I was very lucky to find an apple press at an estate sale this summer. It is a refurbished antique 1872 Whitman’s Americus. The price made me groan a little, but, we are very anxious to make cider now. We scheduled a small get-together at our house to pick apples and try out the “new-to-us” press. On Saturday our daughter & grandkids and friends helped pick 12 gallons of apples (2 five-gallon buckets of Macintosh & 2 gallons of Honeycrisp). 12 gallons of apples made 3 gallons of delicious cider.
We have to wash the apples and at least cut them in half or quarters. Everything has to be clean.
The catch bucket is lined with mesh to keep seeds and apple chunks inside and out of the juice. Then a bucket full of apples is poured into the hopper as another person starts to turn the gear that mashes them. By the way, turning this is a great form of aerobic exercise.
Next, we move the bucket of mashed apples to sit under the press mechanism. The mesh has to be folded over and a board cover is put on top. Then another piece of wood is placed between the descending press metal and the cover over the pulp.
Pressing starts with turning the wheel by hand till it gets hard to do. Then there is a piece of wood that looks kind of like a baseball bat, to help leverage it down tight in the end. This is another great form of aerobics.
The juice is absolutely delicious! There were three gallons of cider to split between us and what little pulp is left was dry and will be great in our compost. Actually, we put it on the ground and found many, many deer eating in the middle of the night when the dog was barking. By morning, the pile was gone. Totally gone, without a trace.
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