Not much juice from my apples :/

[Cuffbertt]

Last weekend I went to a local pick-your-own fruit farm that has a range of cider apple trees. I picked a total of about 12.5kg (for a tenner, which I didn’t think was too bad) of cider apples. About 40% were Ashton bittersweet, 40% Michelin and 20% Dabinet. On Friday afternoon I had some spare time so I decided to press them.

I cored and cut them into quarters, and then used a food processor to cut them up into pieces about 5mm in size. I noticed that the apple pieces were incredibly dry, so much so that when you scoop up a handful of them, they feel completely dry and you don’t get wet hands at all. I then put them into a large bucket and battered them to death with a length of wood. They became a bit wetter after this. I poured them into my 18L press (took two loads to do it all) and squeezed as much juice out as I could. The resultant pressed apple was like cork board and I actually had to punch it out of the bottom of the basket in order to get it all out! In total I managed to get 3.75 litres of juice, which I think gives me a yield of around 30%... I’m not sure what I’ve really done wrong, but 30% seems incredibly low!

Just after a bit of advice with the apples really, and how I can get more juice? As the apples were so dry after cutting them up, I don’t think there was much wrong with my pressing method. Does anyone know if I’ve picked the wrong kind of apples, or have I chosen the wrong time of year to pick them? The apples that I managed to get were quite a bit smaller than your regular desert apples, and were pretty much falling off the trees as I picked them. I'm not sure if this is nomal of if that's why I wasn't able to get much juice from them... I’m a noob with apple picking so I have no idea when the “ideal” time to pick apples is in order to get lovely juicy ones.

Any help is much appreciated :)

Carl

 

[Crastney]

30% does seem very low efficiency.

apples will be at the most juiciest when fully ripe, and if they're falling off the trees then they're ripe (or diseased)
cider apples might just be a lot drier I'm not sure.
I did a pressing at the weekend, and I'd left my apples a whole week since picking, and I managed 1 gallond of juice from 1 and a half large carrier bags (the bag for life ones with woven handles from supermarkets). my press wasn't anywhere near effecient enough, and the car jack that I was using was bending, and the fruit in the cloth was outside of the racks being used to squash the fruit, so still quite wet when I finished, that I could squeeze juice out with my hands!

your process seems perfectly ok - personally i wouldn't have bothered coring the apples, and don't know any reason why you would, it's time consuming, and doesn't serve a useful purpose.
the fact that your apple pulp was bone dry when you'd finished makes me think that you'd extracted all the juice you were going to.

It sounds like they were maybe underwatered, and just not that juicy.

 

[tonyhibbett]

The yield may be low, but the sugar level should be high. I use a whole fruit electric juicer and then press the ejected pulp, which is by far the most efficient method. However, this year the juice yield is down by about 10% and the sugar is up by the same amount. I read an account of apple juice with a gravity of 1070!

 

[evanvine]

I've always used the figure of 20lbs/ gal - 2kg/ltr which works out at something like 50%.
Usual OG would be around the 1.044 mark.

 

[oldjiver]

I found that putting apples in a deep freezer for a couple of days and then thawing before pressing really gets the juice running. I only made a gallon at a time, believe it or not, by cutting the thawed apples in half and using an orange juice press!

 

[Crastney]

I pressed some at the weekend with an SG of 1.046

 

[evanvine]

Just looked at my real cider records, my average is OG1.051, min 1.042