Liquid Apples

This weekend, along with trying to get myself back on pace by eating some apples, I also learned about apples and how they get made into cider.

At Clear Creek State Park in Sigel, PA, where I happened to be for the weekend, they had a little program on making cider (http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/calendar/view_event.asp?CalendarID=22264) that I checked out.

Here's the spread for those who liked to see the lowdown before getting started:

 

The ingredients? No flavorings, colorings, sugar, filtering, pasteurization, concentrate or otherwise. Just apples. These were picked right in the park:

Here's the press that does the solids to liquid conversion with the help of a small motor and some good ol' fashioned human elbow grease. The apples go into a small grinder (the box on the upper right) to break them into smaller pieces. The crunched up apples fall into the bucket lined with a mesh bag below. Then the bucket gets slid to the left side under the press and the handle (sticking above the frame, top left) is screwed down to supply the downward pressure needed to get the apples reduced to liquid:

Enough pressing on the apples and those sweet apple juices will start flowing out of their bucket, across the wood tray and into the final bucket:

And finally what I've been waiting for ... some to sample:

Verdict: delicious.