]

Yeah, first year doing it and I did a batch without pasteurizing and it was a major fail. Next batch came out good and we froze a good bit of it. This was an excellent year for apples. We had so many just off one tree we were giving away bags of apples to friends.

How do you like your ratchet press? I thought abougt getting that one! I like your wood hooper!. I'm always reaching in to un-stick apples unless they are small going in! Somebody on youtube rigged an electric motor to his and the apples just disappeared.
..................
I thought about hard cider- glad to learn about the wild yeast and pasteurising it.

 

[MNBobcat]

You don't have to pasteurize as your cider won't fail because you didn't pasteurize. The blowing up in the bottles is because if you don't kill the yeast it will continue to ferment. That's actually how you can carbonate cider. You just have to be careful not to add too much sugar.

Pasteurization is to kill bacteria that could make you sick. But I suspect that is pretty rare.

I picked up 67 gallons of fresh pressed apple juice last weekend.

 

[DFB]

The gases have to escape when turning cider so the bottles cant be sealed tight.


Apple cider vinegars are popular at farmers markets

 

[MNBobcat]

The gases have to escape when turning cider so the bottles cant be sealed tight.


Apple cider vinegars are popular at farmers markets

The bottles can be sealed tight if you ferment down to a low sugar content and the fermenting has mostly stopped. I bottled over a 100 bottles with sealed tops and didn't have any problems. Also, you need to store the cider in the refrigerator. The cold will keep it from going into malolactic fermentation.