{"id":2747,"date":"2012-09-30T09:24:03","date_gmt":"2012-09-30T13:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/?p=2747"},"modified":"2012-09-30T09:24:03","modified_gmt":"2012-09-30T13:24:03","slug":"the-crush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/?p=2747","title":{"rendered":"The Crush"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apples are in short supply here this year. We had a very warm March and all the fruit trees burst into bloom. Then April turned cold and we had a hard frost and all those blooms froze. The orchard I usually get apples from, Bender’s Orchard<\/a>, doesn’t have any apples this year. Other orchards around have a few and I’ve heard reports that Michigan growers are expecting about 10% of a normal crop.<\/p>\n

What apples you can find then are high-priced. That makes making a cider a very expensive proposition. I did manage to find a couple trees that weren’t tended and didn’t freeze that the owners would let me pick the apples for free. Josh and I picked about a bushel of Golden Delicious last weekend, and I picked another bushel or so of some unknown red variety from a neighbor’s tree last week.<\/p>\n

Yesterday we crushed those apples for cider. It was a perfect fall day for making cider. Clear and bright and in the 60’s.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Erin Scooping Apples<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We had that wheelbarrow about level full of apples when we started. They were pretty small and gnarly and didn’t have a lot of juice. The apples get dropped in this hopper.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Erin Chopping Apples<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the bottom of the hopper are some metal teeth on a rotating drum that chops the apples into bits for pressing. It doesn’t take long to end up with a basket full of chopped apples.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Chopped Apples<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From there we slide the basket under the screw and press the apples to squeeze out all the juice.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Me Squeezing the Apples<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Straining the Juice<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The juice runs out through a hole in the tray and I drain it through a sieve to get the big chunks out.<\/p>\n

Then we strain it through cheesecloth to take a little more of the apple pulp out.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
More Straining<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We ended up with about two and a half gallons. About half the yield per bushel from a normal year. The apples that did survive the frost then suffered from the drought and ended up small and hard.<\/p>\n

Ah, but the final result was still splendid.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Splendid Result<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It tastes like the day it was pressed, bright and sunny and crisp. Old memories and new memories, captured in a gallon jug.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apples are in short supply here this year. We had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cooking","category-skunk-hill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}