Re your question about freezing fruit... I haven't used frozen apples, but today I was looking through Jolicoeur with a view to making a grater mill to produce a finer pomace along the lines that he suggests. In Chapter 6 he covers different types of mill and discusses freezing apples (P102 and P103). He suggests that juice from frozen apples "has a mouthfeel and viscosity completely different from normally pressed juice and feels a bit odd to drink". But, also suggests that "For cider, these effects are not detrimental to the quality"
It will be interesting to get some feedback if you go down the frozen apple path.
I am looking to increase my yield by grating smaller (ideally around 3mm or 1/8" chunks). My present grinder produces a pomace of 1/4"-1/2" chunks and I get about 400ml of juice per Kg of fruit when it is pressed (this roughly translates to more than 20 lbs of fruit to get a gallon of juice), whereas I understand that 600 ml might be possible with smaller chunks... that would be a 50% increase!
Gosh, the alert option here sucks!
Have to share some observations and have some beginner questions, so please bare with me.
My crusher also produces 1/4-1/2” chunks. I’m very happy with it and it’s effeminacy, but yeah, I think a finer crush would yield more. I bought a 12l press, advertised on fleabay as Weston but haven’t seen the name anywhere. I have zero complaints about it quality wise. However after using it I think I’d prefer a bottle jack system and finer crusher. Thinking of buying a hex nut and electric 1/2” impact, deep socket and a bunch of blocks. Just hitting the trigger every couple of minutes while washing, and crushing.
Between my wife, kid and myself I think we have have it down pretty good I think. Every other day we have a 20 gallon tote to process, takes about 2 hours. My son wants to press a gallon and bring doughnuts for his birthday at school, but that’s late September... I told him I’d email his teacher if he can bring his homemade cider in before then to share because it probably won’t last that long pasteurized and without preservatives.
Honestly it’s a lot of work. I can get 2 gallons of cider for $8 that is uv pasteurized. There’s an apple farm that comes to my club once a year and charge a little over $4 a gallon. I charge $125/hr or flat rate. Where’s the business sense in that? But we’ll see.
I’ve made a few cider kits and one raw last year using campden that turned out great after some age... so that’s my resume.
Here’s the beginner questions.
First pressing was Friday, 4 days ago. I have a brand new, washed, sanitized, 2 gallon fermenter, with about a gallon and a half treated with campden. Wondering if it somehow it became infected? And it’s too big to upload even though it’s a screenshot, white film on top. Have not pitched or anything other then campden. Advice?
I also pressed 3/4 gallon of apple and 30 pounds of blueberries and got 2 gallons of blue juice. Topped off the one gallon carboy with blueberry, all treated with campden and nothing else looks bad.
If I do this next year I’m going to invest in an extra fridge/keezer to store the juice, and look for a easier corer. No spay, fertilizers, nothing for bugs.
