The press I made is made so that I can grind the apples into one
basket while pressing juice from the other. Anyway, the press is made
from some leftover pine 4×4’s, wood from an old pallet, the largest
threaded rod I could find with a nut welded on the end. and a few
other odds ‘n ends wooden and metal parts. The pressing tubs are just
3/4 inch pine lumber I cut and held together with copper coated
plumbers tape… the stuff they hang pipes to joists with, and screwed
together with SS screws, (admittedly a little light duty for the job.
They were sized so that I could use old pillow cases to contain the
pomace in. I used the threaded rod instead of a fancy jackscrew
because it was a lot cheaper. I just turn the rod with a wrench
rather than the fancy setups a lot of jackscrews have.

The first apple grinder I made was just a wooden box with a laminated
wooden cylinder inside that was mounted on a shaft driven by an old
electric motor. I trued up the cylinder with a router and screwed
some heavy stainless screws into it. The thinking was that the screw
heads would shred the apples. The problem with this theory, is that
the grinder didn’t grind finely enough and it took too much pressure
to get a reasonable amount of cider from the apples.

My solution was to buy a new garbage disposal and to use that to grind
the apples. I made a prototype setup to test the theory and it
worked so well, i never got around to making a more user friendly
setup. The only note is that it works best if I cut the apples in
half before sending them thru the garbage disposal. It grinds the
apples so finely, you don’t really need a press, I think you could
just hang the pomace over a bucket and a lot of the juice would just
seep out…

All the wooden parts that come in contact with the juice were coated
with a couple coats of polyurethane. They make a nice epoxy coat
designed for this sort of thing… but my press doesn’t get that much
use, and so far the poly has held up fine. As far as the wiring… if
you make something like this, do as I say.. not as I do, you should
use GCFI’s because of all the liquids….

Jim

No Comments »

Had a fun year with hops and cider. First year for the hops, had 8 plants and yielded 26 oz of dried hops.

Rebuilt a old apple press, this thing worked great.  We squeezed 50 gallons of apple cider and 8 gallons of pear cider.

Currently have 5 gallons of Hard cider fermenting and 4 gallons of hard pear cider “perry”. This time I did not add any sugar and used ale yeast.

Notice I use little people for all the hard labor.

A few asked for the last cider recipe.

• 5 gallons fresh squeezed apple cider (original gravity 1.045)
• 3 pounds brown sugar
• Red Star Cote des Blancs dry wine yeast
• 2.5 tsp. potassium sorbate
• Heat 4 gallons cider & sugar 165 degrees 20 min
• Cool & pitch yeast (starting gravity 1.080)
• Ferment 4 weeks 70 degrees (finish gravity 1.000)
• Back sweeten with last gallon of cider & add potassium sorbate

Curt

No Comments »

Jim’s job has some perks! He said “drinking in Belgium” I say “pic or it didn’t happen” Guess what! he sent a pic.

---

Not to rub it in… but here is a pic of me drinking a Westvleteren 12… once voted to be the best beer in the world.  You have to go to the abbey to get it, at least legitimately,( there is supposedly a black market).   Anyway,  I had to travel 4 hours by train today for 3 beers. …  Worth it….

Jim

2 Comments »