Post #17 made 11 years ago
by Skink
You're right, 2 trout, Golden Delicious will be too bland on their own. Personally, I try to use as many different varieties as I can, and also try to include a couple of pounds of crab apples per gallon for astringency. As well as having a press, you will need some way of pulping your apples, as the press will struggle to produce juice from whole or halved apples. There are a number of ways to do this, including shop bought millers, or the 'Pulpmaster', a handy little device that can be attached to a drill (maybe someone else would provide a link, I'm rubbish at it). Another, cheap alternative is to quarter your apples - which I always do anyway to check for decay/maggots - and then freeze them. Then, when defrosted the apples are soft enough for the press to deal with them. Some don't like this method since the apples brown a bit, but it's always worked for me.
This year, I've made 7 gallons or 'OOO-AARRR'juice, freezing 20lbs. of apples at a time for a week, and then thawing and pressing them into a gallon demijohn - I try to use cider yeast when I can because it ferments nice and clear and gives a compact lees. Then 5 of those gallons went into a 6 gallon fermenter along with a gallon of fermented Turbo Cider (The Home Brew Forum is very good for TC), just for variety. I sort of plan to make 3 gallons of fizzy wine, by batch priming and adding a non-fermenting sweetener such as Splenda, plus a gallon of dry still, one of sweet still, and a gallon each of fizzy spiced and still spiced.
Phew - need a lie down after that...