My research showed grinding and layering the apple mash before pressing gets the most juice.
To grind the apples, I wanted to make some sort of spinning tube with teeth. sexy, no? I decided using PVC pipe would be easier than wood since I don't have a lathe. Stainless steel would be too costly, and a coffee can filled with cement might rust after a few uses.
I picked up some 4" PVC pipe and a couple end caps, wrapped it with a very thin cutting board pre-drilled some holes and ran some stainless steel screws into it to act as teeth.
I drilled a hole on center in each of the end caps and attached the pipe to a threaded rod by screwing some sheet metal into the end caps and attaching a nut to the sheet with some epoxy stuff.
I added a few 2x4s for a frame, a couple bearings for smoothicity of motionocity, a handful of nuts and washers to keep things in place on the rod, an OSB hopper, and you're in business. Well.. you're in hobby. Business comes later.
Then I stacked a few nuts on the end and got it spinning with a drill. Ya herd?
The press was super simple! All I did was bolt together a few 2x4s to build a big square frame and set a couple layers of OSB on the bottom section; add baking tray on it to collect the cider and you've got the basic idea. I enlisted a bottle jack to put pressure on the apples and some cheese cloth to strain the mash.
A 2 ton jack seems to cause enough damage to the 2x4s and a few metal plates that I don't see much value in a larger one. Maybe adding more pressure will help the cause, but after feeling how dry the apple mash was after pressing, I'm doubtful adding pressure will get more juice.
In between each layer of apple cake, I put a layer of plastic cutting board material in an attempt to spread out the pressure. I have some other plastic sheeting stuff for later.
For the first pressing, I used cheese cloth to contain and strain the apple mash in the form of apple cakes. It served its purpose very well. Even though the apples were ground to a fine pulp, the cheese cloth retainer and filter didn't let more than one or two pieces of apple get into the cidery result. It does seem like I need to hand wash the cloth after using; the garden hose tore it a new one.
I learned a few things about this process with the first pressing. First of all, it worked! The cider tasted great, the appleratus was a breeze to clean up, and the process was quite a bit of fun.
The 2 ton jack only extends to about 13" from top to bottom, so I had to add a few pieces of wood along the way to get maximum compression. Speaking of maximum compression, when the jack was fully extended, there were plenty of creaking noises coming from the frame. It's possible the 2x4s will want to snap eventually, so I might need to reinforce the frame with some angle iron or something of the sort.
The apple cakes were pretty stable for the most part, but as pressure was applied, they seemed to shift a little bit. I plan to make some sort of frame for the cakes to help avoid this shifting and possible frame malfunction as a result.
The grinding process was pretty smooth. In fact, as soon as the drill got the grinding wheel (toothy shaft) spinning, juice was sprayed into the air. We covered the hopper with a cutting board sheet and it seemed to contain the juice for the time being.
As spinning continued, bits of apple flew out of the small gaps between the frame and hopper, between the hopper and cutting sheet cover, and between the frame and collection bucket.
I plan to line the inside of the frame and hopper with some of those handy cutting board sheets to makeshift a wide mouth funnel as a mash corral. This might help cleanup a little bit, too.
The fine grind of the teeth seems to do the trick. I might loosen the screws a little bit to make a coarser grind and hopefully speed up grinding.
The grinding process wasn't painfully slow; I am just impatient. After the toothy rod was spinning for about 30 seconds to a minute, we opened the lid to monitor the amount of apple remaining.
There were usually a few apple wedges sitting between the wheel and frame, slowly chipping away.
I plan to make some sort of weight to keep pressure on the apples in the hopper. Perhaps extra pressure pressing down on the apples will help put pressure on people and put people on streets. Maybe it will grind apples faster. Either way.
With a proof of concept complete, I went out and bought about 90 pounds of apples for the next runs. I plan to catalog the results in tables so we can track what ingredients make my favorite flavors.
Stay tuned, its about to get real.
TODO list:
- Make a frame to contain apple cakes and plastic weight spreading wafers
- Cut wafers to fit in the frame (or do double duty?)
- Line the grinding appleratus with cutting board stuff
- Research an electric motor or other way to replace the drill
- Get more primary fermentation jugs
- Make a weight / cover for hopper
- Drink more beer
What bearings did you use in that grinder? I get the rod through the PVC bit but wonder how to mount the rod. Thanks
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