Day of all things Apple

Our friends, Saul and Noel, recruited us to crush and press apples this year with a promise of 10 gallons of cider for fermenting. I don't think we really understood how much work the process involved.* We showed up around 9 (thinking we were early) and discovered a lot had already been done and hadn't seemed to have made that much of a dent in the bags of apples chilling on the back porch, so we got to work, rotating through jobs as they became tedious or something else needed doing more immediately.

Some of the apples


Removing the flower



Throughout the day other friends and family members stopped by to chip in and drink freshly pressed juice. The crusher/press that we used is a family heirloom, that Saul borrowed from his uncle. Who purchased it sometime in the seventies when the family owned an orchard. It worked like a charm.

Apples in the hopper


Pre-Press Crushed Apples


Going to town on the crushing


The bee volume was wild--they kept drowning themselves in the fresh press bucket (2.5 gallons) and getting stuck in the cheese cloth we used to keep the apple pieces in the press barrel. They were so ubiquitous that none of us even contemplated the possibility of getting stung, resulting in Optimus and Saul's brother getting stung within minutes of each other after flippantly grabbing pieces of cheese cloth with bees trapped inside. Even with the extra hands it was 8:30-9ish before we sat down in a daze to consume pizzas and admire the jugs of fermenting brews.

*Process in it's entirety:
1. Cleaning the apples
2. Removing the flower from each apple, and cutting away any rotted or pest damaged bit
3. Crushing
4. Pressing
5. Pasteurizing
6. Adding fermentables (sugars, malt, etc.)
7. Transferring to carboy
8. Pitching yeast

We made four batches and had an additional 15 gallons or so of cider left over, a giant mound of apple pulp and scores of dead bees when it was all said and done.