I have long had a fantasy that I would grow apples and juice them when it is time. The apple tree on the property has been in the ground many years before we moved into the house. I had plans to build an apple press, but still never did. So, I made as much applesauce as I could.

I really don’t think this tree yields as much as it should. A typical year is about five, five gallon buckets worth of apples. They have scab and 99% of them have worms. Last year, I didn’t get a single apple. I think my pruning job was too severe. This year, the yard people only pruned 5% of the tree.

I feel like I should get three times that much based on the size of the tree. Nevertheless, the quasi neglected apple tree keeps producing. This year, I got six buckets worth. Not only did we get a good yield, but I also picked up a cider setup. But, you already know that because I used it for grapes already.

Normal cider operation would be a volume production. Not in this house, I have an order to only use the good stuff. This means a lot of extra work. I have to inspect every apple and trim out all the imperfections. Admittedly, partially rotten apples don’t seem very appealing but if I only had a worm in one in five, I probably wouldn’t do things this way.

For this reason, it took me about eight hours to do all of this work. This is a lot. For my efforts I got four gallons of cider. It tastes pretty good too. I haven’t fully decided what I am going to do with this yet. Of course, I want to make some hard cider, but we drank one gallon already. I may chalk this year up to an experiment and just keep the cider in the fridge.

Now that the cider is pressed, you are not done. The juice must be pasteurized or it will start fermenting without any extra help. So, that was another evening. Fortunately, I could watch Monday Night Football and clean up the shop while the operation was happening.

This fits right into my goals. I have always wanted to scavenge apples from some abandoned or forgotten trees and turn it into liquid gold. My second day of doing this I got into a better rhythm of how many apples fill the press. Press while prepping the next batch and wholesale rejecting of apples rather than investing a lot for a little return.

In the future, I will need to split at least or augment my harvest to also make apple sauce. Ideally, I would have seven or eight gallons of juice with some to ferment and some to leave au natural. Plus, I would like to put up 12 quarts of applesauce as well. So, I probably need triple the amount of apples to make this work.

End Your Programming Routine: At the time of writing this, I still have a few, orange tomatoes on the vines. This really marks the end of harvest season. The rains have come and we could have freezing weather at any point forward. If I stumble on a deal for apples, I could be persuaded to run another batch but I am tired now. I would say that it works, now I know how much work it is.