Vowchurch & Turnastone Community Fruit Juicing Project
During September and October you can press your apples for free here at the hall.
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About a month before your fruit is ready, get in touch and we will slot you into a group of about a dozen. Together you will all process everyone's apples. A pressing day is very sociable and fun but its not suitable for children as the equipment is powerful and potentially dangerous. It normally takes a whole morning and we can produce maybe 200 bottles of pasteurised juice if we get a production line going.
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Very sorry but it’s not a family-fun type apple day where you can just drop in and have a go.
​Different ways to join in:
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Bring your own apples and process them at a pressing day
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Help gather donated apples from local orchards and get free juice
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Lend a hand at a pressing day and get free juice
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​Donate apples from your orchard and get some juice back
​To book or enquire, get in touch with Graeme Deas:
01981 550601 / 07726500391
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If you just want a juicing service or to rent manual juicing kit try Herefordshire Wildlife Trust’s Orchard Origins project www.herefordshirewt.org/orchard-origins.
Your apples
All dessert apples are good for juicing though very sweet apples can give disappointing juice. Later ripening dessert apples with a tangy edge produce outstanding juice. Cooking apples may be poor to eat but often juice well with Bramley being very notable. Cider apples are not suitable for general juicing but if you want to make cider we can certainly arrange this.
Ripeness and timing is very important
The apples must be ripe:
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dark brown pips
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will come away from the tree very easily
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have firm juicy flesh and good flavour with an apple fragrance
Unripe apples:
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have pale pips and require a sharp tug to pick them
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rather tasteless, tart and starchy
Overripe apples:
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dry and mushy
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may have brown flesh
​Early ripening fruit such as Discovery must be juiced immediately, in September. Most apples are ready in October and such fruit will become juicier if kept for a week or two once picked. Later fruit ripens at the end of October and November and these have the most complex flavours. They often also have good keeping quality so don’t have to be juiced immediately. All apples will get sweeter through the season. Taste your apples before picking them!
How to pick your apples
Apples for juicing are normally knocked off the tree and gathered off the ground into sacks. Bruising is not an issue with juicing. First clear the area beneath the canopy of all existing windfalls, sheep/animal droppings and strim long vegetation. Either climb into the tree and vigorously shake the crown with your body weight or get a long pole and jiggle individual boughs up and down. Ripe apples will fall to the ground where you can just scoop them into sacks. We have many empty 20kg feed bags to borrow if you have none of your own. Store your apples somewhere cool and dry away from vermin until you come to juice.
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Orchard Collection
Small groups will visit identified trees in the parish to collect apples for community juice and bring them back to the hall for juicing.
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Cider Making
If you are juicing cider apples please make sure everyone in the gang is aware so it doesn’t mix with the fresh juice. We have a number of brewing vessels and ancillary cider equipment to loan out and experienced cider makers to offer guidance so get in touch if you want to try this.
Juicing Day
Message Graeme once your fruit looks about ready to pick and we can see who else is available to set up a Press Gang. (Contact details as above).
All the apples people bring on that day will be mixed up and pressed together. It is possible to juice your apples separately but you must alert the other people in the group and there may be logistical issues. The press takes 40kg at a time and cannot be run half full. Depending on juice content of the apples, each pressing might yield 20-30 bottles and takes 10-15 minutes for a full cycle.
Procedure
From apple to finished juice there are 5 processes: washing, scratting, pressing, bottling, pasteurising On the day there will be individual guidance sheets on each of these; please read them. Each process takes several people. Ideally everyone ends the day knowing all of the jobs so they can help newcomers next time. 1. Washing: First job is selecting and blending the apple mix to avoid very sweet or very sharp batches. Then working with 4 to 6 around the trough, you are cleaning and removing the odd bad apple to provide nice clean apples for juicing. The apples are used whole and do not have to be destalked, dried, peeled, cored or chopped. 2. Scratting: The scratter is like a giant food processor and reduces the apples to pulp in moments. The scratter is switched on then clean apples are poured in the top and the pulp collected at the bottom. Ascorbic acid can be mixed in to prevent discolouration if required. It will take about 3 people to operate and can shred 40kg of fruit in a couple of minutes. 3. Pressing: The press is operated by water. The perforated steel vessel is filled with 40L of shredded apples. One person controls the water pressure while another monitors juice flow and receptacle. When juice stops flowing the dry pulp is removed and reset for another run. 4. Bottling: The juice batches are combined in a large vessel or kept separate if required (note: you must chaperone your own juice). Automatic filler funnels and jugs are used to fill the bottles. 5. Pasteurising: The bottles receive a lid screwed on loosely and then are put into a water bath pasteuriser, which holds 13 bottles. The temperature is brought to 72C then the timer set to 20 minutes. We should have 5 of these giving a throughput of about 120 bottles per hour. Pasteurised juice should last 3 years but the flavour starts to degrade in about a year.
