Fresh Pressed Cider

It's not even fall, and I've already had an opportunity to put my new hand-built cider press to work. My dad knows a manager of an orchard, and he let us go and pick a few bushels worth of McIntosh drops. Ideally, cider comes from a mix of apples, but it's fine to do it with whatever is available. I didn't have a bushel basket, so I don't know exactly how many we got. I do know that a five gallon pale filled with apples yielded about one gallon of cider. From the apples we picked, I got about six gallons. I'm turning five of the gallons into a sparkling hard cider, and we just drank the other gallon. It was a lot of work to get six gallons of cider with the cider press. The bulk of the work consists of chopping the apples before they go into the press. I was using a food processor, but it still took three or four hours to get everything pressed into cider. Next year I'll buy a grinder which will greatly expedite the process.

The fresh cider was crisp and tasty. My mom made some cinnamon and sugar doughnuts that went with it excellently. I'm interested to see how my hard cider turns out. With the exception of pressing the apples, it's supposed to be quite a bit easier than brewing beer, but it does take longer. Some people like to make it during the fall, and not drink it until the following year, but a couple of months should be enough. Mine has been in the basement fermenting for about a week now. I took a small risk by not adding campden tablets. They are supposed to kill the natural yeasts, which can possibly add off flavors to the cider. Not all people add them, but most do. I like the idea of going as natural as possible. I did add some champagne yeast, but I'll let the natural yeasts live. If I don't give it a try, I'll never know. I do have some tablets, so I might use them during the next batch. I'll let the yeasts do there job for another week, and then I'll transfer it to a five gallon carboy, where it will set until it clears. After it clears, I'll bottle it in a manner similar to the beer bottling process; Where I dissolve some sugar in boiling water, add it to the cider, and put it in bottles, while the yeasts turn the sugar into CO2.