Does anyone make apple cider?

[mjarrels]

My moms side of the family has been in the cider business since 1929 (hail storm damaged the crop) so grandad bought a cider press. Murray cide mill in Cloverdale Va. produces over a million gallons a year. Always had fresh cider as a kid.

mark

 

[oldtractors]

This is how a friend does it. Three apple presses with two of them powered by steam engines. We usually make over 100 gallons of cider during the 1 day apple pressing party.

 

[Jstpssng]

Never made it. We buy it from a local orchard in season. His is not pasteurized. He is required by law to tell us it isn't. So maybe you'd be required by law to tell yourself if yours is or isn't pasteurized!

Out of season we buy it from the store and it is all pasteurized.

Pasteurization concerns around here arose from E Coli. Most of the risk is caused by picking up 'drops", which may have been contaminated by deer and other animal feces. If you squeeze apples off the tree there shouldn't be a problem.

However, if it's cold pasteurized it doesn't seem to affect the flavor.

 

[MossRoad]

This is how a friend does it. Three apple presses with two of them powered by steam engines. We usually make over 100 gallons of cider during the 1 day apple pressing party.

I want to be that guy's neighbor!

 

[MossRoad]

Pasteurization concerns around here arose from E Coli. Most of the risk is caused by picking up 'drops", which may have been contaminated by deer and other animal feces. If you squeeze apples off the tree there shouldn't be a problem.

However, if it's cold pasteurized it doesn't seem to affect the flavor.

Which brings up another question....
How does cold pasteurization work? The act of pasteurization raises the temperature of the product enough to kill the bugs. How do they do that cold?

 

[dmccarty]

This is how a friend does it. Three apple presses with two of them powered by steam engines. We usually make over 100 gallons of cider during the 1 day apple pressing party.

Now that is Tractor overkill! LOVE IT!

I too want to be his neighbor!

Later,
Dan

 

[forgeblast]

cold pasturization is using radiation to kill the bugs.
Food irradiation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are chemicals you can add that will kill the bugs, you can run the cider through a uv light (we have one on our well inlet) that will kill the bugs with no heat or chemicals, or you can heat and boil the bugs.

 

[RobertN]

My local brew shop only carries two champagne yeast. The less attenuative one leaves a sweet finish. I use minimal bottling sugar, like half of what you'd use for the same amount of beer. Like between 1/3 and 1/2 cup. Never had any problems. Kegging would be nice, but I drink a lot less cider than beer, and like to give some as gifts.

The main problem I've had with cider is in getting a semi-sweet carbonated version. Even with beer yeast, when I do bottle conditioning I have to catch the fermentation before it goes completely dry by putting the bottles in the frig.

 

[Chuck52]

Robert,

What kind of alcohol content are you shooting for when you use the champagne yeast to bottle condition and get a sweet carbonated cider? I always assumed the champagne yeats would keep chugging along until at least 10%, even for the less attenuative variety. Heck, some beer yeasts are happy above 10%. Though I have added some sugar to my ciders, I am still usually looking for more-or-less beer strength.

Chuck

 

[RobertN]

I have to look at my records. I think it was 10-11%

Robert,

What kind of alcohol content are you shooting for when you use the champagne yeast to bottle condition and get a sweet carbonated cider? I always assumed the champagne yeats would keep chugging along until at least 10%, even for the less attenuative variety. Heck, some beer yeasts are happy above 10%. Though I have added some sugar to my ciders, I am still usually looking for more-or-less beer strength.

Chuck

 

[dmccarty]

FINALLY!

I created a spreadsheet a few years ago that contains a list of apples and their characteristics.

Finally found the file.

My list says that Arkansas Black, McIntosh, Staymen Winesap, and Granny Smith's are resistant to Cedar Rust.

There is a man in my county who wrote a book on old Southern Apples. He is now retired but he just had a tour of his orchard which I signed up to do but a family issue kept me from going. There is another man in Caswell County, NC who is raising these old apple trees. His website is Century Farm Orchards: Apple Tree Nursery The website has some good information. We have been talking about planting some dwarf trees for years but the hard part was finding the apple trees we wanted as well as having the space but this guy has the trees we want.

The website says the following apple varieties are resistant to Ceder Rust.

"Old Fashioned Winesap, Blacktwig, Va. Beauty, Stayman, Mary Reid, Kinnaird's Choice, Arkansas Black, Enterprise, Liberty, Old Fashioned Limbertwig, Aunt Rachel. Some of these are not good polliators, so you might want to get a couple of Va. Golds or Grimes Golden to help them produce apples."

I am gong to attach my spreadsheet in case anyone wants it. I need to update it based on the information on the mentioned website. I created the spreadsheet from just reading about the varieties from a bunch of different sources. No one source had the information. The spreadsheet was created in Open Office which is a free software package that runs on quite a few operating systems. The file had to be zipped to attached it to TBN.

Later,
Dan

 

[moeh1]

St Lawrence nursery also grows old varieties that will survive cold weather. I've had a pretty good success rate with them.

