It is the middle of August and the early ripening apples are ready in Alberta. Generally you can tell when apples are ready when they come off with a light touch and or taste sweet.
Unfortunately you can also tell when large numbers of apples fall off the tree by themselves. This leads me to a problem I would like to help solve. There are many fruit trees this time of year with piles of fallen and rotting fruit at the base. When have spoken the trees owners they often just cant use the produce or cant harvest it.
Inspired by groups like Operation Fruit Rescue out of Edmonton I went to social media looking for apples to rescue and wow was I surprised with the immediate response..
So I went collecting apples as fast as I could. With so many apples that don’t have a long storage life my solution was to make cider.
At the suggestion of my father I found a working antique cider crusher and press or a Cider Mill. As luck would have it last month I found just the piece all the way in Southern Ontario.
The mill I found was restored by a fellow named Lorne whom had rescued it from an antique shop. Using reclaimed lumber from a neighboring Victorian Farm house he painstakingly resorted it to working condition over a 3 month period.
My parents were in the area and were kind enough to drive it 4500km or 2800 miles to Alberta. I now could process the abundant amount of fruit I have collected.
Once I got the mill home, installed in my shed and thoroughly cleaned I took some time to research the piece. As it would happen the cast Iron pieces were cast in 1866 making them 149 years old… that is older than the confederation of Canada!
I will continue to research this peace as I want to know the full history of my press.
Before I started to use the cider mill I made sure to lubricate any of the moving parts with vegetable oil. Vegetable oil is food safe so if it falls in your cider it won’t harm anything but it also works as a great lubricant that is not likely to cause rust issues while preventing damaging friction.
When using apples to make juice or cider you first have to crush the fruit. The first few years I did this using a cold press juicer. The trouble being it was electric, had a small opening requiring you to cut the apples up, required clean outs often and it did not do a great job getting every drop of juice out of the pulp.
The mill can do the same work, that took many nights with the juicer, in a matter of an hour. After installing a temporary hopper I simply loaded whole apples and turned the crank. The crusher works by spinning tines that grab the apples and mash then through a set of blades. Once the chunks have gone through that there is a set of cogs below that mash them further before dropping them into the barrel.
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