LOOK at what I found!!!!!

We have a local radio show called "Telephone Time" every morning, where people call in to sell their junk and there are tons of paid ads. It's usually the same people calling every day, with "I still have that 1990 Suburban with 300,000 miles for sale for $3000" or equally ridiculous stuff.

Today, I just flipped the radio on in the truck, and I got the tail end of "and a wine press. Call xxx-xxxx".

I grabbed my phone and called.

Here's what I got for $100:

That's awesome. Looks like it's in great shape too.

I'm not a winemaker (yet), but nice score!

Looks aesthetically pleasing too!

It's in terrific shape! I couldn't believe it. I expected a rust bucket, and certainly nothing this nice. The parts you can't see are the "top" where the screw press pushes down- it's down in the bucket- and the top of that. The inside of the basket is 100% perfect and sturdy, and it's super clean. The apple grinder is in perfect condition, as is the wheel that turns it.

The only thing I'll do to make it usable is to take a little steel wool to the bottom tray, where the juice will sit before coming out. It's got some finish on it, as you can see from the photo, and the finish is lifting off a bit. I figure I'll get that off, wash it, "cure" it with some mineral oil, and then sanitize and use.

I'll be making some cider on Saturday with this!

Nice score Yoop, is it as new as it looks or is it refinished?

ChefRex said:

Nice score Yoop, is it as new as it looks or is it refinished?

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It's old- but never used. Weird, I know, but this old Italian guy had it for 20 years, as he was going to use it someday, and it sat in his basement so it's really nice looking.

It is a homemade one, made out of a set of plans sold in a winemakers book.

When he said "wine press", and then I realized where he lived (where all the old Italians live and used to make wine up until the 60s), I figured it was a great big behemoth wine press. When I saw this cider press, I about jumped for joy.

Normally, we dicker over price but when he said $100, Bob pulled out his wallet immediately. He might have even taken less, but we didn't even try to negotiate!

I was so excited I called lschiavo (from this forum) and left the message on his voice mail!

We decided that we'll keg apple wine and crabapple wine (uncarbed, just in the keg instead of 100 bottles!), since we'll have far more than we used to since apples are so plentiful this year.

Yooper said:

Normally, we dicker over price but when he said $100, Bob pulled out his wallet immediately. He might have even taken less, but we didn't even try to negotiate!

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I wouldn't have dickered over price either. It sounds more than reasonable to me.

I know you're going to let us all know how the first batch you make with this turns out!

Sharing your joy!

That is a fantastic find, Congrats! I love bargain finds like that.

if i put 5 gallons of cider in a bucket, added beer yeast, and waited what would i get? (dry hop with hallertau and cinnamon sticks)
wrong place, but i know someone here will know.
press looks sweet btw!

NewJersey said:

if i put 5 gallons of cider in a bucket, added beer yeast, and waited what would i get? (dry hop with hallertau and cinnamon sticks)
wrong place, but i know someone here will know.
press looks sweet btw!

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Well, you'll get hard cider. I'm not a fan of hopped cider OR cinnamon, but others are and you may love it that way.

But at the price of all those other adds stuck in your head! Very cool, what does the apple grinder look like inside (pic). I had some press plates made for mine, it presses apples much better with a couple of plates inserted in between the cheeses rather than just load it all up and press, have you guys every tried it like that? WVMJ

Here are some photos of the grinder part:





One of the things we're doing this year is plum wine, so for fun I ran out and put a couple of the plums through. It worked great- the pit stayed inside the grinder part, and the fruit popped right out, crushed. I don't know how 1000 of them will do- but I was happy with one!

I suppose if you get tired turning the handle you could put an electric motor on it.

gregbathurst said:

I suppose if you get tired turning the handle you could put an electric motor on it.

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Oh, I have my own personal "handle turner".

He crushes my grain for my beer, and he's my grunt labor around here.

What I like is that the grinder is attached to the press- so you could grind until 3/4 full, right into the basket, and then press. So you should never get tired of one thing!

Nice Find. Are you sure its not a grape crusher attached...(not to be picky or anything...) jk. That is freakin amazing.

Yooper, you earned it with all the good Karma you generated here by giving us Noobs such good advice. Congrats!

On a similar note, today I got about 10 bushels of beautiful Macintosh and two other varieties I can't remember for... wait for it.... FREE!!!!

