The Fruit Harvest

[poliphilo]

2013 was a great year for apples. This year one of our trees hasn't fruited at all and the others are very sparsely laden.

I've been picking apples so I can juice them in my fathers wine-press.



Lot of work for very little return.

Ailz says she'll buy me a juicer but that's missing the point. A juicer is kitchenalia whereas the winepress is a toy.

Maybe I'll press some grapes. We do have a few vines. My mother used to make wine. We found some bottles in the garage- twenty years old- and It tasted like- well, not like anything you'd pay money for.

Comments

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

We took ours to a cider press. We didn't get the cider from our apples; we got as much cider as our apples should have yielded, less a cut for the cider press guy.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Matthew- our gardener- does that. This is apple country round here. Everyone with any land has trees.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

I'd love to get the apples in our back yard harvested and pressed, but I've no idea where, given this really isn't much of a cider region. As is, they simply provide bird treats and fertiliser. *sigh* I understand one tree is Bramley (well, some kind of cooking apple, and that's about the only "cooking" variety that seems to've survived into this day), the other some kind of eating apple - I'd love to try making cider out of a blend of the two, even if Bramley's hardly a traditional cider apple.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

One of our trees is a Bramley.

My mother tried her hand at wine (with mixed results) and beer (which came out wonderfully) but never attempted cider.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

So how did you do it? Did you grate the apples beforehand or what?

(If you didn't, that might explain your low yield... Apples need to be pulped or grated before pressing to yield any decent result without an industrial press.)

But yes, a thing like that is definitely a toy, and I'd love to have one! Of course in Houston there's not really any reason to, as a) we don't have a garden and b) it's not possible to grow apples in a sub-tropical climate.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I gave the apples a blast in the microwave to soften them up. This was Ailz's idea.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

Next time try grating them raw and then press the coarse pulp; heat slightly alters the flavour of the juice, which is a bit of a shame, really.

(I've been making apple juice for 35 years... Trust me! My family makes 12-1600 liters every autumn.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's a lot of juice!

Thanks for the hint.