Today was the day! After making arrangements with Jim of Gardens of Goodness, Denise dropped me off this afternoon to press cider with Jim’s hydraulic press. Jim has a small orchard of a variety of apples, sweet Macintosh as well as a number of antique varieties suited for Cider. And we’re not talking about Cider for the kiddos ... no, we’re talking “Cider”, or “hard cider” as we Americans tend to refer to it today (the rest of the world, pretty much, continues to refer to alcoholic cider as just “cider”).

Mixing the Macintosh and antique varieties will hopefully yield a delicious Cider in about 4-6 months. We’ll be sure to report our progress over the winter.

As we were on our last batch of apples to press, Denise got back and with G. sleeping in the van, A. was able to come watch while Denise took a few pictures and talked with Barb, Jim’s wife. Aside: we also get our local grain (wheat) from Jim and Barb and Denise is the bread expert of the household, so she had plenty to talk to Barb about!)

All told, we pressed 80lbs of apples and got about 6.25 gallons of cider. The container you see by my leg (silver, with black top) is pressurized with CO2 and sitting in our fairly cool garage. The other cider was jugged and is in the fridge. We’ll probably start the cider in the primary fermenter tomorrow, where it’ll bubble away for a few weeks.

Here’s a good shot of Jim and I chucking apples into the grinder while a batch of pulverized apples is being pressed into cider on the other end.

We had a blast and great sense of accomplishment - and I’m sure this won’t be the last time! I’m looking forward to the cider, but it’ll be a long wait. Four to six months ... yikes!