The changing seasons from Summer to Fall is one of excellence. A favorite of mine- actually THE favorite of mine. Harvesting, colder weather, cozy movies, and canning food. This year I did something new and special, made homemade apple cider, the old fashioned way.
I inherited my set up but will include links to everything you would need to do the same! Without further ado, here is my fun photos!
Homemade Apple Cider the Old Fashioned Way
First comes the links…
3.) Half Gallon Jars (if freezing)
4.) Large Bucket (to catch Juice)
7.) Sharpies to label the canning lids (or some people like to buy labels too!)
8.) Cheese Cloth or Straining Cloth
9.) Grinder (or you can use your blender if necessary! If you do this I would advice getting a small cheap blender for this specific purpose: this one is a great option).
& Now the Homemade Apple Cider Pictures…
First we picked the apples. This year we picked from four different tress. Most of them were wild, all of them were from backyards and fields- a little unkept. But this made for lots of fun and memory building. One day we shared a portion of our fruitful labor with a sweet brown mule and his friend Belle.
After we picked all the apples we did a million things with them: applesauce, diced apples frozen for pastries over the Winter, apple butter, and fruit leather. But most importantly, we made apple cider! We made it using my grandpas fruit press, what a gift to have been able to use his press! It was so special!
Our apple crusher broke- aka started on fire- so we had to blend our apples this year! You don’t want to purée the apples, just chop!
It was so satisfying and fun to watch the jars fill up. Next year we will use a bucket instead because as you can tell not all of the juice made it in our jars! HaHa!
The whole process took us over three hours and we got over six gallons of cider. Before we canned it, first we strained it all into a large pot, and brought it to a boil to clean the juice of impurities for ten minutes. (This part took over an hour)!
This was so much fun, and with that it comes to an end! Here is a beautiful picture below!
Let me know if you’ve ever made your own cider and how you did it! Doing it the old fashioned wat on an old press was so much fun and it brings us hack to our human roots of hard work and manual labor! It makes things we do much more satisfying and enjoyable! Subscribe to our newsletter for more and comment your favorite part of Fall!
