A few weeks ago, Ranger’s family and I finally had enough time to get together and make apple juice. His family has a big press; his uncle designed it. I think it’s pretty awesome. My apples weren’t the greatest for it, but I still got a ton of juice. His family makes about 100 batches every year. They had already done some a few weeks ago, then they did mine, and they actually did a neighbor’s apples last weekend. I bet they froze last weekend. But when we worked on my apples, we were still wearing short sleeves! Isn’t that crazy?
Anyway, the apples start in boxes and buckets in the yard. We pull out some card tables, and grab all of Grandma’s cutting boards, and we slice and de-yuck the apples (Mine were pretty full of yuck. I don’t think the guy we bought the house from did anything to keep them good. And I have a ton of birds that like to take a bite from each apple. I don’t think I can help that, though.
Then the apples go into a wash and rinse, where they are carried to this table:
I’m pretty impressed by this ingenuity. They bought a garbage disposal in order to chop up all the apples. I spent my whole time at the cutting table, so I never saw how they actually chop the apples safely without destroying whatever tool they use to do it. The apples come out of the black tube at the bottom, and they form a slushy mushy mess. Then you take the apples and bring them to the press. they have a tray set on here, with plastic trays to divide each layer of juice. Then they hook a weight up to the springs, and use a jack to stretch the springs and press the juice. It kind of makes a pulp sandwich. Then the juice collects in a drip pan with a funnel-like hole on one end. that hole has a hose that runs into the buckets.
The buckets then fill water jugs and old juice containers for the freezer. I got about 13 jugs. The rest stayed in 5-gallon buckets so I could bottle them. Freezing gives a much purer taste, but I have a small freezer.
I filled 2 5-gallon buckets with about 4 gallons of juice (had to leave room to travel home safely. And I still spilled a little. Its a good thing my Ranger loves me, or I’d constantly be in trouble.
My apples were ab it too thick, so the apple juice is pretty dense. Interestingly, when I bottled it, it thinned out and the thickness all collected into little jelly globs. They actually aren’t that bad to eat, but I don’t recommend shaking the bottle to mix them in. It leaves a funny texture throughout the juice. Next time, I’ll probably let the sediment stay in the buckets and use it as pectin. clearly it works, even if it is just a little. Processing time, for me, is 15 minutes. You can check your processing time here.
