Making cider and ciderkin

I've never made cider before, but now have a lot more apples than a body can handle solo -- or even with her true love!

Can anyone explain the process? When you say, "Windfall" apples, you mean, of course the ones that are on the ground. But how damaged/bruised/insect bitten can they be and still be usable?

Muller's loaned us a press, but Nick has to fab up a part so it will be usable. Hopefully, we'll be able to get back to The Farm one more weekend before our daughter's wedding, and clean up all those lovely, lovely apples.

Now I have to go process Asian Pears.

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Je ne suis pas Alice

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I personally will cut out bad spots (bruises/soft spots) on my windfall apples. Some people say not to use them due to bacterial count, but (and Mike can attest to this) the windfalls at "You Pick" type orchards are usually in good shape and not bruised at all. We picked up 20 some bushels a couple of years ago and they were as good as any apples you would be buying in the store.

But you have to make that decision... we've never had a problem.

We can our cider (a lot of people will freeze it for freshness) so I've never worried too much about it. And while it's fresh, I certainly don't worry about it. Check out Baldy's blog and mine for a better understanding of the actual pressing. Go to walmart and buy some of the nylon porous material and make bags for your press (that's what we do) at it works well. You can buy bags (well normal people with normal size presses can) but it's so easy to make them and so much cheaper I don't know why people would.

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Oh, pony, mix some of your pears in with your apple cider... it's DELICIOUS!

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Thanks, SS.

BTW, do you think the Asian pears will work as nicely as the Bartletts and other types?

I'm still researching recipes to can them. We have about 8 trees in full ripeness, and we were fighting off the wasps and the stupid (fill in the blank) asian lady beetles. Man! Those beetles bore into the fruit with gusto, and pile in on top of each other. Then the wasps come along and eat the fruit with the beetle "sprinkles" on them.

Ugh.

We're going to have a lot of clearing and cleaning up to do in that orchard! Hope we get there before the snow flies!

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We looked for obvious bad spots but a little knick or small brown spot was no big deal for us (i.e. we pressed almost everything except the really bad ones). We just composted the bad ones. Like seedspreader said, if you can it, it's not a big deal, though it is a risk I suppose if you drink it raw. We drank plenty raw and are still kicking but use your own judgement on that. We bought apples that were windfall or small or slightly bruised, etc and had no problems.

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My Home Among The Hills

I cut out the really bad spots but if it is only a little soft in a spot I don't worry about it. Because I use a cleaver to quarter the apples I can see if one is bad on the inside.

As Bob pointed out, the windfalls at a pick yourself can be rpetty nice. In fact, many of the Red Delicious apples looked so good that I was concerned they would say I was picking them off the trees.

I think I'm going to experiment with putting the pressing cloth in my 6 gallon buckets and then just filling filling them up, putting covers on, letting them sit and then going back and pressing later in the day or the next day. With multiple bags it should be real easy to just lift them up and set them in the press.

At the moment I only have one pressing bag though.

Mike

We used to make cider in boy scouts , you can make it with some pritty nasty looking appls tastes fine , many orchards at lease around here will only let you have windfalls for live stock or deer as every one is very concerned about ecoli , back in the 80s-early 90's we would use all wind falls for cider and give them a cood washing with a dash of bleach in the water then rinse again i don't recall our exact yeild.
the troop still does it but by the mid 90's they were picking the apples off the trees and testing for ecoli freezing the galons of cider kept them for a long time.

funny used to be most every one must of had a tolerance for ecoli , considering in the 19 century 90% of dust was manuer , in the 21 century they say 90% of dust is synthetic fibers , petrochemicals , and home cleaning chemicals

i know i have eaten ecoli , cause i saw the tests for the cider , as long as not more than a certain percentage of the cells floreced under a black light it was considered a a low enougth level to be save while still pressent , this was of cource after the apples were picked from the trees washed and all components were bleached that there would still be a very low concentration i can only imagine what it was when we were making cider with windfalls some with ants crawling out of them as we tossed them in the apple box

When I first made cider with an old girlfriend, we went up into her grandparents' pasture, dodging the horse crap all the way. Like you said GCPete, we tossed everything into the bucket and never died. I guess if we are all more sensitive to e.coli now, it's better not to tempt fate. Still, it was an awesome bit of fun and we never thought a bit about it. We stopped making it (together at least!) in about 1991 I think.

