Pressing apple juice
We are fortunate to have three apple trees and a pear tree in the garden, and for the last few weeks fruit has been piling up in bowls all over the house.
Last weekend, we set to and made juice!
The process was all new to me, so it was a learning process. But the sun shone on our endeavours and the resulting juice is delicious.
Quick guide to making juice with an apple press
The gathered fruit has to be washed and chopped into quarters. We did mostly apples but also some pears.
Before you can press fruit, it has to be ‘scratted’ – crushed. You can buy dedicated scratters or at the other end of the cost-spectrum, you can smash the fruit with a lump of wood. We opted for the middle road, buying ‘the Pulpmaster’ – which basically means you put the fruit in a food-safe bucket with a lid and a blade and attach an electric drill!
Fruit suitably scratted, it’s time to press. A straining bag goes inside the wooden cage and the fruit goes into the bag. Wooden blocks on top, and then you start to rotate the spindle down the threaded pole in the middle. Slowly applying pressure, juice comes out at the bottom of the press, ready to be caught into a clean jug or similar.
We then funnelled the juice into bottles and once we had finished, pasteurised all the bottles. Without pasteurising, the juice would only keep for a day or two, but this way it should keep for months.
The remains of the fruit went to the compost heap and then there was a job of cleaning everything!
I’m really pleased with the juice we made and feeling quite inspired for adding extra flavours or mixing fruits together. We might still do another batch this year and another year I’d be more proactive in gathering apples from other people who are overwhelmed by them!
Pasteurising other produce also seems like something to explore. The freezer is very full after these last few weeks of harvesting and batch-cooking, so learning different kinds of preserving seems worthwhile.
Our apple trees didn't do much at all this year, in fact one of them just withred. They were new, and I fear local cats rather hastened the demise of the eating apple tree. I'm hoping the cooker does better next year. The only other fruiting tree we have is an olive tree, but pressing your own olives is...more or less impossible. I do not recommend it.