It all started when the mother-not-in-law told me she had excessive apples and was making juice but didn't want it to go to waste. She had already used a juicer to make 20litres! Then a friend told me he had a small orchard (3 apple 2 pear trees) and wanted some advice. After consulting google and people on this forum (thanks to Trunky and others) advice was given to friend and some equipment and I learnt enough to begin the build. First up was deciding how to scratter the apples - in the end a vigo pulpmaster was bought (see pics below) although leyland were out of stock so I had to go to http://www.stonehelm.co.uk in oxfordhire. (NB next year I'll make a scratting machine
)Next was the press. This I made at work using beech wood and using mortace and tennon joints for strength. The three cross members have a threaded rod running through them with wing nuts either side for easy dismanteling. The drip tray is a beech chopping board with routed groove and 15mm hole & SS pipe pushed up to stop juice flowing under the board. All of it was oiled using ikeas mineral oil (food safe) and net curtain for the cheese cloths. The seperating sheets where made using 3/4" plywood with parallel grooves cut to allow juice to flow out. A square was made but reduced in perimeter size for the sunsequent presses as the pulp was squashed out of sides and not getting all the juice out! The bottle jack was a halfords 4 ton. I wet the frame etc first followed by spraying everything with a no-rinse solution of videne.
video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC49gETH0Bw
pictures:
can anyone identify the types of apples? s.g was 1050 red/green, good crunch, smallish in size - brayburn perhaps?
chickens love the dry pancake pulp!
This filled 4 of my 3us gal cornies (50 ish litres!) plus a few 2litre pop bottles spare
Its now in a 50 litre carboy where I added 11 campden tablets (1 per uk gallon) and left under lock for 2 days. Then I've added more or less a full pot of youngs super wine yeast (60g). After a day its started to fizz
As its got little head room I've got blow off tubes etc at the ready.The other 20litres done by the missuses mum I've put in a smaller 30 liter carboy and left to naturally ferment under lock (it had already started in some of the pop bottles and had pressurised them quite a lot
) It's now bubbling less that 1 a second OK some final questions
- should I rack off the lees as soon as fermenting finishes?
- should I campden a second time to increase storage viability?
- Is crash cooling a good idea (cold filtration) as I now have everything I need to crash cool (ATC800, recirc flash cooler etc)
Although I cornie everything I think quite a lot of this will end up in swingtops as many people are keen on a taste
I'm the only northerner with a oooo-eeeeer-commmbinne haaarvesterrr accent at the moment
Ben
