Apple Cider

It's mid-autumn, and in Cape Breton the apple trees are practically throwing their fruit at you (really, be careful on windy days). What to do with tiny, sour, bruised and probably bug-ridden apples? Smush them. Press them. Make apple cider.

Buddy is supervising, as always.

Emily turning the press to squeeze the smush.

Moragh turning the crank as Sarah threw apples to their doom.

Neither one of us had ever pressed apple cider before, so when wooden spoon-maker Terron and his apprentice/wwoofer Sara(h?) showed up on Sunday (with a car full of apples) to borrow Thom and Jane's cider press, we were eager to help out. The press is hand-made and hand-operated, which means that having a few people to rotate through the working positions is a bonus. The whole process of apple-to-cider is elegantly simple: smush apples, squeeze juice out of apple smush, collect squeezings, enjoy. You can process the cider further to get other products like apple cider vinegar or a hard cider (or even just apple juice, which is apple cider with all the pulp and other cloudy bits filtered out of it). Thom and Jane made a hard cider last year which we were able to try, and it was delicious. The apple smushings made a great addition to the compost piles here, although we wished we had a pig around to enjoy them further.

Cider!

Everything gets tossed into the grinder by the way, including whatever slugs and other bugs that have made their home in the apples. Mmm, protein. Leaving the apples unwashed allows the yeast that lives on the outside of them to naturally ferment the cider once it is pressed, which is an advantage if you plan to make vinegar or a hard cider. We managed to make about 8 litres of  fresh cider with the equivalent of four reusable grocery bags full of apples. Terron and Sarah gave us some to thank us for our help, and it tasted very fresh and a little bit sour which we really enjoyed. Moragh gave the press a good wash and inspected all the parts, which probably means she wants to build one sometime in the future...cider might be our new favourite fall activity. :)