Cider Press

We've had a really good weekend, with a visit to my parents', time with Liz's, and some sorting at home. Being my birthday, there was also plenty of lovely food, and a few presents. My sister gave me some Nerines (Nerine bowdenii), my parents gave me a foraging book ("The Thrifty Forager" by Alys Fowler) and a bee hotel (which will go up in the copse soon). Liz and her parents joined forces to find me an apple press, which I've wanted for some time. It'll be a useful way of dealing with the apple glut, either as cider, or a bottled and pasteurized juice.

New 12l cider/apple press (© Ian 2012)

A couple of bags of cheap apples were ready for a first try-out: ten apples yielded about 500ml of juice, and very easily. It would actually be easier with more fruit—the pressing plate had to have a lot of spacers on top of it, because ten apples is a very small proportion of the press capacity. That said, the juice itself was delicious. It browned quickly (we hadn't added citric/ascorbic acid to the bucket), but that doesn't affect the flavour.

Roll on autumn!