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With bits of wood plastic and metal from round my house (Plus £1 worth of bolts I had to buy) I managed to make a cider press. After pulping the apples (2 buckets worth) I put them in a sterilized old pillow case ready for pressing. In the end from 2 buckets of apples I got one bucket of juice! 8 liters.

Plans - http://i32.tinypic.com/28ku054.jpg

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Video - YouTube - Very Cheap Home Made Apple Cider Press

Post your thoughts here and anything similar you have done!

Crazytwoknobs

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That's awesome, just over 2 gallons! Great job, did you pick the apples yourself? What kind of apples?

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Marbles baby, marbles.

Revvy

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Very cool!!!!

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Ye the apples are from my garden - we have too many. This is just a test batch as they are not fully ripe.

They are not cider apples but there are 5 trees all with a slightly different flavor. 3 eaters, 1 hybrid and 1 cooker. I have about 60% of the apples from the eaters then 30% from the hybrid and the last 10% from the eater.

The juice is very tart. (also more sweet and apply compared to brought apple juice) I will see what the taste of the final cider is like as the juice is meant to be slightly more tart apparently but I will see. The cider should be ready in a couple of weeks.

Although it tastes very sweet to me the gravity readers were low so I added a small amount of syrup and brown sugar but not very much as I really think it is much sweeter than the reading suggests.

Well you say over 2 gallons it is 1.75 good old English gallons :P My DJ is only 5L so I am hoping some sediment is using some space and the rest of the juice will keep in the fridge to be added at the end for more flavor.

Philsc

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Just did my first turbo cider with really posh juice. It was gorgeous. I kind of have the cider bug now and have been all over the net looking for plans on building a cider press. The plan is to have the thing ready for autumn and go out of the city and pick up some apples cheap.

Your plans appear to be the simplest I've seen so far, and judging by the video the press is no worse off for that. Thanks for sharing them.

What's the plastic sheet for, though?

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Well under the plastic sheet there was wood that

a) Wood be a pain to clean
b) Was not water tight

So I went for like a paddling pool area for it to collect with a small area for it to filter out. Many are better made with wood so it is not an issue but mine was a bodge job so This made it so the woodwork underneath could be as bad as I wanted. It was actually a shelf from a book cabinet with anything I could find round the edge to raise it for the plastic sheet. The plastic sheet meant I had no waste as the only holes in it were for 4 bolts and the wood was so firmly pushed in that there was no problem with this.

Did 8 liters in 10mins though so was pretty good compared to most presses out there. I did not put the full presser of the jack on it as it started to bend but I don't reckon there was much juice left anyway.

If you want any more photos or advice just ask.

And TBH if it is anything like England to most people with apple trees in there garden they are just a pain to clear up. If you don't mind collecting all of them (throwing away the rotten ones) I am sure someone would let you have them for free - if not for a bottel of cider