[TheForge] Re: The hard cider is good... OT:

[Mike Spencer]

> Also how are you pressing your juice?  I know you can buy a press
> but I wondered if anyone had an alternate way to press?

If you can find a 1-1/2" to 2" Acme or square thread screw you should
be able to cobble something together.

Here's what I did:

    http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/temp/cider-press.html

The screw and beam came from an old press that had rotted away in some
barnyard because a horn on the wheel used to screw the press down was
broken off.

One old guy told me to not-quite fill a whiskey barrel, put in sugar
one pound to the gallon and bung it up.  I tried about 1/2 pound to
the gallon, bunged it up with the tap hammered in place.  Everything
was great throughout the fall.  Cider of increasing hardness came out
of the tap under pressure with a foaming head.  (Word got around and
we had a lot of droppers-in that fall. :-) Around the first of the
year it began to have a hint of ethyl acetate -- fingernail polish
remover to y'all non-chemists.  I guess somehow some vinegar -- acetic
acid -- formed despite an airtight, pressurized barrel and reacted
with the alcohol to make ethyl acetate. By February we had given up on
drinking it.

Now I don't have a barrel and just a few gallons of cider doesn't last
long enough around here to get more than just a bit of fizz and zing.


- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^