Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Apples to AppleCider

We had the opportunity to buy apples.....

Lots of apples....actually each of these bins holds 900 pounds of apples.
Two of the bins are ours......and the plan was to use one of them to make....

CIDER!


Ah..the anticipation of that first gallon!.....

We had a little friendly competition...teams seeing how quickly they could grind and press a gallon of cider....from start to finish...these strapping young men held the lead at 6 minutes and 24 seconds...


the competition was intense...

even scary...


Such a fun time!!

Even the mamas made a decent showing (that'd be 7min 7sec)


But this handsome fella single handedly thumped us all! He finished his gallon in 5 minutes and 50 seconds.....
No, no....not finished drinking his gallon....I mean he actually grinded apples and pressed his gallon in that time!


We made about 30 gallons (two different pressing events!) The apples cost us about 10 cents a pound..the press was rented for 1.5 days for $60....
The fun we had was priceless!

6 comments:

  1. Wow what a wonderful time!! and such good memories!! (Do you do field trips:)

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  2. We had SO much fun on Saturday. And the competition made it extra fun :)...I think mom's planning on starting the apple sauce tomorrow.

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  3. I'm just catching up on reading your blog. The last couple of weeks have been so busy that I haven't been reading anyone elses, just occasionally posting on my own. Your Thanksgiving looks like it was a lovely time, but this cider making looks like the most fun. You can sense the competition from the pictures!

    I'm assuming that what you call cider is different from what we call cider? Over here cider would have an alcohol content of about 5%. Given that you are calling the freshly pressed stuff cider, I'm assuming it is not alcoholic!

    And I didn't know that your husband was a red-head until now either. We have that in common too!

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  4. Oh my! That is some amount of apples... and that looked like so much fun! As Kirsteen (above) says, you could sense the competition from the photos. Just a pity we can't taste it through the screen too!

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  5. Those bins of apples look like an absolutely daunting task to process. You are a brave, brave woman! LOL! I had no idea that one could actually purchase inexpensive apples in bins like that. But then again, I don't live in an area where apples are prevalent. I bet that fresh cider is even more delicious than the stuff we buy at the store. What a fun activity, and best of all, you had a little competition to boot. Our family thinks that competitions make every task more fun.

    Now I'm curious as to how you'll use the other giant bin of apples... apple sauce, pie filling, apple leather...the possibilities are endless!

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  6. Keri, I'd love to know where you got your apples and the press. Would love to host a party like this at our place next year!

    Blessings,

    Lisa :)

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