North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Mark or Helen Angermayer" <hangermayer@isp.com>]

Thanks for the info Steve.  I had wondered how well the Happy Valley Ranch
presses work.  I'm anxious to start pressing even though we're several years
away from apples.  I've only found a couple non-motorized presses on the
Web.  Happy Valley Ranch looks like it's the better of the two.
Incidentally, I've driven by Happy Valley Ranch and it doesn't strike me as
unusually  "Happy" or "Valley".  It's a metal building (a nice one) on a
flat pasture.  The price of the presses don't make me happy either.  I'm
hoping we won't have to cash in our 401K when it's time to buy one.  Joking
aside, they look like good quality presses with good quality materials.

I did have a question though, does your arm get tired grinding all the
apples?

Mark Angermayer
Zone 5 Kansas
20 miles north of Happy Valley


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "loneroc"
To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 6:31 AM
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Centennials / apple pressing


> Thanks Del,
>
> Centennial must keep its crisp texture longer the less heat there is (duh,
I
> suppose).  Southerners on this list really like Centennial, but state that
> it turns to moosh very quickly.  I have a two week window of crispness
here
> in SW WI, maybe a little more. With your August average highs of 40F up
> there things must last a lot longer.
>
> I too, took the cider press plunge this year.  I'd used an electric
kitchen
> juicer for several years, cutting and coring, before putting the slices
down
> the chute.  Fun for a bushel or two.  I went the absolutely extravagant
> route of paying a grand for the Happy Valley press. I'm not really a
> tinkerer type--who might fall in love with the internal intricacies of
> garbage disposals.  Esthetically, I figured I'd get more satisfaction from
> using a manual, quiet, old-timey contraption and the Happy Valley fit the
> bill.  Now that the press is paid for, I can forget about the economic
> calculation that I'll need to make several hundred gallons of Juice (Cider
> is the fermented product) to recoup my "investment".
>
> I'm satisfied overall with the HV's performance.  It did come with the
> crappiest directions I've ever seen on a US-made product.  I can
understand
> why the instructions written by a Chinese widgetmaker might be nearly
> unintelligible, but Kansan seems to be mutually intelligible with English
so
> far as I can tell. I managed to assemble the press after a couple phone
> calls to the maker and an extra day or two of effort beyond the predicted
> assembly time, but that nightmare has faded into the dim recesses of my
> 50-year-old memory.
>
> Freezing the juice produces magnificent results.  Towards Spring there are
> some very subtle changes in flavor and after a year or so you can notice a
> slight "artificial apple flavor" tastes starting to become more
noticeable.
> Unless your electricity is either very expensive or absent altogether I'd
> recommend freezing over any method except fermentation.  But ya can only
> drink so much hooch!  Canning turns the juice into a product little better
> than Del Monte or Mott's.
>
> Contrary to the advice of almost every cidermaking information I've read I
> use drops to make juice in addition to squeezing the 2nd's.  I remove all
> the fallen fruit from beneath the trees all summer long to interrupt pest
> lifecycles anyway.  I compost the bad stuff. I have no livestock to
> contaminate fruit butt he drops that seem to be pretty good are washed in
a
> mild bleach solution and rinsed well anyway.  I then inspect each apple,
> cutting out bruises, rot, and any other spot where the skin has been
broken.
> Can anyone see a down side to this process that I'm missing?
>
> I like to allow the trees to drop a third of the actual main crop (not
> counting June drop and other early falls) or more before I pick . The
drops
> are nearly all  fruit that have some sort of insect or disease damage and,
> because of the ethylene produced by decay, those fruit fall first---the
> remaining fruit tends to be the undamaged stuff.  I pick from the tree and
> can, for the most part, just bag the fruit.  True 2nds go into the press.
> Perfect fruit is separated into more-ripe, and less-ripe.  The riper stuff
> is the first fruit pulled from storage and the greener fruit is left for
> late season eating.  I don't wash prior to bagging because several months
> have passed since my two scab/curculio sprays in May.  Fruit with bird
turds
> are not bagged but there are only a few of them
>
> My small orchard produces more apples and product than I can possibly use
> with out adding 200 pounds to the mid-section.  The rest goes to friends
and
> family.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Steve Herje, SW WI
>
>