Sunday, Janie, Leslie and I went to a community cider-pressing event. Janie had experienced this as a girl growing up on an apple ranch, but Leslie and I had never seen it before. I bought several boxes of apples a couple of weeks ago with the idea of checking out the cider press from the NE Seattle Tool Library, but my reservation date was not until next week. Having never done it before, I was eager to take advantage of the Tool Library’s opportunity to participate in a group session. At the very least, it would give me a chance to see how it is done.

 

It turned out that we were able to press all of our apples after watching a couple of other families, and we helped others as well. Our friend Tim had told me that doing this as a group activity was more fun, and I think he was right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We wound up with a little over 4 gallons of cider from the 3 boxes of apples we brought with us. That’s about 4 pounds of apples per quart. Even though the apples were less expensive at a fruit stand, I doubt that the juice was any less expensive than it costs to buy it in the store. I mixed 2/3 Honey Crisp with 1/3 Granny Smith apples. The juice is sort of tart, but not sour–I like it, but I think I could have used a 3 to 1 ratio.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The left over pulp will go to someone’s goats!

Next week, we’ve been invited to Yakima to participate in another group pressing, and I’m looking forward to it! This time we’ll be guests of an apple grower, so it will be interesting to see whether the process is different.