Fruit and Failure

That title is a bit misleading. Yes there was fruit and there has been a lot of failure, but in the end there has been success, of sorts.

The first build of my cider press did well for what it was; a somewhat poorly designed box frame with little structural support and a lack consideration of where the forces of a 4 ton bottle jack had to go. The lack of heavy lag bolts and strong supports led to cracking lumber and broken dreams.

The solution? Break it down and build it again.
Where is the failure in learning from your mistakes, what wrong is that?

The wrong in this case was not mine, at least not in the building or dismantling part.

Finn decided to help me as he often does when I venture outside to avoid schoolwork and house work. He was diligently picking up the discarded wood screws and placing them back into the screw box( often doing so quickly because the friction from removing them had caused them to glow with the heat of 2 suns). I paid him no mind when he started stacking lengths of lumber a few feet from me- just Finn being a kid and puttering about I thought.

Then  BAM! right in the brain box.
The sky grew brighter and pain welled up behind my eyes, I put my hand on my forehead to staunch what I thought was surely grey matter, set my jaw, and clenched my eyes tightly together to fend off the urge to tear up.

I want to say I was silent when this happened, stoic enough to take my punishment( for not wearing a helmet apparently), and simply walk it off. But I wasn't. I was weak, that or I hadn't been drinking enough to numb the pain. Bringing my hand down from my head I saw blood and the world heard my confused rage in the form of language that would make a sailor take notice.

Luckily I think Finn was shocked enough by what had happened that he didn't pick up anything,  or Willow would have keelhauled me.

After it was all over and I had an unnaturally blue icepack pushed against my forehead I could finally laugh about it, willow on the other hand had been laughing about it since I stumbled in to tell her what our little assault child had done to me. I guess I will be wearing my caving helmet whenever I work outside with Finn now.

so the failure here:
Finn cracked me in the head with a 2x4, there is a 1 inch gash in my forehead. I may have said something loudly that shouldn't be uttered in the presence of children and women.

Success:

Before the press gave up the ghost I managed to get 3 gallons of good grape juice out of it, I sulfited it and put it in a bucket and will be making wine from it today i hope. The skins also got some sulfite and will be used to make a table/cooking wine.

Finn and Willow helped me pick these earlier, it took only three hours to pick and destem 50 pounds of grapes- the picking i had help with( at times too much Finn help) - the destemming I had to do alone while I watched episodes of BrewingTV on my thinkpad.

Note: destemming grapes is a very boring and sticky business.

Success: The new press I build is one based heavily on things I found online. I should have just bought plans to build one, the videos i watched showed the press working great - mine required lots of tinkering and reinforcing as well as an entire day to complete. (the one I refer to is called a Whizbang Cider Press and is very well reviewed) I should have just bought the plans and saved myself lots of time and aggravation. In the end the press I ended up with( at least for now) seems to be able to take a lot of pressure and doesn't make too many unnerving creaking noises when I press stuff. I managed to do some apples from our trees last night and got a good 1/2 gallon of juice really quickly. I used an old pillowcase as a pressing bag- its a high thread count one from somewhere that we just didn't like. I worked really well - the juice was much clearer than the juice I made before, and despite the apples not being quite 100% ripe the juice was good and kid approved.

This might look like them getting home on the first day of school, but I assure you this is their "the cider meets our standards" dance celebration. really. Abrial is even so blinded by the deliciousness that she has to close her eyes.


Also: its painted the same color as our house - Thanks whoever left paint in our basement!

so to sum up:

It takes 80 pounds of grapes to get 5 gallons of juice - I had 50 and got 3.
A toddler armed with a 2x4 is bad news - wear a helmet.

Fruit Press Basket Complete

So I went out and bought a can of Watco Butcher block sealer for my wood press components. I put about 5 coats of this stuff on the basket and press plate. it looks great and now I can be assured the basket will last a long long time. The tin says to wait 72 hours before using the sealed wooden object so I can finally use it tomorrow.

Willow checked our grapes tonight during our pre dinner tennis excursion and they are sweet and so dark they look black. Tomorrow is the day to pick them. I think I am going to make a nice big red wine and maybe a second wine with the leftover skins to use as a table wine or a cooking wine. I have a lot of bottles to fill. Thank goodness I bought an Italian floor corker.

Unfortunately, like many of you, my lovely children are going to school tomorrow so I will lose my able but not always willing outdoor servants and child watchers. This will make picking fruit much more difficult. This means that they will get up early- 6 am, and come home around 2:30 pm. Over the summer their schedule was more like get up at 9 and go to bed at 10:30 or 11 with a possible nap in between- and these are 11 year olds. I finally got some better family photos last week after everything greened back up and before the Irene rain dumping from the last few days.

 In the photo above: Rylan in red, Finn, Abrial, Jalene holding Maelle

The obvious addition here is willow.

Cider Pressing Matter

Over the last year I have plotted and schemed trying to justify buying a cider press. I found someone locally that makes and sells them but the prices are high: around 300 dollars if I remember correctly. Shopping craigslist and the local classifieds brought up a handful of fully functional antique presses for around 500 to 1000 dollars. Clearly I had to do something else.

So two days ago Willow took all the kids except Rylan to some kind of gathering and I decided to build something.

After scowering the web I found many people using scissor car jacks and 4 or 8 ton hydraulic jacks. Luckily I bought a 4 ton hydraulic jack at Harbor Freight a few weeks before.

The plan, as it sits, is to gather apples either from our back yard of to buy bushels of seconds from a local orchard and use those. They will be cored and pulverized into an applesauce like product, placed into a nylon mesh bag and pressed using the jack and some bucket sized plywood circles.

I had planned on sanding and varnishing everything with food grade wood varnish but then my laziness took over and I made a snap decision not to do it. Instead I plan on placing food grade plastic on everything that the apples/cider will touch. this way I can simply add plastic when the press is in use then throw it away when we are done.

I checked out apples today and they are about two weeks from ripe so I went and bought some drops from a local place. Three bushels got me almost three gallons of cider, even though my process was very inneffecient. It tastes great and the kids liked it. I contacted a local guy about making me a proper basket for the press, I need to cut a few more pressing disks and I need to find some material that will let me create the cheeses and have them stay where I want them.

If you research the term " pulpmaster" you will find a delightful product sold in the UK, I couldn't find it here in the states) that works to chop apples in a way that might work better than my blender idea. I bought a few things at the hardware store today and will be making one for myself over the next few days.
Our grapes are almost ripe as well, and hopefully this press can do double duty as a grape press. Two years ago we picked 120 pounds of grapes but being novices we picked them too early and got slightly tart grapes. This year I am going to wait until the birds start eating them and then pick them, as I was instructed to do by many an internet sage.

The video I made of the press seems to be to large to load, even after letting the page sit unattended overnight. So I will post it to youtube and set it up here in the future.

In the video above I stated I used three bushels of apples, looking at what a bushel is I realized what I bought were half bushels.