Wow, we did this last year, but had the help of Mom and Dad while they were visiting. This is tons of work, but more fun with more folks. We did get some help picking, but all of our friends whimped out on the making part. I’m sure they will be around when the hard cider is ready!
First you must start with the clean apples. After harvesting we clean and grade our apples into two piles. Premium (few worms and bruises) and seconds. We use the premium apples for our juice and the others for hard cider and vinegar. We have discovered if you soak the apples in water overnight the nasty little apple worms crawl out and drown! For actual apples we use what friends offer us since we don’t have land yet with apples on it. We do have several trees in buckets just waiting to be planted though! Anyway, there is a whole craft in creating cider and we are just beginning to learn. The first thing is blending your apples types for just the right taste. Most of the apple cider varieties are old English heirloom apples, but there are many American heirloom varieties. To learn more visit the this site that has wonderful descriptions of each. To purchase some of these varieties which can be nearly impossible to find, go to Green Mantle nursery. If you are really into this and live on the West Coast like us. Email me for a more specific list of what does great in our cool mountainous region or ask Green Mantle Nursery. Tell them Farmer John sent ya.
So we got Esopus Spitzenburger apples this year from a new friend of our in the valley below us. This tree 
was a favorite on the East Coast for many years. It has a great fruity sweetness. Now, if we were master crafters we would have one of the other apples needed to bring in some of the high tannin levels that give the cider that edge. However, that will have to wait till we get our trees in the ground. Next you will need the apple press. We have come to love the Correll Press. We rent ours for about $55 from The Beverage People. Since you only use them once a year it is not a bad item to rent so ya don’t have to store it. However, once we are a part of a sustainable community it would be someting the community would own. Here you see that this model has two press baskets. This is wonderful since it allows you to shred apples in one and be pressing the other at the same time. A real time saver!
This model has an electric shredder. Also a time saver, but with more parts to break and something that would have to run on solar in the future. So we have plans to buy a model with a manual shredder. The actual shredding part is a breeze. You simply make sure your press basket is below with your press bag in it (nylon bag kind of like cheese clothe) and start shredding. There is kind of a rhythm to 
watching the flow in to the basket below and loading the apples above. You will get the hang of it. Once this basket is full you move it over to the press part of the apple press. Here you will place the pressing cap on top and start loading the pressure with the screw. Make sure to have your catch pan ready to catch the juice. See Part II
Some great books with more information pictured below. Just click on them
