apple squeezing

Gray has Full Tilt tattooed on his knuckles. It is appropriate for some of the activities we partake in including a recent round of apple cider pressing.

Gray, Noel, and the current WWOOFers Liz and Tanya gathered apples from our tree, loading up a couple of giant coolers. From there the apples went to a neighbor’s shop and into a janky old cider press. Our neighbor Kathryn started everything off with a quick wash down of the press.

The press is another neighbor’s (Ned) machine. He told that he bought it for $300 thirty years ago. According to a handy inflation calculator, that would be about $800 today. Oh, and it was used when he bought it, so who knows what it originally cost.

Ned oversaw the first few rounds of pressing, staying just long enough to collect a quart of raw cider.

Gray did most of the first pressings, and I took over after that. In the humidity and falling sun, the work was sweatier than it would be in the Fall when folks are pressing their storage apples. Along with all the grass clippings, twigs, bugs and leaves that ended up in the press, I’m sure we added a few drops of sweat during the work.

The way the press works is pretty basic. You load the hopper, a motor drives some metal plates together and crushes the apples into an open wooden bucket. The bucket is made up of spaced slats of wood. The full bucket is moved down to the press, which is cranked down onto the apples. The juice runs down into a small container at the end of the press.

From there the cider is filtered, the smashed up apples removed from the press and the process started over again.

I think we did about 25 gallons that night, finishing up after the light of the day had been and gone.

By then it was time to drink up some samples and head back home.