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

[Jerry Frost]

Geez you guys are getting complicated! Can't I just use the juicer 
attachment on my Kitchen Aid mixer?

Jer
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Spencer" <mspencer at tallships.ca>
To: <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2010 4:01 AM
Subject: [TheForge] Re: The hard cider is good... OT:


>
>> 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/                        ^^-^^