But as I explained above, in addition to making cider, I am also producing apple juice to preserve for drinking and use for making apple wine:
1) APPLE WINE
Apple wine will ferment more vigorously than your cider. The apple wine I started on 9/9/07 had 2 lbs of sugar added to each 7 pints of juice (the juice had a low SG) which bulked it up to 1 gall. and although I only filled the demijohn to the shoulder, once the ferment really got going it foamed right up into the neck and it was several days before the remainder of the juice (that was fermenting in a seperate bottle) could be added. If I had left all the sediment (very heavy as from a soft apple), which when dropped out was about 30% of the volume, it would almost certainly risen up and sprayed out the airlock.
2) APPLE JUICE FOR DRINKING
I'm sure anyone would agree that the murky brown sludge that is fresh pressed apple juice looks unappealing, despite tasting delicious. Some varieties will drop their sediment naturally, both others need a little help. This is some that was given that "help" only a few hours previously, and by the morning was crystal clear and ready for blending and pasteurising:
And after bottling looked like this (don't normally use clear bottles unless part of 1st time gift of apple juice to some one who has given me apples so they can see it's not the brown murk that some people produce):
3) CIDER
Whilst not essential, I still add pectalase to drop the sediment (that would not fall by itself overnight) because I have a shortage of fermenting capacity at this time of year and I don't want to store sediment, the stored juice is multipurpose (in that it can also be used for drinking and wine making), and finally it produces a cider (started 2/9/07, completely fermented out, clear enough to read a newspaper though after 2 weeks and with only a thin compact sediment:
Maybe I should have rotated the paper, rather than the picture.
And this is that cider (made last month) after racking, and it's ready to drink already (with some of those walnut cookies):
Have pressed 25 galls of juice to date and hope to get to around 40/50 galls (+ pears).