Apple Cider Time

So it has finally come, the moment we have been waiting for since we first named our homestead Cider Brook!  Yes, indeed, we have made our own apple cider!

 

Well, truthfully, this was a couple of weeks ago.  We ended up doing two batches of cider, one with fresh apples and one with frozen apples.  I only managed to take pictures of the fresh apples batch because it was the first batch we did, and there was much less of it to do compared to the frozen apples.

In order to make cider, you need two things: a way to soften the cells in the apples, and a cider press.  Traditionally, you grind you apples with a fruit grinder, which is a menacing looking device with a big funnel on top to throw the apples into and a big crank to make the grinder teeth go round and round.  Since we didn't know if we would enjoy making cider or not, we kept things as cheap as possible this year.  We bought the cheapest metal cider press we could find that made about a gallon of cider at a time, and we skipped the grinder altogether.  Instead, we used a much older idea for making cider, which is to freeze your apples.  This only worked for us because we have so much freezer space, as we ended up freezing about two bushels of apples from our trees as they became available. 

 But to test our cider press, I thought we would try fresh apples from my neighbor's trees. 

 

 

 

I heard that you could use your food processor to shred the apples as a way of grinding, and as I just got one of those this summer, I thought I'd try that idea out.  I had about a peck of apples for this first run.  I put my shredding disc into the processor and got to work.

 

 

It took me about an hour to shred all of those apples, but it would have taken less time if I didn't need to cut bad spots out.  Working with wild apples can be a little frustrating sometimes.

 This is what I had when I was done.  The brown apples don't look so appealing, but that's what you want with cider.  It's what gives it that special cider flavor!

 Then off to the cider press!  Chad had screwed the feet down to some plywood sheets that we then stood on, so that as we turned the handle to press the apples, the machine wouldn't twist with it.

 

It's just a little guy and can only hold about two or three gallons of apples in it at a time.  But it works!

 

 

What surprised me most was that it's not hard to turn the handle.  The trickiest part of cider making is that you need a lot of patience.  Once the handle starts feeling tight like you can't turn it again, you have to wait.  In a couple of minutes, the apples are ready to give you more cider, and then you turn until it's tight again wait some more.  Turn, wait, turn, wait.  About half of the cider from a batch comes from the part where you're waiting.

The cider is delicious.  The fresh cider was better overall, but most of that is because the apples used were sweeter and better suited for cider.  It's all about using the right apples!  

After pressing for several hours, we ended up with about five gallons of cider!  We drank a lot, gave some to the kindly neighbor that let us pick her trees, and canned the rest of it.  We ended up with 14 quarts of apple cider in the pantry.

Our home is now truly Cider Brook!  And we'll have lots of cider to enjoy through the winter.

Velvet decided he was the official cider press inspector and has fully approved our press. 

 Dorian on the other hand was no help at all on cider day.