Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

[cranky]

More to the topic - I found another source for windfall (dropped) apples today. Stopped at an orchard stand and talked to the owner. He says I can pickup whatever amount I want for $25. That'll get me any amount from a bushel up to a pickup bed (carload). The other place charges $4 per bushel, so for the 8 five gallon buckets (4 bushels), it would be cheaper at $16. Nice to know there's more than one choice. I may be going out tomorrow.

That sounds like a pretty good plan if there are more than a few buckets full on the ground.

[S-Cackalacky]

Cranky, I get the impression that some of the pickers must have butterfingers. The wife and I took a drive yesterday down a long road that has orchard after orchard on both sides of the road. The rows of trees that had just been picked seemed to have more on the ground than were originally in the trees.

I had hoped to get out today, but it ain't lookin' too good. My son's car is in for repairs and he's depending on me and my pickup truck for school and work. He works today at 2:00, so I'm not sure there's time to get to the orchard, pick up 8 or 10 buckets of apples, and get back in time to get him to work.

[Bushman]

My understanding at least in our State that orchards are not allowed to use fruit that has fallen from the trees. We had a huge storm last month that dropped a ton of apples before they started picking. It was a shame to see all those culls go to waste as I am sure they would have been safe pasturized and used for commercial juice but with the chance of ecoli new rules (last few years) have been put in place.

[S-Cackalacky]

Yay - got apples! My daughter and her boyfriend drove me out to the orchard. We picked up 8 buckets (4 bushels) of golden and red delicious apples off the ground in less than 30 minutes. Most look very healthy without bruises or worms. Now comes the hard part. I hope to get started on the grinding and pressing tomorrow, but need to get some EC-1118 first - don't want to let the juice sit waiting for the yeast. I went to the brew shop this afternoon only to find that they are closed on Mondays. Also still need to sharpen up the mud mixer.

Depending on how well this goes, I might go out and get some more. The lady at the orchard stand said they have about 2 more weeks of picking left to do.

[Jimbo]

Man, there are (were) 8 trees loaded with apples. Ive been so busy I watched half the goldens fall to the ground over the past weeks. Its this coming weekend or bust. Good thing I have a few quarts left of 2012 and 2013 batches. Last year I missed it too, too f'in busy! Damn this.

Ok Im done now, just venting. Carry on.

[raketemensch]

For what it's worth, there's been a price war on EC-1118 online for a few weeks now, both on eBay and Amazon. I stocked up.

[Jimbo]

Fall demand from all the winos

[cranky]

Good deal SC. Glad you got the apples, now you need to get them ground up and pressed.

The reason it's illegal for Orchards to use drops is that some years back an orchard was using drops to make unpasteurized cider made from drops and it got contaminated and a lot of people got sick and a little girl died so they changed the law to prevent it from happening again, banning orchards from using drops and requiring pasteurization except when sold at the orchard. I do agree that it is a shame to let the apples go to waste.

I can't believe Jimbo the apple master hasn't picked any this year

[Jimbo]

I can't believe Jimbo the apple master hasn't picked any this year

I know right. Ugh. Its ok, Ill get to em. Come hell or high water. It hurts to watch em fall and rot on the ground.

[jedneck]

How many pounds of apples are you using to get a gallon of cider. I can get cider(1.058) fresh pressed from the orchard for $4 a gallon. Not sure its worth the time to press apples for that price.

[Jimbo]

Not sure its worth the time to press apples for that price.

Who took over Jeds account. That dont sound like Jed.

When the apples are free and youre going for 50+ gallons it is. Its a labor of love anyway, you know this!

But if youre filthy rich then maybe not, in which case you could just buy cases of the best Calvados and call it a day as you lounge in your leather chair with your smoking jacket on smoking only the finest Cubano's and have your butler keep your glass full.

My 2 local orchards charge 6 and 7 a gallon. But to answer your question, a 5 gallon bucket is about 23 lbs and makes 1.25-1.5 gallons. And takes about 5 minutes to pick and another 5 to wash and press when up and rolling. In a 1 hour stop at the trees I can shake and pick up about 250 lbs. I do that several times, then the pressing all at once burning up a Saturday for 1500 lbs or so.

