New to pressing apples and making cider

I finally got the wild hair to do this. I am using a store bought press for the time being, but I have plans drawn up to build my own, bigger, better cider press. Along with cider, I am also planning on venturing into the world of wine making.
One of the things I have been trying to find information on, is what an average yield is on grinding and pressing apples, to how much fresh cider is produced.
Last night I pressed my latest batch of cider. Here are the results of this round :
Four large grocery bags of apples @20# each
By my math that translates to 80# of apples. After grinding and pressing, I ended up with 5 gallons of fresh cider. 5 gallons @ 8 pounds per gallon makes 40 pounds of cider. This translates to a 50% return (so to speak) on the apples.
As I stated before, I am new to this, but I think that is a pretty good press on the apples, and that doesn't count for the amount of waste I had to remove from the apples. So the less waste, the more cider you should get from a pound of apples.

I just thought I would pass this along, and see how many others chime in with their respective pressing results.

Happy brewing

50% sounds pretty good, I get about the same. I think that pressing at home you won't get above 60%. A farmer near me said this year he was offered $80/ton for his second grade apples by a juicing operation, they get 85% yield.He sold the apples for stockfeed instead, says very cheap juice is being dumped by china on the world market.

I built a rack & cloth type press over the last few months and have been impressed with the yields that I have been getting - close to 5 gallons per bushel. I will try to remember to weigh them before pressing next time to see what kind of efficiency I am getting. I should be pressing again the next two weekends.

From what I have read, 70% efficiency is good.... to go any higher requires much more pressing pressure - good 'ol law of diminishing returns. My press racks are about 120 in^2 and I have a 6 Ton bottle jack so I have the capability for 100 psi of pressure, but I don't usually go that high. My current setup gives me about 2.5 gallons/press.... but I could easily double that by using larger racks.

I have also read that the most important factor is the grind quality. I am using a garbage disposal (new!) to grind my apples. After pressing, my pomace is about like a mat of wet sawdust.

Another interesting factor in pressing is the rate of production. I can get 12-15L/hr (3-4gal/hr) which includes the grinding with a garden mulcher. Its pretty slow and hard work with my little home made press but rewarding in the end. I plan to make a better press next year.

I find that the apple prep is what takes the most time of all. Especially if you are doing it alone, like me. If I didn't have to inspect every apple for bugs, and cutting out the bad spots, it would take a heck of a lot less time to press 5 gallons. I bet I could cut, grind and fill the press, getting the cider flowing in 20 minutes. Two press fulls for 5 gallons in under an hour. Then attend the press as the cleanup goes on, which always seems to be the worst part of anything in brewing. The final cleanup!!!

Bombo80 said:

I find that the apple prep is what takes the most time of all.

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I guess it depends how fussy you are and how bad your apples are. I don't worry very much unless there is a rotten apple, then it gets chucked. In big operations there is no inspection at all, just a wash and straight in the mill. Bugs are good protein to help the yeast.
Yeah, clean up is a pain, in wineries they spend more time cleaning than anything else, how romantic!

I agree on not worrying so much about apple quality. I sort all my apples into 3 categories: Eating/Baking, Sauce and Cider. Cider being the lower quality apples. I cut each apple in to quarters or halves and take a quick look for rotten spots (which get removed or tossed), then its into the grinder.

Working by myself, I get about 2.5 gallons - a single press- per hour. If I had one person washing and cutting apples, one person running the grinder and another pressing I could probably get 3 or 4 presses/hour. I think my grinder would be the bottleneck at that point. But this is kinda a moot point for me as I am not doing huge quantities just yet. In another 5 years or so I will have 40 trees coming into bearing and I will have to build a larger press.

when you built your rack and cloth press what are you using for your cloth? it siad in brew your own magazine to use cheese cloth but i was wondering if there was a less expensive alternative

I am using just nylon netting material that I bought at Walmart. It was $.97/yard and I used 3 yards to make 6 cloths. I don't think I will get more than a season of use from it, but at that price who cares? My grandparents used duck cloth with their larger cider press. When you do small batches you loose some yield with any material that is going to absorb the cider, which is why I went with the nylon netting.

I bought some scrap Corian pieces (sink cutouts) to use for my racks.... easy to clean and you can cut them pretty easy with carbide tipped saw blades.

I will try to snap and post some pics when I press this weekend.

I visited a small operation that does fruit winemaking and distilling. They used a large garden shredder, like contractors use for pruning trees,to shred their fruit. could shred apples really quick I expect, might be worth getting for 40 trees.
I use nylon mosquito netting for my cloth, and slabs of wood for the racks. Corian sounds like a good idea, i might investigate further.

I definitely like the idea of getting the corian scrap pieces. Great suggestion !!!!! :rockin:

For pressing the apples, I just use the grain bags I have for brewing beer. Even if I have to buy a new one, the largest one midwest has is only $7. (nlylon straining bag)

Emerald,
I like the idea of making my own bags. I never even thought about that. THX :rockin:

I am also venturing into making wine. I think I will get some of that cloth and make one to fit inside my primaries. I think that would work quite well, to have a bag lining the primary, and have the must poured in it, and just process it normally, then when it's time to take the must out and press it, pull the bag, drain as much as you can right there, then take it to your press and get the rest out of it.

I was actually planning on doing it that way myself.

I find it much easier to deal with juice than pulp when fermenting. When pressing fermented pulp you need to make sure it hasn't fermented dry or it will tend to oxidise. Juice needs much less handling.
Partly it depends on how much cider you want to make - if you want to make lots a food processor isn't much good.

gregbathurst said:

I find it much easier to deal with juice than pulp when fermenting. When pressing fermented pulp you need to make sure it hasn't fermented dry or it will tend to oxidise. Juice needs much less handling.
Partly it depends on how much cider you want to make - if you want to make lots a food processor isn't much good.

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I was thinking of just a few one gallon trial batches this year. I was also thinking that I would let it ferment in the bucket for only about a week or so (maybe less) and then rack it into another container to get it off the pulp. Almost like you would grapes- I figured that if I ferment about 1 and 1/2 gallons of pulp it would probably rack into the 1 gallon container just right. Then I could do trials with racking onto some nice honey or even some of the blueberries that I picked and froze this summer.
But, I am really new at this I have only made a one gallon trial of the famous Edworts Apfelwein and at the two week mark I started a batch of 4 gallons of the Apfelwein (so nice and easy and the first batch tastes great) and one trial gallon of csyer that I had a little taste of this weekend and it is doing quite well too... So now I have been bitten by the bug and want to try all kinds of things. But don't have the ready cash to invest yet on more fancy equipment! But have been thinking of getting together with the friends and pooling our apples and getting them all "pressed" together at a local place to help defray the costs. And freezing some for later in the year. I was thinking that since we all had different kinds of apples it would make for a more complex flavor in the cider.

i went to the amish a got rough cut 2x4's cut them the same length and bolted them together with threaded rod with the 2x4's standing upright...then sanded them smooth once bolted... then if the wood shrinks some i can just tighten the bolts... we'll see how it works,,, probably overkill but i'm using a hydraulic jack instead of a screw so i figured it'd have to be pretty stout

Sully123 said:

i went to the amish a got rough cut 2x4's cut them the same length and bolted them together with threaded rod with the 2x4's standing upright...then sanded them smooth once bolted... then if the wood shrinks some i can just tighten the bolts... we'll see how it works,,, probably overkill but i'm using a hydraulic jack instead of a screw so i figured it'd have to be pretty stout

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Sounds very sturdy, post some pics.