How do I press/juice apples with little expense.

[larrydcarter]

I an being given a few hundred pounds of apples and I want to make lots of cider and some spiced cyser. Problem is money it tight and I don't have equipment to press any ideas on the cheapest method of juicing the apples?

 

[Paps]

Have a fat woman roll over them.Tell her you will pay her in bacon.
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or maybe affix some wood boards to a table vice and use that.

 

[adiochiro3]

You can rent a crusher & press at your LHBS, if you are close enough to one. Rental is pretty cheap at mine.

You can make a scratter to shred the apples using a number of different methods, including using a food processor, blender, or -- the best trick I've seen -- a re-purposed garbage disposal. Type "scratter" into your search engine of choice.

I have a buddy that used to put his apples in a garbage can and drop a sledge hammer on top of them -- over and over and over -- to mash things up. The riper the better (without being spoiled) he says. Sounds like a TON of work to me, but ultimately effective.

In the end, you're going to want to press the juice out of the mash. There are various methods for improvising one of those too, including using hydraulic jacks and clamps. Easiest press I've seen is made from two 5 gal. buckets. Drill holes in the bottom and low on the sides of one bucket to drain out juice. Fill the "holey" bucket with pulp and place in a pan to catch juice. Set the other bucket inside the first on top of the pulp and fill it with water to act as a press.

 

[gregbathurst]

You can make a press with any car jack and a few bits of board, use some netting material to wrap the crushed apple between the boards, collect the juice in a plastic tray. You just need something solid to press against, like a workbench or some heavy machinery.
To crush the apples, freeze them then thaw and put them in a bucket, bash them with a length of 4x2. The bucket and 4x2 method works without freezing, but is harder.

 

[beaksnbeer]

Take them over to Yoopers she has new press

 

[brontecider]

i bought a used kitchen juicer for $12 bucks. Juice comes out clean after skimming, settling and filtering through teatowel. Discard bottom sediment. Takes a long time to juice with a kitchen juicer but makes nice looking juice. Get an apple slicer that they use for making pies, makes short work of cutting the apples.

 

[Yooper]

Take them over to Yoopers she has new press

Yep!

But for the many years before this............................

I would gather apples and crabapples and rinse them off and put them in big plastic bags in my freezer. Freeze/thaw helps the apples be much easier to smoosh up.

Anyway, I"d freeze them in bags and then let them thaw partially and smash them up with a wooden pestle-like thing. Then I'd put them in sanitized mesh bags right into a sanitized primary and let them finish thawing. I'd put the campden tablets in boiling water (just a little) and pour that over the fruit. I ferment about 5 days, stirring and smashing daily, then using sanitized hands and arms, I"d "press" the fruit by squeezing the bags as much as I could. This is easier if you use lots of bags, not fully filled.

It's labor intensive- but free (since I use the mesh bags for fruit wine anyway, or you could use sanitized pillow cases!).

Another thing that works is to thaw them out in the sanitized pillow case/mesh bag/whatever in the sanitized fermenter bucket and use a sanitized baseball bat to smoosh them up. They are pretty soft once frozen/thawed.