[jedneck]

I don't yet have access to free apples so gotta buy them. So knowing that buy apples and press myself or buy cider

[cranky]

Now time for the update on my apple grinder
Today I made some tremendous strides on the chopper. I still had a piece of the oak chair so I cut what I thought was unnecessary amount off the top bucket and cut the oak to fit inside it at the top. Then I drilled a hole to keep the shaft of the chopper lined up. I then built a frame out of a scrap 4x4 to hold the whole thing. I could only find one 4x4 that was 116" long so I was limited or it would have been taller and had some cross bracing and the drill would have been secured but it worked very well. This time instead of the air drill I remembered to bring my good electric drill that I bought to drill the holes in the concrete slab for my porch. I didn't have to run very fast at all and think a cordless drill could easily run this thing. At this point I still have to hold the drill while others feed the apples but it would be very easy to secure the drill and it would be a one person operation. So here are the pictures.

So here is what it looked like all set up and ready to run apples, you can see the apples in the bucket to the right of the grinder.

While running them, it got a little messy because I cut the top bucket a little too short and didn't slide the shield down from where it is in the picture, it is the orange section on the white lower bucket but with 2 people feeding apples 8 at a time it never slowed down or missed a beat. If you look close you can see the pulp in the bucket below the grinder.

and this is what the pulp looked like after grinding. Nice and small with no broken seeds and faster than the traditional style drum grinders I have seen.

This afternoon I really wanted to stop and shake down more apples but didn't, I might next week. This thing is actually very fun to run. One of the guys at work actually shot a very good video of it but unfortunately I can't show you guys
I did stop at the apple trees after work but I was once again doing battle with the strangler vine that completely surrounds one of it's 4 trunks. Last year I managed to get the vine off the sweet apple and 3 of the 4 trunks but failed to get it off the 4th. Today I managed to get about half way around without damaging the trunk so maybe I will succeed this year.

[Jimbo]

I don't yet have access to free apples so gotta buy them. So knowing that buy apples and press myself or buy cider

Oh ouch, Ya if ya gotta buy em go for the cider let someone else toil LOL

[cranky]

I don't yet have access to free apples so gotta buy them. So knowing that buy apples and press myself or buy cider

Oh ouch, Ya if ya gotta buy em go for the cider let someone else toil LOL

Yep

[jedneck]

I'm gonna wait a few weeks. I'm supost to be gettin a pickem up truck or 2 load of free pears. Free pears are better than bought apples.

[cranky]

For what it's worth, there's been a price war on EC-1118 online for a few weeks now, both on eBay and Amazon. I stocked up.

I went to my brew shop the other day to get some yeast and they were completely out of 1118, I was after D-47 and 1122 so it didn't matter but I usually get some 1118 just to have on hand.

[cranky]

I'm gonna wait a few weeks. I'm supost to be gettin a pickem up truck or 2 load of free pears. Free pears are better than bought apples.

Free pears that someone else picked are even better than regular free pears

[Jimbo]

I dont keep tab of the hours when Im doing something I enjoy, but if I was to guess, I put prolly 12-16 hours into the apples total for 70+ gallons of cider, 3-4 cases of brandy. and lots of drinking cider. This is now, since Ive built the mill and press and figured out how to harvest apples in bulk. Maybe x10 the time in the beginning with juicers and other feeble methods HA! Painful that was. This setup now is generation 3 over 20+ years.

[jedneck]

Time is free when you are doing something for fun.

[cranky]

The amount of time I put into apples this year has been insane, fortunately I have done everything but the picking at work. The new chopper cuts that down tremendously and now after seeing the video of us at work throwing apples into the chopper as fast as we can, she wants to help me now.

[raketemensch]

I did stop at the apple trees after work but I was once again doing battle with the strangler vine that completely surrounds one of it's 4 trunks. Last year I managed to get the vine off the sweet apple and 3 of the 4 trunks but failed to get it off the 4th. Today I managed to get about half way around without damaging the trunk so maybe I will succeed this year.

It wouldn't be your Moby Dick if you didn't have to struggle.

[cranky]

I did stop at the apple trees after work but I was once again doing battle with the strangler vine that completely surrounds one of it's 4 trunks. Last year I managed to get the vine off the sweet apple and 3 of the 4 trunks but failed to get it off the 4th. Today I managed to get about half way around without damaging the trunk so maybe I will succeed this year.

It wouldn't be your Moby Dick if you didn't have to struggle.

The trees in this park and this one in particular have been very good to me so I try to be good to them. I have actually spent quite a bit of time caring for them, clearing blackberries and underbrush and those damn strangler vines. Some of those vines are 3-4 inches thick and completely encircle the trunks but the tree does much better when the vines are dead and I get more apples so it is worth the effort.

