To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [NAFEX] Cider presses and Apple Pressing and Botulism
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 13:39:29 -0700 (PDT)
Jim, do you recommend cutting out wormy cores, then?
I'd have thought apple juice to be acidic enough that botulism isn't
a problem - and botulism spores aren't killed at 180. Maybe you mean
e.coli? Though I'd think our systems would be used to all the e.coli
around this place by now :-)
Would vinegar do the trick to sanitize? I don't like to use bleach for
environmental reasons. What about if you were making hard cider/wine -
I don't always use camden tablets but the sulfering would kill the
bacteria?
And another thought on apple presses - while we still are thin in the
apple deparrment, we had a good crop of grapes and plums, of which
a fair percent was juiced for wine. It hadn't occurred to me, but
the cider press will just as well press grapes and (pre-cooked) plums,
right? That makes it much more reasonable. My golden plum wine
(wickson plums) was a little boring on bottling, but turns out I
bottled it before it was quite entirely done, and it kept going and
popped a cork; but have been drinking the rest, it's a lovely light
fizzy wine. Maybe one can make plum hard cider...
Lisa in Ashland Oregon
USDA Z7 - Sunset Z7 - 1800' - 19" annual rainfall