Some pressing experience

From Ukcider

Some pressing experiences from this year that may be of use to those thinking of what equipment to use in future years. It has been a while since I did this years pressing and I had intended to post this a while ago! - so I hope it is all still fresh enough in my memory to get the details right.

I bought a Vigo basket press and their mill/scratter in 2003 and used it for two years pressings. In 2005 I bought a new rack and cloth press and then later a Shark apple mill (thanks Ray) so I am in a position to make some comparisons.

After washing my apples are taken to the cider house in buckets - standard size 2 gallon plastic buckets from a large DIY chain and these make my measurement guide. One bucket of apples crushed in the vigo scratter just about fills the basket press (if you push it in you can get a bit more in). This yields between 2 and 3 litres of juice depending on the apples used and how long the press is left. Vigo suggest it is possible to get three pressing an hour, it may be with several people working at it but I have never achived that level and I suspect that yields would be at the low end. If the press can be left (with occasional tightening) for several hours it is possible to get about 25% extra juice. Some juice yield starts before applying pressure doing this especially if the apple is pushed down into the press basket by hand.

Before the Shark arrived I used the old scratter with the rack and cloth press, I found that it took about four buckets of apples to fill the press. No juice was produced before pressure was applied to the press and to get a good yield quite a lot of pressure had to be applied - perhaps too much as the screw pushed down into the pressing block! Yield was very similar to that when using the basket press, perhaps marginally more but not by much.

After a pressing I kept the pressed apple which still had some wet bits and did another pressing. I then put the apple from the first pressing (or from a parallel basket pressing) back in with that from the second to refill the press. On repressing I got extra yield though the amount may not seem worth the extra effort I think it was about an extra 20%. Interestingly this juice was clearer (the end of a pressing is usually clear with the start cloudy in my experience) and had a slightly lower SG.

When the Shark arrived I still had a few apples left so I used it to mill the apples, I did not use the basket press so cannot make any comparisons there ( but see the up date paragraph below). The first thing I noticed was that it now took more apples to fill the press, up from four buckets to six. The second experience was that juice started to flow very quickly before any pressure was applied, some 40-50% of the yield was in the collecting vessel before the press was shut. Pressing was a lot easier and a lot less pressure was required to squash the pulp down to the same thickness. Yield was a bit up so now it was over 3 litres per bucket of apples. As with basket press extra yield could be obtained by leaving the press under pressure for some hours but the extra yeild from this seemed to be less percentage wise. Combining two lots of pressed apples to repress again produced more juice but the amount would not be worthwhile unless you are very short of apples and again the SG was down by as much as 0.005.

So in summary the advantage of a good mill and a rack and cloth press is largely in terms of speed and ease of yield rather than in extra yield. More yield is obtained from the rack and cloth press when using finely chopped apples but most of this was accounted for by getting more apple in the press in the first instance! Extra yield can be obtained by prolonged pressing and this is useful if you have to do other things in the meantime (Sleep overnight, collect more apples from the orchard during the day) but the usefullness of this depends on how many apples you have and how desperate you are for extra juice. Later juice tends to be clearer and may have a lower SG - perhaps better to pasteurise as juice instead of for cider.

Update August 2006

Using the Shark with the basket press on some early apples at the end of July 2006; instead of one bucket or just over I actually got two buckets of apples into the basket at a time. Pressing produced about six litres of juice so similar to but perhaps a little higher yield than when using the Vigo scratter when you take into account the extra apple load. One potential problem however was pomace squirting out between the wooden slats of the basket. I believe Vigo do a cloth bag to fit in this press or perhaps a fruit bag of sufficient size from the shops might do combat this problem. If the press plate goes inside the bag then there is a need to ensure sufficient clearance at the sides. If the bag is folded in under the press plate then there is a risk it will ride up at the sides and jam so that it is necessary to remove the pressure and re-fold the bag several times per pressing (I had to do this with some soft pears in 2003 and it was a pain!)

I hope these experiences are useful to someone in deciding what to use in their own Cider making in future years.

Michael Cobb