Health regulations in some states require commercial cidermakers offering their product for sale to pasteurize it. However, it makes no sense at all for home cidermakers to treat their cider in this way. I often make 30 gallons of cider or more from my 30 apple trees, and wouldn't dream of pasteurizing it. I know the apples are clean and free of pathogens when I press them. Juice that we will use in two weeks or less is simply refrigerated; the rest is frozen in plastic gallon jugs and goes into the deepfreeze.

Fresh cider will eventually begin to "work" even if refrigerated, as the natural yeasts in the juice begin to convert the sugars to alcohol. There is nothing necessarily unhealthful in this process, but it does change the flavor of the juice. Pasteurization would not stop this process, as the air is full of natural yeasts that would eventually enter the cider, pasteurized or not.

What make a good cider is a matter of taste, but most cidermakers try to blend sweet and tart varieties together for best flavor. My favorite apple for use as a cider base is the Stayman Winesap, but this and most other somewhat tart varieties are seldom found in supermarkets, where sweet apples usually dominate. You might try blending a sweet variety like Golden Delicious with the somewhat more tart Granny Smith or McIntosh. If you have pick-your-own apple orchards in your area you might be able to find a nice mix of varieties for juicing. Store apples in the coolest place you have in the house or refrigerate them.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Personally I think we've removed too much crap from our diets and now we are weak. But that's where we are. Heating to 160°F for 1 minute doesn't change the taste.
I don't do it for myself, I'm sure I eat enough fecal matter that a little ecoli isn't going to faze me and I gladly drink straight out of the bucket, but I don't know about others who will drink my cider. Since it doesn't change the taste I figure it's better safe than sorry, I haven't poisoned anyone yet and I don't plan on starting.

I have had pasteurized in the fridge for over a month and it hasn't started working.

I get up to 1.5 gal of cider per 20 pounds of apples which works out to about $6.60 per gallon if I pay fifty cents per pound. If I buy cider around here it costs me more than $7 per gallon. And I make apple/pumpkin butter with the leftovers which is free.

I used to make the cider with a Champion juicer. It was OK but I wanted cider without the foam and a faster production rate. I made an apple press from a $200 Harbor Freight 20 ton shop press. I get more juice per pound and it isn't foamy at all.

The natural yeasts can sometimes make a good hard cider. Pasturizing would kill the natural yeasts. If you want to make hard cider you may or may not want to pasturize depending on whether or not you want the natural yeasts.

Zeuspaul

Certainly agree that a lot of bird poop on apples would be an unappetizing sauce, but I don't see that on my apples even when they are not bagged. In any case, I rinse all the apples in a large sink located in the greenhouse before grinding and pressing, then cut most of them in half so they will easily enter the throat of my kitchen disposal grinder.

Sometimes apples that are unprotected by bags will have quite a bit of sooty blotch or flyspeck on the skins, and I even try to scrub that off before pressing, though I know this is overkill.

Didn't have to worry much about pressing apples in fall, 2008 since I was pretty well wiped out by cedar apple rust. Wait tell next year I always say, and sometimes it works.

There was a big scare in WA a few years ago from the juice of apples grown where cattle had run. Apparently, they were using drops and there was contamination that led to some sickness. Probably 99.9% of apple cider would never see these problems, but its that .1% that health authorities worry about. I can keep cattle out of my orchard, but there are deer out there.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

It was worth the extra peace of mind when my friend told me his very young granddaughter loved my cider in her sippy cup.

Judging from all the scratches on them birds seem to love sitting on my apples.

As far as those of you so careful as to feel the need to pasteurize your cider, I bet you could find a more efficient way to spend time and energy to make yourselves safer.

It wasn't until a few years ago that we started worrying about raw hamburger and ecoli. I blame it on germicidal soap and being too clean, but it's where we are. Some people cannot handle some germs.

I have been drinking unpasteurized apple and other fruit juices for over 40 years...I don't want to kill the good stuff like enzymes etc.[that's the benefit you can have when doing it yourself] I'm a hobby bee keeper and sell some honey, raw honey, the same here, if you know all about raw honey, it would be a shame of heating it up.
A lady told me ones, she don't buy honey if not pasteurized, ...I said, it will never happen.