I happened to be passing near an orchard on my way back from a work thing and stopped to see if they had cider apples for sale. The lady told me they had wicked wind storms and I was welcome to pick as many windfall apples as I could handle. Well, needless to say the apples I picked off the ground were better than any of the apples I had picked off trees all season, and best of all they are all organic. No herbicides or pesticides.

I had to drive straight from the orchard to my LBS to buy more fermentation vessels as all my other buckets/carboys are already full.

This year has been quite the cider bounty for me!

Today is our lucky day!

Awesome score Yoop! No more "smooshing it up in the bucket." Next thing you know, you'll be planting cider cultivars
Regards, GF.

It is always the diamond in the rough finds like this, that make you feel good about spending hard earned money. Score!

gratus fermentatio said:

Awesome score Yoop! No more "smooshing it up in the bucket." Next thing you know, you'll be planting cider cultivars
Regards, GF.

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Haha- you mean centennial crabapples and dolgos aren't cider cultivars?!?!

We have two freezers full of fruit right now, so this was a real find. Bob is going out to find more apples (there is a huge bumper crop this year) so we can make even more apple wine than normally.

We currently have plums, grapes, crabapples, chokecherries, and apples in the freezer(s).

We're going to make some fresh cider for drinking, although neither one of us drinks much juice at all. My grandson will love it!

Nice find on the press, I made my own press this year after not being able to find one like this at a reasonable price. After pressing 18 gallons this year my only concern would be that if you have a couple helpers, that they can't grind while you're pressing.

Still, I would love one of these for days when I don't want to lug out my big press or plug in my garbage disposal (grinder).

Dang that is nice! Just made our first small batch of wine from our small amout of grapes. I don't need a press yet (smooshing the mesh bag trick), but hope to need one in 3-4 years. The apple grinder is just a perfect add on. Score!

I had both grandsons today, so Bob and the older one took a little walk and came back with their treasure.


I sanitized the containers and the mesh bag (it's too small, but I have some on order already from Wilserbrewer!) and the frame and grinder while they were gone, and they got to work.


I pasteurized the juice on the stove (paranoid about the 3-year-old drinking it unpasteurized, although I know it's overkill). Then, cooled it in an ice bath in the sink.


Cheers!


And it was very very good!


This stuff was wonderful! Now, we are so excited about crushing all sorts of things. Tomorrow for sure are the plums and crabapples. Since I ferment on the fruit, we'll put the mesh bag of plums in the fermenter with the juice (basically, only crushing and not pressing).

Bah, why do I never find sweet deals like this?!?!?

Congrats on the first pressing!

That is a fabulous find! I've had plans to build a cider press for a couple of years, but it's one of those things I never get to until it's too late.

Looks like you will have fun every fall collecting fruits and things to crush and make wine out of!

When using a new (to you) press it is good to calculate your efficiency, not for competitive reason but for your own info. Just weigh the apples before using, in kilograms, then measure the juice output in litres. Output/input = % efficiency. This is not strictly accurate but is the commonly used measure.

My wife and I made Blueberry Wine about a month ago from all the blueberies we picked around my parent's house in the UP. They live about 3 miles from Whitefish Point.

gregbathurst said:

When using a new (to you) press it is good to calculate your efficiency, not for competitive reason but for your own info. Just weigh the apples before using, in kilograms, then measure the juice output in litres. Output/input = % efficiency. This is not strictly accurate but is the commonly used measure.

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Good idea! I will do that sometime in the future. I know that will help with winemaking and hard cider, for sure.

dannyjed said:

My wife and I made Blueberry Wine about a month ago from all the blueberies we picked around my parent's house in the UP. They live about 3 miles from Whitefish Point.

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I only made one gallon of blueberry wine this year, although we picked 40 pounds or so. It's young, of course, but it seems like it's going to be pretty good. I wish there would be more than 5 bottles in the end!

Well, we crushed and pressed 2 5 gallon buckets of apples today. It tasted great- tart and apply- and we got 2 gallons of cider out of it.

I sulfited it, and will add some S04 tomorrow.

I didn't even check the OG yet!

Making your own fermented cider would be awesome. I'm assuming this tastes quite a bit different when ready than regular Apfelwein made out of filtered/pasteuerized apple juice?

