If you live in Washington State, you probably have at least one apple tree in your yard, often you have several trees. And unless you have a niece who plucks the whole stem off the apple including the nub which flowers the following season, you'll end up with quite a load of apples at the end of the season which is right now. What do you do with this abundance of apples. You can leave them on the ground and let the deer gorge on them. Or you can just add them to your compost pile which is quite wasteful. Or you can press them and make cider. Which is what we did at M's house beforing leaving Whidbey Island.
The first step is creating a dilute bleach solution to disinfect the outside of the apple as birds may have relieved themselves on the apple or those harvested off the ground may have been contacted by who-knows-what critters (yes, Washington does have its fair share of slugs).
Then after sorting and removing the bad apples (or bad apple sections), they're dunked in a rinsing bath of plain water (chlorinated apple juice ISN'T good eats)
Then on to M's 37 year old apple press run by a reconditioned washing machine motor
This basically "shreds" the apples for easier pressin'
Which the Mrs attempts (M finished the manual pressin' as height was needed for maximum leverage).
I just wonder how long before the fresh juice turns to hard cider?...
Comments