Apple processing*
Saturday, 23 September 2023
Autumnal subsistance agriculture activity day…we made cider, which is unfermented, fresh apple juice. We all agreed that this was the most cider we had made at one time, at almost nineteen gallons.
We used this machine. Here’s where the apples are loaded. Not shown is prior apple collecting and washing. Also not shown is cleaning all the containers, and this mill.
Cranking the handle chips the apples. Gravity is crucial to depositing the chips in the bin inside a heavy-duty filter cloth.
Then, more cranking to squeeze the juice out of the chipped apples.
We created several wheelbarrow loads of compressed, dry apple chips.
The last major step is filtering the cider. This involves multiple washings of the filter cloth, as it gets clogged.
* Note that this is very different than yesterday’s Apple processing.