Cidering

In a further attempt to finish the fall updates, here are some photos from a Saturday back in the beginning of October. Nick organized a party with apple cider as the objective. It was my first close-up experience with making cider and I was fascinated with the whole process, especially the way the cider press made it possible to do a lot of hard work quite efficiently and all by hand. Here's the step-by-step process, from apples on the trees to cider in the jugs.

1. Prep. At a long-overgrown apple orchard in Lake Leelanau, Nick and I set up two cider presses - one handmade by Nick, the other rented from the county extension office. While we waited for more cider-makers to arrive, we hiked uphill through the brush to visit the yurt Nick is building and, back down in the orchard, harvested a bucketful of concord grapes to make into juice.

2. Pick. As the group grew, we hauled our buckets and baskets to the apple trees. We picked yellow apples...
and red apples.3. Pulverize. Then we got to work with the presses. Here, Matt tosses apples into the hopper while Nick turns the crank to grind them up.
The apple mash collected in the bucket below, which was lined with a mesh sleeve.
4. Press. The next step was to place a heavy wooden disc in the bucket and crank the top lever, as Nick and Ben are doing below. This turns a giant screw that presses the disc down onto the apples, squeezing out the juice.
At the bottom of the bucket, the juice flowed out through a notch in the tray and collected in a bowl.
5. Pour! Cider achieved, we then carefully decanted it into jugs in a variety of creative ways, as we'd forgotten a funnel.
With both presses in action, there was a lot of cidering going on. This year wasn't a great one for apples due to a late spring frost that took out many of the blossoms. But there was plenty for sampling, and enough for everybody to fill a jar or two to take home.

Bella kept an eye out for any threats to the apples we did manage to collect...
while Maisie stood guard over the three jugs of finished cider. To see if we could tell a difference in flavor, we had a jug for the yellow apples, a jug for the reds, and a jug with a mix of the two. Verdict: All good! For more photos of the cidering process, plus some other fall happenings, pop on over here.