apple party 2.0: forming traditions

when you think of your family, surely there are many things that spring to mind as traditions- those things that you always do together.  what i never thought about was how much energy went into to creating those traditions.  luke and i have decided to make an apple cider pressing party a tradition of ours, involving us, family, friends, and most importantly neighbors.  you can read about last year's pressing party here, and we had another successful party at the beginning of this month, pressing about 45 gallons of cider.

some things were the same: 

*we got the apples from oregon heritage farm again.

*it was a group effort!  de-stickering, washing, chopping, pressing, bottling.

*children make the apples that much cuter, especially our niece clara.

and ziyad just couldn't get enough!

 

  some differences this year were:

*there were new babies there!

my dear friend mogli and her little one taylor.

brandon and victoria are expecting their first little one in december!

 

*we pressed honeycrisp apples instead of jonagold like we did last year.  the cider turned out too sweet and i think next year, we 'll go back to jonagold.  the tart flavor lends itself nicely to cider.  a huge cubic yard cost $200 this year, instead of $100 last year, but still a great deal. 

*we found a press this summer at a garage sale, so we mainly used that instead of our homemade version from last year.  we did however still use an old "insinkerator" to mush up the apples.

*this year, we asked for donations from folks that went toward a community orchard that luke has been working on in our neighborhood.

the hard cider is well under way and i'm already looking forward to next year! 

apple party... this is how traditions are born

 it all started last year when we were invited to our roommate's family's apple cider pressing party.  we enjoyed ourselves so much that ever since then, we've been scheming how to host our own.  the time came this year, as we are more or less settled into our new home and we have luke's sister/brolaw/the adorable kids living with us.  luke headed out to Oregon Heritage Farms, where a crate of 800 lbs of jonagold apples was forklifted onto the trailer!   they sat at our house, as we invited our neighbors and made a plan.  we borrowed an apple press and chopper from the kitchen share SE and scoured our immediate neighborhood, handing out invites. 

we decided to do a trial run of the press (it was much smaller than we had anticipated) and in doing so, realized that would take FOREVER because it only pressed like 6 apples at one time.  john and luke then started talking, googling, and dreaming up their own homemade press that was completed by the time saturday morning rolled around. 

  they used a design they found online, which used a bottle jack and its hydraulic system to provide the pressure needed to squash the apples.  it worked like a dream.  they also used a garbage disposal (don't worry- it was cleaned and sanitized several times!) to mush up the apples before we pressed. 

by the end, we had quite the assembly line going and everyone found something to do. 

we maybe made it through 3/4 of the apples and ended up with about 36 gallons, not including the gallons drank that day by all present.  we also made tons of applesauce, froze apples for pie filling and both dehydrators are still working on apple fruit leather and dehydrated apple rings.  we had 20 families show up to help, and many of the people present spoke Spanish, so Spanish was heard as much as the work table as English.  we all have had way too much cider this weekend, as exhibited by our sore tummies, but are definitely already looking forward to next year!