A wild harvest gone bad.

And by "wild harvest" I'm literally talking about food that grows on trees, often neglected and generally thought of as a nuisance to home owners. Apples, pears and other fruit tress will grow on long after the original owners who planted then have moved on to other dwellings.  Often leaving no one to care for or prune them and yet, many hardy varieties will keep on for many years growing tall and gnarly but toughing it out none the less.   In my area I found four good sites in only one afternoon, driving around the back roads earlier this fall.   All the places I found were directly on the roadside, though I've seen many trees on lawns and some small, old, orchards.   I have yet to get up the nerve to visit the owners of these sites and ask if I might take some of their fruit off their hands, and frankly this year I wouldn't have had the time to process it all anyways.

So to begin, I had found the fruit, but most of it was out of reach. So next. I had to dive into my basement of many wonders and with some scavenged parts from a display my workplace was throwing out, the wire portion of an election sign, a screw, a torch, some copper wire, paperclips and an old sheet I made a make-shift, if perfectly serviceable expanding pole picker.  It has a long "sock" attached so that the apples can roll gently down the length of the fabric tube to the ground and into a bag at my hip... it keeps them from falling on my head and from getting bruised in the process.

Now because these apples were ripening a bit at random I had to freeze a bunch that were going to go too mushy on me, but once I had what I thought was "enough" it was time to really get to work.

The work planned is cider.... hard cider.  Now I have made a few different hard ciders before and the cost per carboy 5-6 gal is usually in and around $35-$65 depending on where I have sourced my cider from.   In Ontario, Wellesley cider is one of the few that is sulphate and sorbate free, which is essential if you want to go and turn it into an adult drink.    This time the aim is to buy/make all the gear needed for less than that.   In effect to turn my yearly costs into a one time cost without going over budget. 

Now... to be fair, I already own a small press used in jewellery and metal forming.  It is a very solid steel frame with plates that move up and down in it, under the power of a 20 ton car jack... I have seen similar setups made in wood, using a car jack that you often find with your spare tire in your trunk.   Commercial cider press' can be found new online from about $200, so, for now that is just not an option.

Now to convert my small press to make the most of its space and to suit me I went with a style of pressing that involves stacking fabric enclosed layers of ground apples.

So I made the frame out of 1/2" x 1" pine about 7"x8" rectangle, a board of the same footprint for the top of the press and I cut a bit of 2x4 to fill in the center to distribute the weight of the press across the board. With some aluminum I had kicking around I formed up a pan to fit all this, with an open side formed to make a spout. Then I hunted down the last of the fabric that I have made the pole picker from and tore it into three squares with a bit left over.    Excellent, so with the gear prepared, now back to the free produce.

So food processor at the ready, I split and pulverized my first batch, 5 lbs seemed good.  A pound at time made a nice batch and all of it filled a juice jug to the 2L mark.

Now step by step here's how it went for me.

Lay down some plastic craft sheet the kind kids use to "sew" patterns on. 

this let me shimmy things a round a bit so all the layers lined up and allow the juice to flow through.  On very large cider presses they use slatted wood frames to do the same job, but this is all about what I had on hand in the basement and this one sheet cut down perfectly in for pieces and it was a leftover from my last soapmaking workshop.

line frame with  cotton sheet, centered

fill frame with apple mush

fold over left and right then bottom and top

lay down another piece of plastic

put frame on top of first one and repeat

lay board on top, no pressure is being added yet

now a bit of a squeeze, slow and steady means less blowouts of the cotton bundles

Now a bit of a note on blow outs... if your cotton starts to stretch or bulge unevenly, go slow... heck go slow anyway.   But when you do hear a pop and see your apple mush go flying in one direction or another don't stress.  Just make sure the next time you use that piece of fabric that the tear needs goes under the where the apple mush (pommace) will go and then lay a scrap of cloth over the tear before you add in the mush. This essentially patches the problem putting the tear somewhere where there is no more stress on it.  I could have washed and saved this fabric when it was done but honestly by next year I will invariably have more sheets and such that will have been retired to rags and I will have "fresh" ones for next year.

had to add another board

needed a bigger cup this is one L and it was only halfway to done

nearly all the juice is out

pomace left over, it was dry and compressed 

a stack of a days hard work

I tried a meat grinder from pricess auto for $25, to see if there was a power free way to do this and although the pieces were very big it made nearly the same volume of cider per batch so it seems that the pressure is more important than the fineness of the ground apples.

1.52 on the hydrometer means that if/when it brews dry it will be about 6.2% abv 

Total weight of apples and pears 51lbs, 16 L cider. 

 I pitched a package of lavlin ec-1118 champane yeast into water and then mixed it in and now a day later the little yeasty beasties are burping away happily turning sugars into alcohol and CO2.  They will keep on doing the hard work for a few more weeks and then I will likely be doing parts of this batch as a spiced seasonal and the rest finishing in the bottles as a sparkling cider.

total in new purchases = $38.85

wood $2.15

meat grinder $25

yeast $0.75

new hydrometer (the last one broke in the move) $11

Not bad all in all and next year, this should only cost me .75 cents or so plus, lets be honest, a fair bit of time, but it's been more than worth it for me this year.