We have young apple trees, so this would be a possibility in a few years. I would need to find similar equipment though.

solbes said:

Making your own fermented cider would be awesome. I'm assuming this tastes quite a bit different when ready than regular Apfelwein made out of filtered/pasteuerized apple juice?

We have young apple trees, so this would be a possibility in a few years. I would need to find similar equipment though.

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I like cider- but I've done it with store purchased juices as well and liked that too.

I think a good mix of apples makes a big difference. Ideally, the mix would be like 1/3 sweet apples, 1/3 tart apples, and 1/3 bittersweet apples or something like that, but when I pressed yesterday, I just used apples that tasted tart. The resulting cider is really tasty- I'd purchase that from any cider mill.

The interesting thing for me is that since we used only "found" apples from places like the neighbors, down the side roads, etc, for wine in the past that every year is different.

I think we'll mix some of our crabapples in with some regular apples next year, because my crabapple wine is one of my favorites. The crabs have this "spicy" flavor to them that the regular apples don't.

My first experiment with hard cider was when I was about 14 and I placed a tupperware glass with cider and a lid on the basement shelf behind some canning jars. A few days later the lid popped off and my dad and I could hear it upstairs when we were watching the Red Wings on tv. He looked over at me with a quizzical look on his face and I just said, "I think my cider is ready..." He just shook his head and smiled.

I like my cider best when it's not too tart and has a bit of fizz and zing. And I enjoy the tart even less now that I'm older. The problem with most hard cider and apfelwein, actually, is that they are stripped of a lot of the flavor and end up dry. I liked the fizzy cider that wasn't too fermented best.

Now that I have a kegging system, I bet I could make a couple of gallons of that kind of stuff with some Co2 gas and a pasteurizing or treatment. I wish I had built my press now!

Yooper,
What comes around, goes around. No one is more deserving than you to find such a score!

Now, when you get a chance, come up with a cherry/apple cider recipe for me to try.

WOW nice find Yoop!
and for 100 bones? Well done!!

Cheers
Jay

WOW! It's even nicer than I expected. Are you only going to use the juice for apple wine or still start it off with the pulp? It's funny that Troy bought one a day or two before you found this...at least I won't be pestering you to borrow it. I wouldn't let me borrow it.

lschiavo said:

WOW! It's even nicer than I expected. Are you only going to use the juice for apple wine or still start it off with the pulp? It's funny that Troy bought one a day or two before you found this...at least I won't be pestering you to borrow it. I wouldn't let me borrow it.

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Of course I'd let you borrow it. It would probably come back motorized, with automation and a fan.

I actually am doing a couple of things with it. One is, pure cider. Then, hard cider. Just the cider, fermented with S04 (since I have some of it, and hate it for beer. ).

The other thing is just want you'd expect- crush, press, and then ferment WITH the pulp in mesh bags right in the fermenter and then crush the pulp after about 5-7 days. I'll do that for crabapples, apples, and grapes. The plums didn't work in the crusher (big pits) but they pressed ok, and the chokecherries won't crush (too small) so we'll press them and ferment on the pulp.

Two gallons of simple hard cider is already fermenting well, as is 9 gallons of plum wine.

We've been busy! You'd be impressed with our industriousness this week, considering we also pulled out our boat, cleaned it, stored it, had my grandsons two days, and I worked two days.

I told Bob that I was thrilled to go to work yesterday at the hospital, as I desperately needed some rest.

Looks similar to mine, but much more sturdy. Great score for the price, congrats!

I never realized how many Italians lived in the UP until my brother and sister in law moved there. Guess I should be looking for a wine press there instead of southern WI!

9Frogs said:

I never realized how many Italians lived in the UP until my brother and sister in law moved there. Guess I should be looking for a wine press there instead of southern WI!

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They are the only ones who can put up with the Finns!

Wow! That looks awesome! Congratulations on the score.

Yooper said:

We have a local radio show called "Telephone Time" every morning, where people call in to sell their junk and there are tons of paid ads. It's usually the same people calling every day, with "I still have that 1990 Suburban with 300,000 miles for sale for $3000" or equally ridiculous stuff.

Today, I just flipped the radio on in the truck, and I got the tail end of "and a wine press. Call xxx-xxxx".

I grabbed my phone and called.

Here's what I got for $100:

View attachment 151365

View attachment 151366

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that should function as a cider press too!