Apple Cidering

I'm sitting here at my computer on this fine, very cold January morning, a cup of fragrant hot cider on the desk beside me pressed from our very own trees. It's rather good to be inside today looking out and there's nothing more comforting than hot cider on a cold, snowy January in Northern Utah writing about making what I'm drinking.

And what I'm drinking is the sweet cider from DragonGoose Farm's cider press, unpasteurized, with no preservatives, and pressed from apples picked off the tree – that is, no windfalls. I like it best hot and plain. Our two cidermasters, my husband, Alan, and daughter, Melanie, choose carefully the mix of apples, and the blend that results makes for a wonderful taste, full bodied, crisp, and tangy. In other words, it's nothing like the insipid stuff offered in the supermarket, and doesn't need an infusion of cinnamon or sugar to jazz it up.

The description below is for American style apple cider, nonalcoholic, not what is termed Hard Cider which requires fermention. One of my former colleagues did take a five gallon jug of our sweet cider home for his own hard cider in which he uses champagne yeast. But a description of John's process is for a later page.

Choice of Apples

Melanie Comparing Apples

In either case, the first and most important step in cidering is choosing the apples for a well balanced, full-bodied blend. The best apples for sweet cider are those that ripen late, near or after the time of frost. The early ones we sell for eating out of hand or some years for making apple sauce for us. For cider, Melanie likes a mix of sweet apples such as our Galas, mixed with Northern Spy and Fortune, Sweet Sixteen, Honeycrisp, a few late Fugi apples, and Arkansas Blacks. Then she adds the tart types such as our Liberty apples (though in some years the Liberty apples are often a well balanced mix of sweet and tart), Jonathan, Ashmead's Kernal, Stellar and Goldrush, both yellow apples, beautifully crisp and tart, and for an astringent touch, the crabs -- Whitney, Geneva, Redflesh, and Chestnut. Some aromatic McIntosh will add to the fragrance of the cider which is one of the best aspects of homemade cider

The balance changes from year to year. Many of the sweet apples have been sold by the time we're ready to press, but there is a good selection left, especially after adding in the applesof all varieties that are too small or of ungainly shape that we put aside for cider. Sizes this year varied widely. To the left, Melanie is describing the differences in size of our heirloom Northern Spy, some of which were huge this year. The Northern Spy and Fortune (Northern Spy x Empire) are difficult to tell apart, both types of trees have huge and regular sized apples hanging from the same limb and, this year, even the smaller of the Northern Spy/Fortune apples were fairly big.

A good illustration of the usual size in our cider apples is in the photo below of Melanie's brother-in-law, Steven (and our much appreciated son-in-law), at the cider sink, inspecting individual apples for worms and cracks (sources of contamination) and giving them their last wash before they go in the hopper for crushing.

Notice that the two apples in Melanie's hands have already been washed and polished on our automatic line, as are all our apples, both sold for fresh eating and put aside for cider. So the before-press wash will be a second wash along with the inspection before being put in the grinder. This double-wash process assures us that the cider we're making is pure and free of bacteria and other contaminants.

A Gradual Move to our Own Cider Press

For the first two or three years after our apple trees started bearing an appeciable amount of apples (we started planting apple trees in the 1990s), we took most of our apples to a local, government-inspected press. Apple Cider Press

Then we decided to try doing the pressing on our own. After an Internet seach, we decided on an American Harvester Cider Press offered by Happy Valley Ranch in Paola, Kansas. This was in the year 2000 and the press is still doing a wonderful job of turning out first-class sweet cider. (Shown at right.) At the same time, we went through a frenzy of building inside our fairly new apple barn. Alan started building our 10x10x10 cooler to store our apples at 32-34 degrees Farenheit. This room opens into the cider room, which was a family effort under Alan's direction, and follows government standards for such rooms. It features washable walls and floors, a floor drain, stainless steel tubs, a water-tight steel basin for under the press, and a good-sized water heater. Most of the work requiring electrical and plumbing expertise, not to mention muscle, naturally enough fell on Alan's shoulders. Much of the reading and research on making the cider fell on Melanie's.

Step by Step

After the first few batches of apples are washed and inspected, they are ready to be tumbled into the hopper to be crushed. From the grinder, the crushed apples are dropped into a nylon press bag which is draped over a wooden tub made of evenly spaced, beveled maple staves held together by two steel bands (see below).