[cranky]

I almost forgot, I cut up the apple branch today. I got seven 1"x1"x6" sticks of heartwood ready for toasting. I like to keep things light on the wood so they should last me a while.

[jb-texshine]

Wild persimmons are coming ripe here in east Texas.got my eyes on about a half dozen trees,some loaded down some not so much. Not sure I know how to to handle them though.itll be my first anything that's not a sugarhead,and first fruit must period...
wild persimmons would be tough to peel ,like plums...
Will the skins cause off tastes? Get them out or leave them in?
Seeds,kidney bean sized.same question, get them out somehow or leave them in?
my plan was to mash the persimmons add some water try to remove the skins or not depending...boil to kill wild yeast. And...either try to remove the seeds or not depending on y'all's advice.then check the sg and depending where its at possibly add just enough sugar to hit1.050-1.060 and pitch ec1118. Let it do its thing then clear syphon and run.
any advice? Comments? Criticism?
Thanks guys
Jb

[Wooday]

A friend calledand begged me to help him pick the orchard on his "gentleman's farm", so me and the spawn spent an afternoon picking apples and pears.
We called it quits after 6 5gallon buckets of fruit.

I really need to get moving on the drum crusher I'm building.

[contrahead]

Wild persimmons are coming ripe here in east Texas.got my eyes on about a half dozen trees,some loaded down some not so much. Not sure I know how to to handle them though.itll be my first anything that's not a sugarhead,and first fruit must period...

I look at it this way. A wine made without the skins and seeds will have a more delicate taste and lighter color than would a wine fermented with them. If you are more interested in producing a brandy than a wine, then I would consider just starting the ferment as a pomace wine. Remove the stones (seeds /, and stems if any - both will contain perhaps undesirable tannins) so that you can juice the fruit pulp in a machine. Just rinse the fruit well first (I like to dunk the fruit in a very mild solution of water with Clorox, and then in pure water. This discourages bugs, spiders, bacteria and wild yeast clinging to the outer skin). Then disinfect the “juiced fruit pulp” overnight with Camden tablets or other form of sodium bisulfite or sulfur dioxide. Boiling the fruit is totally unnecessary, but could be done in quest of a different taste (some of those fruity esters are going to be lost). The secret to getting a good liquor yield from pomace is in breaking down those excess polysaccharides with pectic enzyme.

I’ve not tasted persimmons in about 40 years, but as I remember they were bitter up until the very end; when they finally ripen and become sweet and soft. As all the fruit on any particular tree may not ripen at the same time this could present a problem. I don’t think you’d want to add any more astringents than necessary to your must.

[S-Cackalacky]

OK, gotta make a newbie move here and ask a first time question. First, because the 4 bushels of apples I have are drops, I've decided it might be prudent to pasteurize the juice before it goes to the fermenters. I was also thinking about doing a sugarhead with the pomace. I'm not finding a lot of info about recipes. My idea was to add water in equal proportion to the volume of pomace and about 1 lb of sugar to 1 gallon of water - with sugar adjustments depending on the OG. Does this sound reasonable? For the same reason, I would probably also cook the pomace/water/sugar mix. Any advice on a good pomace/Calvados recipe, or a link, would be appreciated.

[cranky]

Wild persimmons are coming ripe here in east Texas.got my eyes on about a half dozen trees,some loaded down some not so much. Not sure I know how to to handle them though.itll be my first anything that's not a sugarhead,and first fruit must period...

My 2 cents is mash them up, add some 1118 and let them ferment then strain if you need to. It's been a long time since I've done anything with persimmons so I'm not sure how well I remember them, I personally would probably take the seeds out and maybe try to make that steam stripper. I wouldn't use any sulfites for anything that's going into a still, I don't use them at all for anything, but especially in a still they can carry over some sulfur smell and I'm guessing wild yeast in the area is well adapted to the persimmons so they won't hurt anything.

[jb-texshine]

Thank you contrahead that link is excellent.i think I'm going to use it as a starting point so to speak.nothing with sulfites though as it will be distilled though . I do believe I should look in to the seeds though as I've heard some seeds can contain or produce toxic chemicals...cyanide maybe? Anyhow,thanks again.
Jb
Looking forward to persimmon brandy!

Posted same time as cranky.