North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[John Henderson <jhenderson@ithaca.edu>]

For my sake, I'm glad to hear someone else has struggled with the  
directions. We've had our HVR press for a couple years now and are  
quite satisfied with it. However, when I was trying to put it  
together, I spent way too much time struggling to get it right.

Only  trouble with freezing is you can forget about it. Making room  
for this year's cider in the freezer, we found a jug from 2004.

John Henderson
Lodi, NY

On Oct 19, 2006, at 3:51 PM, nafex-request@lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> > > 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.