My new Apple Chopper

[Bushman]

Nice job!

[cranky]

I just videoed the chopper running through 2 buckets of prepared apples. By prepared I mean washed and leaves and stuff like that removed but still whole uncut apples. We went through 46 pounds of apples in 56.24 seconds That means my new chopper is actually capable of 2,760 pounds per hour That was probably about the limit but these are hard apples, soft apples would probably go much faster. We did try going even faster but actually managed to overwhelm it and jam it up but at 2 bucket per minute it happily sits there and eats them up.

I plan on having the video up soon. On a side note my improvements to the press are making it work much better and faster too

[cranky]

I just realized I never got the video of the timed test posted.


The newest chopper has now been through an entire fruit season where the apple trees went completely crazy. I did somewhere around 1,500 lbs of apples and it has worked flawlessly. Even Mrs. Cranky is very happy with it. The only mods I am planning this year is making a bigger hopper / table/ chute so I don't have to keep filling it constantly and possibly a 2nd lower chute that will allow the pulp to go into a bigger container without me having to keep emptying it every minute (literally).

[Bushman]

I just realized I never got the video of the timed test posted.


The newest chopper has now been through an entire fruit season where the apple trees went completely crazy. I did somewhere around 1,500 lbs of apples and it has worked flawlessly. Even Mrs. Cranky is very happy with it. The only mods I am planning this year is making a bigger hopper / table/ chute so I don't have to keep filling it constantly and possibly a 2nd lower chute that will allow the pulp to go into a bigger container without me having to keep emptying it every minute (literally).

What will you do with your old set-up? Might be interested.

[cranky]

What will you do with your old set-up? Might be interested.

Funny thing I was just looking at it and thinking about cutting up the stand and burning it as fire wood and dismantling the rest. If you want to come get it you are welcome to it. Of course it being a prototype and being used for at least 2 seasons it has a few issues that you should be aware of and may want to address. I never used bearings on it, the shaft just rides in holes through oak spreaders that have gotten a little wallowed out, this isn't that big of a deal to me but bearings would help it run a little smoother. It has broken a couple of blades over the years, which doesn't seem to harm it much and replacement blades are easy enough to come by but they tend to cost about $14 a set right now. The last thing is the 1/4 H.P. motor is a bit under powered which I think is the biggest problem because you have to limit the feed speed to keep it from jamming. None of these things have really been that much of an issue to me but the newest version works much better and faster.

If you want it I'll put it away in the new shed I'm building until you can get down this way to pick it up.

[Bushman]

Cranky, let me get ahold of my partner that owns the two orchards in the San Juan Islands as that is where we will be using it.
Thanks in advance as I am trying to improve our process as we are currently using a modified wood chipper.

[cranky]

Cranky, let me get ahold of my partner that owns the two orchards in the San Juan Islands as that is where we will be using it.
Thanks in advance as I am trying to improve our process as we are currently using a modified wood chipper.

No problem and no hurry, I have plenty of storage space now and don't really need to do anything with it.

[Soft batch]

That is awesome. I rebuilt mine this year based on your improvements (SS blades). Before I had a chance to use it, my trees got a fungus and I lost every apple. Didn't make a single drop of juice this year.

[cranky]

That is awesome. I rebuilt mine this year based on your improvements (SS blades). Before I had a chance to use it, my trees got a fungus and I lost every apple. Didn't make a single drop of juice this year.

That's a real shame I was extremely fortunate in the apple department this pat year but given we haven't had much of a winter so far I doubt next fruit season is going to be very good at all.

[Soft batch]

The improved grinder is in play this year, works like a charm with the new blades. The first pressing of 16 gallons took 4 hours from tree to bottling. If the Mrs wouldn’t insist on removing very bad spot and worm, I could have cut that in half. I added a hopper that easily holds a 5 gallon bucket of cleaned apples- less than a minute through the chopper as fast as I could feed them. Fewer blades are the way to go. Round two in the morning - five buckets already picked, mostly of drops - the trees still have plenty!
Fresh cider with spiced rum if fantastic!

