Events/2019/5th Annual Cider Pressing

Bring your own apples and containers and join us to make your own fresh squeezed apple cider. For more information on cider making, including what apples to purchase, see Cider Making.

Free tours of the Hacksburg makerspace will also be provided.

Time

Saturday, October 5 - 10 am to 2 pm

• Apple tasting and cider making demo at Blacksburg Farmers Market

Sunday, October 6 - 1 pm to 4 pm

• Make your own cider at the Hacksburg Workshop

Location

Hacksburg 1872 Pratt Drive Suite 1620

Public Transit Directions can be found here

Cost

• Free for members and community, donations gratefully accepted

Lessons Learned

• Wade's Orchard is excellent source of inexpensive apples
  • Seconds ($8.50/bushel) were great quality
  • Cider grade ($5.00/bushel) had some bruising/rot/leaves, but were very adequate
• Got way too many apples: purchased 8 bushels for Farmers Market demo, only used ~2-3
  • Still left with 3.5 bushels after make-your-own event
• Mix of 4 parts Stamen Winesap, 2 parts Golden Delicious, 1 part McIntosh, and 1 part Granny Smith produced very good cider
• Grinder did not overheat (likely due to lower temperatures)
  • Still a good idea to eventually replace motor
  • Using surge strip as power switch worked okay, would still prefer a built in switch (maybe foot pedal or spring loaded normally open)
• Metal pressing plate worked great
• Bottleneck during make-your-own event was the press
  • Tried to set up original wooden press, but did not have enough/properly sized pressing disks
  • Wooden press also less user friendly, especially without metal pressing plate
  • Possibly encourage using multiple smaller cheeses
    • Need more bags and pressing disks
    • Disks are preferably HDPE (food safe, resist breakage, chop up cutting boards) or metal (harder to work with, corrosion concerns)
• Fabric bags seemed to clog up eventually, wasn't squeezing out all the liquid
  • Blew up three fabric bags due to using more pressure to get out juice
  • Nylon bags worked well and resisted clogging, but let more "stuff" through into the cider. Press and then filter?
• Cleaning up concrete pad failed; put down tarp or plastic dropcloth first