Personal Pages/Apple Harvest 2018

The two apples trees on the field are "Schneider Apples", a variety local to Zurich, discovered/named in 1746.

2018/09/15 The maize harvest team moved in and cleared the access to the two apple trees.
2018/09/16 picked up 4 x 17kg, Aksel picked up 8kg, so about 75kg. Plenty more left on the ground and still hung on the trees.
2018/09/22 Sat have squeezed 2 of the frozen crates, looks like about 20litres. Have 6-7 green crates waiting for washing and cutting.
2018/09/24 Mon have squeezed 1 frozen crate.  Two more getting ready to defrost by Wednesday, then press Friday.

2018/10/04 Thu have about 80litres of juice for making cidre.  

This season I am doing it slightly differently. I am making:

• one portion of cidre, in a 100litre vat.
• two 100litre vats with all the leftover bits, brown, black, rotten etc.
• two 150litre vats for apple, cut and frozen.
• one 100litre vat for the trester from the juicing. Will be adding water+sugar.

I saw a documentary about the making of Williams brand - they never juiced anything, they put the mushed/crushed fruit direct into the fermentation tanks. I presume plus maybe some anti-pection enzyme? Apparently the taste is in the skin of the fruit. I am going to try the same, so still washing, cutting and freezing, and then straight into the vat(s).

For crushing the leftover bits into a pulp, I bought a hand-operated "mincer" in the Brocki. It has no knives that will cut the pips or any bits of apple stalk. To the first vat, I simply added a yeast starter, for the second vat, I added enough fermenting mush from the first vat. 20181004 They are both bubbling happily.

Some loose comments:

• The 300litre vat is too big to handle, takes up too much space.
• might be useful with a metal frame support for the vat instead of the Rako boxes with the wooden shelf on top.

experiment #1

It seems to me that yeast bacteria ought to have little problem with the cell walls? The bacteria that eat away at the apples when they grow brown and finally black certainly make an apple all squishy. Maybe I don't need to freeze the apple at all?

20181005 I have taken 3.5kg apples cut over about 24hours, and put them in a small 15litre vat. I then added 2ml of fermenting juice (from the cidre).