[cranky]

The improved grinder is in play this year, works like a charm with the new blades. The first pressing of 16 gallons took 4 hours from tree to bottling. If the Mrs wouldn’t insist on removing very bad spot and worm, I could have cut that in half. I added a hopper that easily holds a 5 gallon bucket of cleaned apples- less than a minute through the chopper as fast as I could feed them. Fewer blades are the way to go. Round two in the morning - five buckets already picked, mostly of drops - the trees still have plenty!
Fresh cider with spiced rum if fantastic!

Good deal Soft Batch I was wondering if you were going to keep at it. You still using the fire extinguisher?

For cider apples I will select only the non wormy ones but for brandy apples I float the worms and earwigs then throw them in whole.

I'm finding that blade spacing is more important than actual blade design...that and speed, the blades really need to spin between 1200 and 2000 RPM but I'm using 12 inch blades right now.

This year I made a bigger Hopper table that can hold in excess of 5 buckets and a chute so the pulp runs down to a large tub, and a scatter shield for safety's sake in case it chucks a blade.

That was 4 buckets of apples but something was wrong and the chopper was running slow, most likely due to power loss from the 3 extension cords I ran to it, but it took nearly 3 minutes to do 90 lbs.

[MichiganCornhusker]

...but for brandy apples I float the worms and earwigs then throw them in whole.

...I'm finding that blade spacing is more important than actual blade design...that and speed,

most likely due to power loss from the 3 extension cords I ran to it,

God's speed my friend!

[cranky]

...but for brandy apples I float the worms and earwigs then throw them in whole.

God's speed my friend!

I guess I should expand on that. I was watching videos of the french making cider and brandy and they hardly did anything with the apples. I watch the videos and noticed they don't even float the apples. They only use drops and just dump them into the grinder sometimes sorting out the odd rotten one but plenty of rotten looking ones find their way into the mix. I figured if it's good enough for the french it's good enough for me. I do take out the rotten ones though, can't bring myself to use them but when I dumped out 240 #s of rotten ones last month I smelled them and they smelled fine so I regret not pressing them and seeing what I got out of them.

[Soft batch]

Half the cider is for drinking fresh, any many of the apples had the same fungus they all got last year. They look fine until you cut into them, the whole core is mush. I guess I have to be more thorough with spaying next year. A few worms don’t bother me, but not the mrs!
We are done with the fresh for the year, 30 gallons pressed so far. Still plenty of apples still on the trees, next round will be strictly for the fermenters. I may be more lax in prepping as it won’t be drunk fresh.

My setup is very similar to your’s cranky- a smaller hopper though. The hopper will need work before next season as it started to come apart. I did install a foot pedal (Harbor Freight) to control the grinder- well worth it!

[MichiganCornhusker]

Thank you for all of your apple posts, Cranky, especially this thread. Along with Jimbo and Bushman you inspired me to put apples on my bucket list.
This fall I got ahold of about 800# of apples and this thread was my starting point for processing them.

I made a super-low-rent version of your chopper, but it worked great and I wound up with almost a full 55 gallon barrel of cider to ferment.

First thing I did was look for the container. The stainless trash can you used wasn't on sale around my parts so I cheaped out and bought a $5 plastic trash can from a dollar store. It worked to keep the apples in the chopper, but offered no safety from flying parts.

Then I made up the main chopper from threaded rod and sharpened pieces of steel bar.

I used a drill press for the power. I was able to put the top of the threaded rod into the drill chuck and the bottom of the rod into a hole in a plywood box that I had attached to the table of the drill press. A couple holes in the bottom of the trash can allowed the pulp to flow out onto the table where I could then scrape it off into a bucket. I was more messy than I had expected so I had to put up a tarp to control the flying pulp and juice, but all in all it went really well. You can see by the marks in the plastic trash can that the blades had a pretty fit pretty close. Chopped everything up to near apple sauce!

Drill press worked great. I allowed me to play around with different speeds of rotation, and also allowed me to raise and lower the chopper into the trash can for a good fit.

