Make 20 gallons of apple cider an hour--washing machine press w/ video

Hey guys,

I've been a lurker, thought I'd share our latest (successful) homesteading project. We've been trying to figure out how to juice the thousands of apples that grow wild around us, and this method works unbelievably well!

Looks like a nice and productive system, thanks for sharing the video. 

To process multiple batches, do you just scoop out the majority of the pulp (pomace?), and start over again?  How does the final clean-out go?

Thanks again!

Yeah, it's not a real exciting part of the process, but we probably should have shown it. We just scoop out the pomace and feed it to the animals or put it in the vinegar barrel. Takes a couple minutes, and then you're ready to go again!

We've made over 60 gallons now.. We've been doing it every few days since we enjoy it so much fresh! Thinking about maybe adding some pears to a batch too--bet that would be yummy.

Sounds great.  It's a wonderful time of year.

I'd be curious to hear how the pears work out, too.  Asian or European pears would be interesting for fresh cider.  Planning on doing any fermenting?

In the next year or two, I'd like to find some scion wood for some good perry type European pears.  The ones I've seen commercially available tend towards biennial bearing.  Disease resistant and annual bearing would be nice.

thats really neat! Im gonna watch for them on craigslist now.

K.B. wrote:
Planning on doing any fermenting?

For sure--we couldn't drink it all fresh no matter how hard we tried, (and we try pretty hard...  ) I read somewhere that apple cider will ferment into good wine on it's own, so we put 5 gallons into a pail with an air lock, and put up a bunch more in a variety of containers... We also boiled down a bunch in our maple syrup pan and froze the concentrate.

Good luck with your pears. We have planted some of our own pear trees, but they are only a couple of years old... Fortunately we have some very generous friends with very mature trees! I really don't know much about the varieties, though.

I was thinking it would be convenient (if the heated storage space was available), to keep the washing machine juicer on standby through the winter. We put lots of apples in the root cellar, and you could juice the ones that get soft and have fresh juice all the time...

Looks great! There are special pears for cider. They have much more juice and you can't eat them fresh.