[Mrs Bee]

I have never made cider before or any alcholic beverages but I am being tempted into it as oi do loikes a drop of cider. And we have the apple tree and loads of people give us their windfalls and surplus apples.

Have done a bit of reading around the subject and have a few queries before I start.

A. would you recommend getting a cider press or could I use a juicer?

B Could I freeze the apples and juice them or press them later?
c. could I juice the apples and freeze the juice and use it later?

Thanks Di

[ilan]

Personaly if you have never made cider before dont bother its not worth the cost or effort for the first few times of making it without the experiance. so I would make a strong apple wine instead and dilute it with water  that way you will need less equipment
make sure you use a good wine yeast demi jons air locks etc with out these forget it .

mince an assortment of apples into a 5 gall food grade container and cover the pulp with water add a good yeast and a campden tablet plus a little sugar you will also need some lemon juice and a good ltr or two of cold tea and let ferment for a few days in the warm then strain into demi jons add more sugar 250 grams and let ferment , taste in about two weeks and add more sugar let ferment till starts to clear rack into new demijon let finish .
yes you can freeze apples first, yes you can use frozen apple juice . you can make a home made press but to make good cider you need to use a good mix of cider apples (the local brew has 27 different apples in it and most taste foul yet each complements the other in the brew . table/cookers rarelymake good cider   

[Alastair-I]

A sturdy cider press is very easy to make, with DIY-shed timber it's somewhere around £80-£100 including the bottle-jack.  If you shop around the timber yards or have access to waste construction timber its going to be somewhere between cheaper and a lot cheaper.

I would never buy a cider press, the small ones available under £100 are very small.

This is the one I built last year, I think we were loading it with a 10kg pillowcase of apple pulp at a time.  We were scratting the apples using a garden shredder.



The design was copied from something I'd seen on the web.  This year the pressing plates are getting replaced with something more substantial.

[stompy]

You can use any apples to make cider.
However, the quality will differ from one type to the next.
The thing cider apples have over all others is a masive amount of malic acid, and it's the malic acid which you "need" to make a "good" cider.

Fortunately you can make a good cider with the addition of malic acid from a home brew shop, it comes in a powder form and is added at the stated quantities.

Cider does take a long time to mature though, around a year on average as you need the cider to go into a second state of fermentation known as malic fermentation.
I know nothing about this or how long it actually takes but i know it needs to do it in order to taste nice.

You can put your apples through a juicer fresh or defrosted from frozen but you will get alot of pulp after fermentation, with a press you use a fine cloth usually muslin and press the juice and only the juice through it, this way you don't get all the solids as you do from a juicer.

Hope this helps, if not just google how to make cider and there's a huge amount of information there that will help you get sorted.

Andy

[Mrs Bee]

Thank you all so very much for your help.
What a wonderful source of information you are. Nothing beats asking people with experience. 

And now I need to have a little think as to what to do next and which route to take.

Di

[Mrs Bee]

PS. I think your home made press is wonderful Alastair.

Will show it to OH as he will be iin need of a winter project. Can't have him sitting round doing nothing or under my feet