Yesterday a group of friends and family gathered at our farm for an apple cider-pressing party. It's been an outstanding year for apples, and we have several trees that were loaded with Golden Delicious, Grimes Golden, and a few mystery varieties, some of them wild. Other folks brought Johnagolds, Red Delicious, Granny Smiths, and more Golden Delicious to press. Pressing apple cider is a fun excuse to spend an afternoon with friends, and a wonderful way to celebrate the arrival of fall.

A few years ago, my in-laws and a couple of their friends purchased an old cider press from a friend who sells antiques. The press is probably at least 100 years old, and although it's not in perfect condition, it gets the job done. Its grinding mechanism had been retrofitted with an electric motor that burned out almost immediately the first time we used it. Since then, we have tried various methods of crushing the apples prior to pressing them. The grinder can be hand-operated with a crank, but its crushing teeth are so old and worn down, they don't do a very good job of grinding up the apples. The last time we pressed cider, we improvised by smashing the apples in a bucket with a 2x4 prior to pressing them. It worked, but was not very efficient. This year, one of our friends welded a mashing device that looks something like a giant potato masher. It worked fairly well, although there still is room for improvement on the mashing front.

We had 15 people to split up the work. First, we gathered all the apples and washed batches of them in a tub. Six or seven people at a time halved the apples and cut out any bad spots. Then someone dumped the prepared apples into a bucket, where another person crushed them with the metal masher. Several of us traded off the mashing job. After the apples were crushed, we dumped them into a mesh bag and placed the bag inside a wooden pressing basket. Then someone cranked the pressing plate down onto the apples, squeezing out the juice.

It was a lovely day for cider pressing, cool and mostly overcast, so there weren't too many yellow jackets buzzing around. It takes quite a lot of work to press cider, but a good-natured group of friends makes it a pleasant task. I don't know how many apples we used...a LOT! As an off-the-cuff estimation, I would guess we had about 100 gallons of apples. We pressed around 12 gallons of cider in all, and if we had been able to grind the apples more finely, I think we could have gotten more juice out of them. The grinding/crushing/mashing of the apples is definitely the weak link in our system, but we will continue to make improvements and hopefully find a replacement grinding wheel for the cider press that will mash the apples more finely than is possible by hand. Nevertheless, a good time was had by all, and everyone went home with a couple of jugs of delicious, sweet apple cider. In fact, the cider was so thick, we agreed that we could dilute it somewhat without compromising its delicious flavor.

I squirreled away a few boxes of Golden Delicious and Grimes Golden to make applesauce and apple pie filling, and to eat out of hand in the coming months. We will drink some sweet cider and freeze the rest of it. This evening, we will pasteurize a gallon of the sweet stuff and pitch it with wine yeast to make hard cider. The crushed apple waste will go to our pig, who loves apples and who is getting mighty big. (Butchering season is coming soon...)

I hope everyone is enjoying the arrival of fall. I recommend toasting the bounty of the season with a refreshing glass of fresh apple cider. Cheers!