Apple pressing time

The Tamar Valley is renowned for its fruit, especially apples of which there are many varieties, both the uniquely indigenous and locally grown 'national' varieties. We've got 4 trees of varying fecundity in our garden and, for the second year, we've had enough fruit to use it for juice. Although our local 'orchards' group organise a communal apple pressing day, it never quite works out that it fits with our plans. The alternative is the DIY approach and we're lucky that we have neighbours who loan us the necessary kit. This is how it's done, if you are vaguely interested.

It all starts with getting the apples off the trees. This year we had two charming assistants to do all the donkey work. Result!

The results of their efforts, which they enjoyed (or so they said), was a large barrowload of fruit.

To help extract the maximum amount of juice, the apples are chopped/shredded before pressing. This can be done by the delightfully low-tech and labour intensive process of scratting, through a hand operated scatter. This is essentially a set of toothed wheels at the bottom of a hopper. Turn the larger handle, the toothed wheels move and the apples are drawn through and chopped.

Although you can have single variety juice, I use whatever varieties I've got. This year I had three varieties, all of unknown provenance. As I bottled after every few kilos, it means that the taste will vary from batch to batch and bottle to bottle. There's something I like about this inconsistency, a total contrast to the factory uniformity of most modern foods.

And what do you get from scratting apples? Pomace, that's what. A mix of skin, flesh, pips, stems and the occasional wasp.

The next step is to extract the juice from the pomace using a screw press.

The pomace is put in a muslin bag and this filters out, quite effectively, all the solid material that you wouldn't want to end up in your juice.

All set to start pressing. I'd estimate that there was about 4-5 lbs of pomace per press.

And here's the juice coming out, normally the flow was rather more impressive than this rather prostatic dribble. I always find this step to be very satisfying and I can never resist sampling it as it's produced. In a way, it reminds me of taking milk directly from a cow's teat when I worked on farms.

The final product - freshly pressed juice from our own apples. Food miles? About 30 yards.

The juice can be frozen, of course, but our freezers are always full of our own pork. Pasteurising and storing in bottles is the way we go. Clean, dry bottles are filled just below the necks...………..

……….the caps very loosely fitted on top and then placed in a temperature controlled pasteuriser (hired for £5 from our local orchard group).

We are pasteurising, not sterilising, and this means holding the juice at a temperature of 75C for around 25 minutes. The pasteuriser makes it all so easy, just set the parameters, press the start button and wait for the cycle to be completed.

At the end of the cycle, the bottles are removed and the caps screwed on very firmly. They are then lain on their sides so that the inside of the caps are pasteurised as well. There is expansion, of course, and by screwing the caps down when the contents are hot, a vacuum forms at the top of each bottle.

At the end of all this effort, we had 30 bottles of juice, which we store in a cool, dark corner of our garage. We are still drinking bottles from the 2019 vintage, so it does keep well. You just can't buy anything that tastes like your own. Absolutely no additives, apart from the odd crushed wasp or two.