Sunday, September 28, 2008

Processing Day - Hard Cider 2008


We decided to upgrade our production line this year. For the last four years I have been forced to rent an antiquated hand-crank grinder. I hate using the hand-crank for two reasons. First, I'm lazy. I don't like slaving. Secondly, hour after hour as I'm sweating and dying of exhaustion, I know just by looking that the quarter-sized apple chunks being spit out of the grinder are going to be wasted all because I can't seem to get the apples ground small enough.


That said Dan and I discussed a few options. We talked about contacting a cider mill and paying them to press our apples for us, but we found that there was only one commercial cider mill in Canon City, Colorado. They were busy with their own apples and couldn't help us.


With that option put to rest, we, meaning Dan (he's the problem solving brain of the operation), put his mind to solving the pressing problem (I made a pun!) of simplifying our production line. We decided on a super-burly stainless steel garbage disposal, which I named "the consumer." I was counting on the thing being insatiably hungry.


I'll admit I was a little nervous about the upgrade. I loved the idea, but I didn't trust it. In fact, "the consumer" gave me plenty to mistrust. It crapped out on us on day one.


The other major improvement that we made this year was buying a stainless steel pressing basket to replace the traditional "cheeses." "Cheeses,"for those of you that don't know, are linen cloth filled patties of ground apples that are stacked like coins and then pressed. Making "cheeses" is tedious and messy work, so we decided to buck tradition. I'm glad we did.


So, with the advent of our new-fangled gadgets and extra apples, we boldly decided to double our production. We made 24 gallons of hard cider last year. This year we were shooting for 50 gallons of cider. We acheived that goal, then we shot it out of the water.


Even though we still had over a hundred pounds of apples in the garage, we were finally forced to close shop because we ran out of carboys to put the cider in. All told we ended up with an unthinkable 70 gallons of cider this year!!!


I'll let you know how it turns out in a year.


Here's a photo journal our weekend.



Here's my truck with all of my brewing tools in it. The guy at the homebrew shop dubbed it the "fermentation wagon."



We started with so many apples that I couldn't even get all them in the picture. This is the best I could do.




Dan and I built this hydraulic press last year for $140. We operate it with a 2 ton bottle jack. If you look on the righ side of the press, just to the right of the orange bottle jack, you can see the white power switch that Dan fashioned onto the frame.



As I've already mentioned, grinding apples is a pain. This year, however, was different. To ease our collective pain, Dan wrigged up a super-powered garbage disposal with a stainless steel sink. How do you like them apples?



Here's another picture of "The Consumer."


We did run into a little trouble with "The Consumer." He died on us about four hours into our first day of processing apples. We tripped his thermal sensor. That wasn't acceptable, so we chucked a few ice packs on him and waited for him to cool off.




Here's another picture of our cooling system.



This stainless steel colander was Dan's brilliant solution to the messy and wasteful world of "cheeses." It worked like a champ after we drilled a bunch of holes in it and learned that we needed to wrap the pomace in cheese cloth before pressing so it wouldn't spit at us.
Dan's doing a little surgery on our strainer. The operation was a success. We'll probably drill more holes next year.


Here's Dan chugging some fresh worm juice.

3 comments:

Fanta said...

It's good to see you finished the process.

I would like to see the pictures on the panasonic lumix.

Would you ask your partner to burn them for me?
Fanta

Fanta said...

I'm glad to see you finished posting the process.
I'd like to see the rest of the photographs on the panasonic lumix.

If you please could you burn them for me?

Fanta

Taylor Roy said...

Nice post Forest. I can't wait to try the cider.