Makin stuff out of (mostly) junk
We’ve made a whole lotta stuff at the house out of scrap wood that was left by the previous owners, things lying around the yard and other otherwise useless things. Projects include a compost bin, garden structures, and recently, a cider press. We’ve got a problem at the house which is that we have a bunch of fruit trees and not enough desire to eat apples or pears 24 hours/day during 2 weeks of August. So I decided to research how to build a cider press and luckily found some easy instructions at ReadyMade.
Using the instructions found on the site, I’ve got the basic structure built. I’ve still got some work to do on the press base and final sealing/cleaning, but I think those are another 1-2 hours work.
Total time so far: 2 hours. I’m estimating it’ll be about 4 hours total. Then we can make grape juice (kid and adult varieties), apple cider (kid and adult varieties), pear cider (kid and adult varieties) and just about anything else you think you can press between two boards using a hydraulic jack.
UPDATE:
Added the press base and sealed the joints. Next step is to cover the pressing surfaces with some wax and we’re all set. Just in time too cause we’ve got some “sweated” apples that are READY to get squashed.
ANOTHER UPDATE (9/5/08):
We picked about half a bucket of apples and pressed them into 1/2 gallon of delicious homemade cider. Unfortunately, most of the apples got maggots and fell off early this year, but we did our research and we should be better prepared next year.
If you end up with a bushel of apples and don’t know what to do with them, feel free to bring it over and squeeze the crap out of them with our 2-ton jack.