The cidering process is best done with three people, especially when the press has two tubs as ours does – one to catch and hold the crushed apples (the pomace) and one to hold the pomace in the process of being pressed.

The photo below right shows our older daughter, Ethy, dumping washed apples into the hopper. These look like the smaller of the Liberty apples that were fairly tart this year. The grinder on the original press (an American Harvester) was hand-powered. DragonGoose Farm's other Cidermaster, Alan, added an electric motor by the second year which saves quite a bit of wear and tear on the shoulders, his especially. Apples Into Hopper

Now for the pressing

The grinder drops the crushed apples into the nylon bag inside the back or pomace tub, shown below left. When the tub and press bag is filled, the tub is slid forward under the screw. At that time, the press bag is folded over the top of the pomace, a circular wooden block is placed on top of the bag, and the pressing begins.

Notice the four lugs on top of the screw. The person at the press slides a three-foot long iron pipe in between these lugs to act as leverage to turn the screw, which in turn presses the wood block down onto the pomace to extract the juice. After the apple juice has been pressed into the nylon-covered tub, Steven shows (in the photo below right) how to loosen the hand screw to bring the press block up for the next pressing .

The dry pomace, called the cheese, is in the second tub by this time, which is slid back out of the way. This cheese will be dumped into a cart and the nylon bag and tub rinsed for the next batch of crushed apples. In the meantime, the empty tub, with the newly rinsed press bag in it, will be pushed under the grinder for a new infusion of crushed apples.

Ordinarily in this type of press, the juice runs out the front into a receiving bucket and the juice poured from the bucket into jugs. As the number of apples pressed increased here at the farm, there appeared a definite need for a more efficient means of storing the juice for bottling. After an arrangement (defying description) for pumping the juice into a tank, Alan bought a plastic immersible sump pump for the receiving bucket that would pump the juice into a 50-gallon tank (shown below), which simplified things immensely. Storing the juice into a tank also allows for better mixing. Below are Melanie and Ethy drawing juice from the tank and stacking jugs on the table. Melanie is monitoring the flow of juice into bottles at the spigot.

Notice that the half-gallon jugs are not quite full. That extra inch or so at the top, approximately a half-cup's worth, allows for expansion when the plastic jugs are stored in the freezer and (naturally enough) frozen. Otherwise, the caps would pop off, which would make a delightful mess indeed. We've switched from gallon jugs to half-gallons because many of our friends and customers are unable to finish off a gallon of cider (nor are we) before the quality of the juice deteriorates and/or ferments into hard cider.

Now for the Cleanup

The sump pump can be sterilized between cider pressings and pumpings with scalding water. The tank can also be cleaned with hot water through a highpressure washer, as can be the press and all its parts. Everything is then covered with clean tarps for the next pressing.

Below left is one of the cheeses dumped from the tub, still in its nylon press bag, and ready to be included with the rest of the cheeses in the cart, at right. The cart has been waiting outside the cider room to be taken to the compost heap. I've read of some cider makers who are also breeders of apple trees who spread this pomace out on a protected part of ground and check for promising seedlings later. Many also feed the pomace to cows and other stock. Chickens and geese love it. So do the deer around here who make regular forays to our compost heap during late fall and early winter for discarded apples and pomace. I can see them from the study window during the early mornings and evenings, heading south through the grain field – thankfully on the other side of our electric fence.

Notice the size of the (fairly big) apple chunks in the cheeses loose in the cart. In two of the souces on cidering that I've read for this piece, it was recommended that the ground apples end up the consistency of a slurry, a near cousin to apple sauce. This consistency produces, they say, the most juice. I've always thought that we should be getting more juice from our apples and so mentioned this consistency problem to our two cider masters.

And ignited a controversy.

Melanie worried about the seeds being ground along with the apples if we bought a heavier grinder. Apple seeds contain a trace of cyanide and, though the amount of cyanide ending up in the cider would be miniscule, she was concerned about it affecting the taste. She was also worried about what the heavier motor would do to our old-fashioned cider press. She could see it eventually being shaken to pieces. Her Dad thought this through and decided to try speeding up the grinder on our press rather than getting a new one. Increased speed might make for a softer pomace without crushing the seeds – the grinder now, he says, is set at the lowest speed.

The narrative on that experiment, however, will have to wait for next year's cider pressing.

Meanwhile it's still January and still very cold,