 

[forgeblast]

Cornell University has a huge apple farm, they are working on a bunch of varites with different resistances. I would also check out trees of antiquity, Trees of Antiquity They have write ups of all the different apples.
I am using Cummins Nursery to buy 5 goldrush and 5 enterprise as part of my CRP planting that will begin in the spring.
Cummins Nursery | Home Page I found that cummins nursery to be very knowlegable and very willing to work with me to find the trees that would do best on my soil type.

the enterprise is a Tree that is spreading and vigorous. Immune to scab, resistant to fire blight and cedar apple rust, moderately resistant to mildew.

the goldrush is Field immune to scab, highly resistant to powdery mildew, susceptible to cedar-apple rust, moderately resistant to fire blight.

I wanted trees that would be as low spray as possible.

btw, for cidermakers, there is through wyeast (a yeast company) a seasonal cider yeast that they make.

 

[rootytoot]

We make hard cider. We've been doing it for a couple of years, and have had only one batch turn out as 'scrumpy' (I'll drink even the scrumpy, but my wife won't). Usually we use apples from our own orchard, which are a varied lot of big and small, sweet and not so sweet. We dunk them in dilute bleach water, rinse them in a clear water, and grind/press them in a Happy Valley Ranch press (like the one you can buy from Lehman's). I usually get about 10 gallons going each fall; this year I went in on a portion of a box of apples (600 lbs!), and so have 17 gallons going.

I put the juice in a 5 gallon carboy that I've rinsed out with a Campden solution, along with a packet of champagne yeast and a couple spoons of yeast nutrient (I get it at the beer store; it's not sugar, but rather minerals or vitamins or something). Some people put a Campden tablet in the carboy to kill the wild yeast, but I've usually relied on clean processing and luck.

We let it ferment until it stops bubbling (a few weeks), then rack it off into a clean carboy. It usually sits in the second carboy anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months; I'm not usually in a big rush. It was interesting to read another comment in this thread about letting some sort of malo-lactic conversion take place; I had not heard of that.

We bottle into the reusable (Grolsch-type) bottles. Ours are 16 ounce, about right for two people to drink up before bed in the winter. We put in a half teaspoon of sugar in each bottle when we bottle; this is enough to give a little 'pop' when we open it a couple of weeks later, but not so much as to create a lot yeast solids in the bottle. I really enjoy our cider. It's not very alcoholic, but it's pleasant to drink with a slice of home-made bread in the winter.

Annie Proulx has a very detailed book on cider making.

 

[Jstpssng]

Cornell University has a huge apple farm, they are working on a bunch of varites with different resistances. I would also check out trees of antiquity, Trees of Antiquity They have write ups of all the different apples.
I am using Cummins Nursery to buy 5 goldrush and 5 enterprise as part of my CRP planting that will begin in the spring.
Cummins Nursery | Home Page I found that cummins nursery to be very knowlegable and very willing to work with me to find the trees that would do best on my soil type.

the enterprise is a Tree that is spreading and vigorous. Immune to scab, resistant to fire blight and cedar apple rust, moderately resistant to mildew.

the goldrush is Field immune to scab, highly resistant to powdery mildew, susceptible to cedar-apple rust, moderately resistant to fire blight.

I wanted trees that would be as low spray as possible.

btw, for cidermakers, there is through wyeast (a yeast company) a seasonal cider yeast that they make.

Here's another good source for antique apples, up in our neck of the woods.Fedco Trees catalog listing

They don't have dwarf trees though; and most of their trees are on standard rootstock. This is because the trees will live longer, and someday your grandkids kids can enjoy them.

 

[zeuspaul]

I modified a 20 ton shop press that I got at Harbor Freight for under $200. It is a rack and cloth press.

I make the mush in a food processor.

I get most of my apple trees from Greenmantle Nursery I get the bench grafts which are about two inches tall on standard root stock but you can specify dwarfing rootstocks too. After one year the trees are three to four feet tall. After three years I start getting apples. Tree and shipping costs are a lot less for bench grafts. If you want a lot of trees it will save you a bunch of money. Also the selection is rather large.

Zeuspaul

 

[peckfarm]

I'll post some pics of our rack and clothe press. We make about 150 gallons of hard cider every year. The trick is clean apples and monitoring the sulfur content and increasing to kill existing bugs and yeast. Than after a day use a nice cultured yeast. Any brew store will have good yeasts to use most often the Redstar yellow is used. We like the Lalvin K1-V1116 or Killer 1 as well. Remember that oxygen is the enemy so keep it air-locked and pour into in CO2 flooded containers if possible. The best apples for hard cider are not good apples for eating. Bitter, sour, dry and ugly make the best. Some people say that the "hard" in hard cider does not refer to the alcohol but rather the hardness of the little apples used to make it. If you want a sweet product eliminating all yeast in the racking process is necessary so that added sugar does not ferment. If you like a dry product that is fizzy then ferment until there is no sugar and at bottling add about 2/3 cup of sugar for every 5 gallons. Careful though, it will pop about like champagne. Wow so much to write... Annie Proulx wrote a great book about cider making a long time ago. Even though she has since written some horrible garbage, the "Cider and Cider Making" book is well worth it.

 

[peckfarm]

Wife's toes on the 4310 looking at the cider operation...

 

[Duffster]

Wife's toes on the 4310 looking at the cider operation...

Nice toes. LOL

Anymore picture of the cider press?