[MichiganCornhusker]

To press the juice I used a perforated metal pot from a turkey fryer kit and a floor jack. The apples were in nylon mesh sacks, and I used those sacks to line the perforated pot, and then set the pot into a larger pot. Then I put a plywood disk on top of the pulp bag and ran a 4x4 up the a steel I-beam in my garage. By using the floor jack to lift the pots against the I-beam I was able to press out most of the juice. You can see from the photo that the left over pulp (pomace?) was pretty dry.

I've run the fermented cider, but I haven't made any cuts yet, or done any blending. I ran all of the cider through my 2-keg setup, filling the boiler and thumper with cider. Then I dumped most of the low wines into the last cider run through the system for kind of a 1.75(?) run overall. I did wind up with about 15 quarts of brandy, but I haven't even checked the abv of the jars yet.

I just wanted to post up and say thank you for all of the info you have provided for apple brandy. I'll check back in to let you know what I eventually wind up with and whether or not it tastes good.

[Bushman]

MCH that is exactly what I do! Put up a lot of cider this year always tough trying to keep up with Cranky

[cranky]

MCH that is Awesome!!!

How did the side exit work out? Did the trash can fill up with pulp and you have to scoop it out or did it kind of flow out on it's own?

It looks like your blades are very close to the top which may account for the excessive spatter, mine spits out a bit but nothing like that. Keeping the blades as far away from the inlet helps, I think the way I spaced my blades out helps too. I can't really see how you spaced them.

I'm interested to know about the different speeds you tried and how different the results were for you.

[MichiganCornhusker]

I think the side exit worked well with the trash can. The pulp just kinda blobbed out the hole and I would scoop it away into a bucket when it would pile up to about the size of a softball. If I didn't scoop it away from the hole it would start to build up inside the trashcan and start to slow the motor. I never had to scoop out the inside of the trash can. By not having an open bottom I think the apples just sort of got beat to sauce in the bottom as it worked its way out the hole.

Yeah, having a little more space above the blades, or even some kind of chute, would have helped a lot with the mess. I just got it set up sort of a prototype but it wound up working well enough that I just went with it. I spaced the blades with nuts and lock washers, I think it was blade-lock washer-nut-nut-lock washer-blade. The blades were made from 1/8" steel bar and they weren't super sharp, I just put an edge on them with a hand grinder. I'd need to go back and count but I think there were 16 blades.

I went by your suggestions for rotation speed. Having the drill press allowed me to fire it up at the lowest speed, something like 300 rpm, so that reduced the terror of start up a lot. At around 1200 rpm it started chopping the apples but often an apple would get stuck on a blade and I'd have to shut it down to pull the apple off. I settled on about 1800 rpm, it chopped everything up well and no more stuck apples. I didn't try any speeds faster than that because it was working well.

[cranky]

not having an open bottom I think the apples just sort of got beat to sauce in the bottom as it worked its way out the hole.

Mine is open bottom and comes out looking about the same as you describe so I don't think that's necessarily the case, by the time it all works past all those blades it tends to be very well chopped.

Yeah, having a little more space above the blades, or even some kind of chute, would have helped a lot with the mess. I just got it set up sort of a prototype but it wound up working well enough that I just went with it. I spaced the blades with nuts and lock washers, I think it was blade-lock washer-nut-nut-lock washer-blade.

One thing I did to try to prevent spatter was the 3 stages which in my theory allows larger chunks to get past the first set of blades, then a space between them and the 2nd stage where the main chopping takes place. I believe the top blades help prevent bits from being spit back out as easily.

The blades were made from 1/8" steel bar and they weren't super sharp, I just put an edge on them with a hand grinder.

I think it's actually best to sharpen but not super sharp.

I went by your suggestions for rotation speed. Having the drill press allowed me to fire it up at the lowest speed, something like 300 rpm, so that reduced the terror of start up a lot. At around 1200 rpm it started chopping the apples but often an apple would get stuck on a blade and I'd have to shut it down to pull the apple off. I settled on about 1800 rpm, it chopped everything up well and no more stuck apples. I didn't try any speeds faster than that because it was working well.

It is a little scary turning one of these on for the first time and when I had that 3HP motor on it was absolutely terrifying to turn on at all. I do find that the sweet spot for chopping is from 1600 to 1800 rpm and a piece of of plywood as a scatter shield helps relieve a little stress.