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My Home Among The Hills

I put up some more pics of the cider that we made and of the taste test. My blog address is in my signature if you want to check it out

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My Home Among The Hills

We took all the noise insulation covers off the disposal, and cut the apples into quarters or smaller. Once in awhile it does overheat, maybe once in 2 hours if I am not careful. I have learned to recognize the sound it makes when the motor is starting to overload, and if I quickly unjam the disposal--it is usually some apple chunks just spinning around, so I poke around in it with my wooden plunger--it doesn't overheat at all in a 2 or 3 hour long session of grinding and pressing.
We have a computer fan blowing on the disposal, too, which helps keep it cool, and I am planning on adding some fins cut from aluminum roof flashing material and held to the case of the motor with large hose clamps to see if that keeps it cooler.

WisJim,
How do you go about keeping the insides of the unit clean when you are all done? I mean, how do you ensure every last bit of stuff is out so you don't end up with a mess? Just curious. I may be interested in getting a similar setup

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My Home Among The Hills

Thanks Jim, I always thought of wrapping copper piping and running water around the electric motor and then continuing the copper piping to a washing station for the apples... but I don't know if I am that ambitious.

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I am thinking of finding the wringer off a wringer-washer and running my mash (pomace) through it after it goes out of the apple grinder.

I would like to keep it all manual and non-electric... but who knows when I run out of child labor that could change.

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I was looking at an old wringer washer when I was trying to build something to crush grapes. It turned out that the one I found had a coating on the rollers that would tend to flake off. So look it over real good before you use it.

Ok, so here's the question for all of you cider makers; How many gallons of juice will I get from 400 pounds of ground apples? I just started grinding and had to quit cause I ran out of buckets. Tommorow I will start grinding again after I start pressing. I am going to let the pulp set overnight to see if I gain any more juice. I hope the pulp continues to brown even though my buckets are airtight. One more question for you experienced cider makers; do you get a better pressing with a half full basket or a full one? I'll report back sometime tommorow.

on keeping the garbage disposal unit clean-- we just run a lot of water through it, unplug it, check it out and use a bottle brush inside, re-plug it in and run more water through it til it runs out clean. I spose a little soap and bleach would help sanitize further for when you store it away.
on overheating-- normally for disposal use in ones' sink, one runs water whilst running the unit. In addition to running a fan on the unit, after running a measured amount of apples through it, I removed the five gallon bucket from under the spout and put another five gallon bucket under the spout and ran about a gallon of cold water through the unit and shut it off whilst pressing out the cider. It only overheated on us once and while we were waiting for it to cool down, we used the food processor.
It seemed to work for us and we did two pick up loads of apples this week, with several families working together. We used a mix of apples--red & yellow delicious, honey crisp, Jonathon, Empires-- and some we didn't know the variety, but the squeezins are oh so good!
I don't really know how many gallons we got out of all that, I was only there for the first day, but that day after doing almost one pickup load, I know there was at least 30-49 gallons.

I assume that you mean the garbage disposal that we use to grind the apples. I hose it out good with water, holding my hand over the outlet so it fills with water then releasing it a couple of times, too. We found that running a tray of ice cubes through it cleans it out pretty well, too. Then we put the little cover thing back over the disposal opening until we use it again.

I have thought of that too, but we don't run the water that often when pressing apples, but I suspect that a slight trickle of water would do it, if you got the copper tubing bonded to the housing well enough. There are some conductive epoxies that might be worth considering.
Or maybe getting a bigger commercial disposal would be the solution, but I like the idea of the $100+ disposal available at the local hardware store.