The apples are starting to fall so it's time to make use of them. Has anyone any recommendations for types of apple press to make or buy?
I haven't tried making cider before. There's loads of info on line but some hints from those that have would be useful ...
The press isn't the problem. It's mincing the apples.
spend £500 on a top class crusher and press and then enjoy.
Tried a small screw one a few years back, to make any real progress the apples needed to be fairly well pulped first, I used a clean almost new garden shredder but the juice will not do any aluminium parts any good if it is not rinsed off. It wasn't worth doing really . The press is in the back of one of the sheds somewhere, if I was really interested in doing it a larger one would make it worthwhile for not much more effort but as it is there are a couple of local producers around here and it's easier to get some from them as required.
G.Harman
Tried it decades ago but small scale apple juicing is a lot of work for very little return.
Tried the apple wine methid of crushing them a bit then fermenting in a bucket but this didn't work well.
Ended up stewing them in a huge pan to break them down and then putting them in a brewing bucket to make apple wine.
This worked really well apart from the wine having a dark amber colour. Didn't care because it tasted good.
These days home brewing and wine making is too much effort when you can buy decent stuff cheaply in the supermarket.
Cheers
Dave R
The suggestion someone gave me this weekend was to quarter the apples, freeze and defrost them and then press them.
Too true.
Chap I work with freezes them whole and then presses them, it seems to work fine but his son operates the press and screws it down far more than I could.
The ice crystals rupture the cell walls which makes them crush more easily .
Despite working with trees I still don't manage to get many usable apples of my tree as it suffers from codling moth and brown rot/blossom wilt such that the fruit all falls prematurely .
I'm tempted to pull the blossoms off for a couple of years to see if I can break the cycle of infestation.
AJH
I don't know if this works (a gardener in the pub told me, so good provenance!): in Autumn, rake up all the leaves water the area under and around the tree with diluted Jeyes Fluid; repeat about the time that blossom starts to form use a physical barrier of grease trap on the trunk.
Not sure if Jeyes is still available - seems too useful to be permitted nowadays.
Grease band the trunks?
Cue Chris Hogg but don't the Codlin Moth have to crawl up the trunk to lay their eggs?
My local ironmonger stocks jeyes Fluid. I suppose the real question is whether or not it is real Jeyes Fluid or whether it has gone the way of Nitromoors, etc.
Nick
That's what I suspect. It's available on line but of course that probably makes it less likely to be the real thing.
Sainsburys and B&Q sell it in their stores.
We used grease traps when I was a kid. Long time ago.
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