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
_______________________________________________
nafex mailing list
nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Reproduction of list messages or archives is not allowed.
This includes distribution on other email lists or reproduction on web sites.
Permission to reproduce is NEVER granted, so don't claim you have permission!
**YOU MUST BE SUBSCRIBED TO POST!**
Posts from email addresses that are not subscribed are discarded.
No exceptions.
----
To subscribe or unsubscribe, go to the bottom of this page (also can be used to change other email options):
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/nafex
File attachments are NOT stripped by this list.
TAKE STEPS TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM COMPUTER VIRUSES!
Please do not send binary files.
Use plain text ONLY in emails!
NAFEX web site: http://www.nafex.org/
