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The Final Product
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2005-12
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In short:
Delicious!
Some bottles went out in the mail and some were handcarried to
their lucky recipients. Hopefully you have had a chance to
taste. So overall, this project was definitely a success and
was also an excellent chance to do something fun with
friends. We are already planning for next year, and have
concluded that we will need to make at least 20 gallons. There
has been some talk of ice concentrating cider to make
applejack, and distilling a few gallond to make apple
brandy. All that needs a significantly larger amount of cider
to start with though.
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Throughout this process, we imagined how we could do better
next time. Probably the most obvious improvements could be in
the shredding and pressing. Its neat to use an antique press,
but it doesn't do a super job of milling the fruit, and
probably can't exert the multi ton pressures needed for high
juice yield. Also, the bucket press system is somewhat
cumbersome to cycle through since the batch size is small and
the pomace takes some work to extract from the bucket after
pressing.
We have a few ideas about building a new machine for
next year. I've read on the internets about how a cheap
garbage disposal from home depot mounted in a chunk of plywood
is pretty much perfect for mashing up apples. Seems nice to
have the whole thing human powered though, both for aesthetics
and for when the Hard Times Come. We may also want to move to
the stacked trays in a frame type of press. Again, human power
seems nice. A hand operated hydraulic jack would be very good,
but lacks charm. We'll have to think about it...
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Design partially original and partially ripped off from other websites
by Holly Gates
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