Apple Press

After I figured out how I was going to crush apples this coming year, I started looking into how to press them.

There are two basic types of presses – the basket press and the cheese press. The basket press is usually a round slatted basket in which pressure is applied using a screw in the middle, and the juice runs out the side. There are already made presses out there for $250, but an overwhelming amount of people I talked to said that this design yields a poor amount of juice when working with apples. Instead, they suggested I look into the cheese press system, which tray with “cheese” and a hydraulic jack. There is a set of plans in Annie Proloux and Lew Nichol’s Cider: Making, Using, & Enjoying Sweet & Hard Cider, which is similar but better to one on Andrew Lea’s website. Old Time Cider just posted a video of Alan Yelvington building a cider press out of a Harbor Freight Shop Press, which is a press already mounted into a frame and would save some time and energy building (I appologize about the layout, but resizing the video is just fighting me today):

He also posted with the video his suppliers:

• The press is from Harbor Freight
  
• The tray can be found at Bel-Art
  
• Good Nature, Day Equipment, and OESCO have a few other odds and ends, like the pressing cloth

How the press works:

Harbor Freight recently had a sale in which their 12 ton shop press, which normally runs for $120 was on sale for $80, and I got one. However, this means that the tray he used is too big because it is a narrower press. I’m currently looking into other food grade plastic or stainless steel trays that would fit.

I’m going to slowly buy up the parts I need and try to have everything ready by the end of August to make apple cider.