guess I'm gonna make cider!

[SmokeyMcBong]

Had a friend pop in yesterday from up north. He says "I hear you're brewing now, here's some apples to play with". So I've got a 5 gallon bucket of crab apples and a 5 gallon bucket of some other random larger apple. I don't really have a way to crush them but I was thinking about feeding them through either my kitchen aid grinder or shredder attachment then strain through a clean towel?

Once I've got the juice filtered, I'll campden and bump the SG so as to end up around 6-8 percent, then in with some 1118 that I've got kicking around.

Anything else I should add? Pectic enzyme? Yeast energyzer? Nutrient? Tannen? Etc? Thanks peeps!

 

[RPowell]

definitely do some nutrient. Pectic enzyme for clarity. Otherwise, you've covered the basics.

 

[Maylar]

Dunno if mushing apples in a grinder will extract all the juice. Worth a try tho.

 

[SmokeyMcBong]

The grinder actually worked miricles! I'm gonna ferment on the pulp then strain it out after, a la red wine.

 

[SmokeyMcBong]

Its been fermenting for a week now and the amount of pulp left in the bag has reduced by half and there seems to be a lot more juice in the bucket. I'm gonna strain the pulp out and rack to a carboy today.

 

[WVMJ]

When you ran it thru your grinder did it grind up all the seeds? Any idea what kind of crabs or just some apples your buddy found growing in his yard? Did you eat one before grinding, how was the acid levels? WVMJ

 

[SmokeyMcBong]

When you ran it thru your grinder did it grind up all the seeds? Any idea what kind of crabs or just some apples your buddy found growing in his yard? Did you eat one before grinding, how was the acid levels? WVMJ

Some of the seeds must of gotten ground but there were tonnes of them that were whole, I used the coarsest die that I had.

The apples were of two different varieties, one larger and much sweeter and one kinda smaller and more acidic. They are from trees that are just growing on my buddies property up north, so there's no way of knowing what they are. His and a few of his neighbors properties are covered with apples that they never use. This little batch is just a tester to see if it'll taste any good. If it does, we're gonna get a crusher and a press and attempt a whole bunch of it next year. Truthfully, we'll probably do that anyway lol.

Just to lay out what I've done....

I ground the apples, ended up with about 5 gal of apple puree/juice. It went into a bucket lined with two mesh fruit bags. I campden bombed it (had to, it was starting to bubble almost instantly) and left it over night to gas off. The next day I added pectic enzyme and left it over night again. Then the next morning I added some white sugar (OG 1.060ish), EC 1118 and nutrient then air locked it. I squeezed the bag and stirred the juice a few times in the first week. Yesterday, I squeezed the pulp bags till there was very little juice left in the pulp and racked it over to a carboy. I ended up with about 4 gal of juice in the carboy but its very cloudy so I'm sure I'll loose a whole bunch of that to sediment.

 

[Yooper]

I just got an apple crusher and press last fall.

Prior to that, I did my redneck version of cider and wine making.

I froze the fruit, washed first, and then when it was frozen, weighed it and put it in woven mesh bags and put it in the fermenter. I dumped a little boiling water over it, along with the campden tablets, and then smooshed them up with a sanitized dowel. 12 hours later, I added pectic enzyme, and 12 hours after that I added the yeast. I kept smashing it and stirring it with my dowel for about 5 days, then lifted the mesh bag out and squeezed.

That was my version of both crushing and pressing, and I used it for apples, plums, crabapples, chokecherries, grapes, rhubarb, etc. Maybe I didn't get as much juice out as I could have- but it worked well for me for more than 20 years! I still fall back on it for small fruits with big seeds, like chokecherries!