Things that are just cool « Bacon Time !!!!!!

Went out to my brother’s house on a fine (and very warm) October morning to make apple cider.

Below is the cider press that has been in the family since about 1910.

97% of it is original with just a few pieces of wood being replaced or remade.

Note the stainless bowl that is at the front of the press.

This is about 3/4 of the apples that were picked/gathered. There are a few apple trees on the former homestead that the new owner let us have , there are several trees that are on township property and some trees we’ve knocked on doors to ask if we could have their apples. Surprising number of people own apple trees that view the fruit as a nuisance, not an asset.

I wasn’t really planning on making a post about making cider so I did not document and photograph everything I should have. The below blue bucket has a stainless honey filter and honey cloth that is used for the first filter. This is a relatively new process and I have to laugh at how much more difficult it used to be using cheese cloth that was clothes pinned to the bucket.

This is most of what we pressed. A few people had stopped by and we probably already gave several gallons away by this time.

This was the best year for apples that we have had in 10 years. It was just my brother and myself working as several others that said they would be here, had other obligations come up. Turning the hand crank is quite the workout.

This is how many apples we had left that we will save for another weekend. It takes about 3 of the 5 gallon buckets to make one squeeze.

Going back to the first photo and that stainless bowl, that gets filled with each squeeze, not including the amount of juice that comes out from just grinding the apples. These were very juicy apples. Two red buckets to one yellow made a very good mix. I like the cider tart.

Now, we could have probably finished the cider on this day, but being warm lent to the BEE infestation.

Almost every time we have made cider in the past, it was cold and damp, this time it was 80 plus and the amount of bees was astonishing. My dad got stung once, my brother twice and I was not stung at all. Bees were literally getting pored into the containers and we had had enough of the bees.