Apple Cider Galore!

Apple Cider Extravaganza

Jo and I are two peas in a pod.

We both love gardening, preserving and learning the more traditional handicrafts…we also tend to go overboard in the sheer VOLUME of product that we end up withJ

One of Jo’s coworkers let her know that he had a bunch of apples (as many as we wanted in fact!) that he was willing to give us, and we jumped at the chance!


He got a long fruit picker stick and shook all the apples out of the tree for us!
His 10 year old grandson LOVED that part:)

A truck bed later and we were done!

12 crates later we began to feel like we might have gone overboard again…

We canned some of my mother’s fancy Ginger/Cinnamon/Applesauce recipe and also dried 3 gallon bags worth of apple slices (Michaela loves these!)

There isn't a "recipe", you just add fresh minced ginger
and ground cinnamon until you like the way it tastes. I used to add golden raisins
until I found out it was just bleached grapes.

We were down to 11 crates of apples…

Then Jo found out one of her neighbors has a cider press and he was willing to lend it to us!

Neither one of us had ever used a cider press before, and had no idea how long it would take or how physically difficult it would be. I had visions of working on pressing all those apples every day after work for the next week!

Luckily I was wrong and we blew through the apples faster than either of us had hoped! The cider press is a really cool mechanism, and every time I see it in use I’m just amazed at how effective it is and how simple it is.

Seriously. It just POURED out!

We started with 7 gallon jugs to fill with our cider and it QUICKLY became clear that we were going to need more containers… a lot more.

While I ran to the store to get more containers and more apples from my house, Jo and Josh continued to press cider and were using Chrissy’s big jug.

I brought an additional 10 gallons back with me along with another 4 crates of apples we had left at my house.

It was actually REALLY fun to press the cider!

There is an odd sense of satisfaction in feeding apples into the grinder and then watching the cider pour out in DROVES. We got about a gallon and a half for each pressed basket.

It's astounding how fast the apple juice oxidizes and turns the familiar caramel color we're all familiar with.

And in case you're wondering...Yes. fresh apple cider is just as amazing as you think it would be:)

We also pressed some Bartlett pears and Asian pears along with the apples.
It was cool to see how different they were in color.