Konrad

I'm never buying unpasteurized cider from CHINA, that stuff might kill you and the roadkill! Hopefully my orchard will be producing enough to satisfy my wife and I before domestic production is killed here in the US.

My brother had to travel to India this year for work, he contracted some bug that almost killed him in short order. He described to me in detail the conditions people live in there. We are extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to choose between the grocery store, our own garden, hunting or even the side of the road for our food.

So it all depends on the apple varieties and on the state of the apples themselves. Pasteurization will make delicious juice out of the worst, mealy and half rotten apples.

Now I have a German apple juice storage drum, and it requires that you pasteurize the juice. The way it works is that the juice is pasteurized directly in the storage drum, and then there is a floating lid at the top that has high edges. One then pours parafilm oil on top, the oil floats and seals the juice from the atmosphere. The spigot is at the bottom of the drum, and as you open the spigot and get juice, the lid and the oil simply lower without breaking the seal.

You can keep this drum at room temperature, Mine has a capacity of about 500 liters. It's much easier to take all of the gravs, even those fallen on the ground, and press them without washing them. Then boil the whole 500 liters, seal, et voila, juice for the rest of the year.

I agree that fresh unpasteurized juice is the best as long as your apples are fresh, and for that, a small juicer in the kitchen is enough. However, pasteurization is highly encouraged for people that rarely see the outdoors, that live in germ free environments full of germ killing chemicals, and people that have weak immune systems because of illness. But if you're a gardener that spends a lot of time in the dirt, you don't need to pasteurize your juice.

Wow...you must have a large family, we used to have wooden barrels in the old country and I think they were
anywhere from 250 to 500 L.
Some we let ferment naturally, the others were pasteurized in the barrel with a heating element then sealed [water].

Axel, can you show a picture of your's.. how do you heat yours up?

>>as long as your apples are fresh, and for that, a small juicer in the kitchen is enough<<

This would be a never ending deal and a foaming one too, I guess in a pinch it will do.

I have a couple of stainless steel high pressure kegs, hold 50 Liters, juices are being fermented to about 50%, then the prosess stops at around 140 PSI and you're getting something like a cooler,...see thread below, you can see one keg filled with cherry juice. I had a thread on this but it's gone again!

Konrad

Here's a picture of the container:

You can't see from the image, but there's a floating lid inside the container, it's basically like a flat round piece of steel with the edges lifted up. The paraffin oil floats on top of the juice in between the lid and the container. You can't use vegetable oil since it goes rancid.

You heat it with a pasteurizing rod:

The beauty of this thing is that you can pasteurize a bunch of juice, and then you can literally just get it by the glass and not worry about it. It's a year-round supply of apple juice. I use mostly gravs for my juice, no other apple even comes close to Grav. based juice. (No, it's not cider, cider has alcohol, non-alcoholic cider is not cider, it's juice. We can all thank the puritans and their campaign to stamp out cidermaking in the US for this nonsense in nomenclature .)

You can order this stuff from Germany, that's how I got mine. The main annoyance is paying the wire transfer fee of $20 because US banks are still in the Stone age and don't really deal well with wire transfers which is the rest of the world's way of paying for stuff. Sorry, I am German myself, seems we have some sort of complaining gene built-in. :)

The only drawback of this entire setup is that it's not earthquake proof, a real consideration here on the West Coast.

Konrad

I use a press and have very little waste. I core the apples first to remove the seeds and the cores are the only waste.

The pomace is used to make apple butter or apple pumpkin butter. I mix it with pumpkin/squash because I have a lot of that to deal with too. The pumpkin is too moist and the apple is too dry which works out just about right as you don't have to boil off any moisture to thicken.

It is challenging trying to use all of the apple pumpkin butter. It works well on toast and spread on a sprout omelette. And for dessert when used to make apple/pumpkin cake.

I also dry apple pomace in the oven. It can then be pulverized in a blender for apple flour or left chunky for addition to soups. I leave some on the table next to the ground pumpkin seeds and sprinkle it on salads or vegetables.

Zeuspaul

We put the apple butter on oatmeal, eggs, salads, toast. It's looking like we can use about a quart a week.

Zeuspaul

I could use a quart of apple sauce a week, until I hate a quart of apple sauce a week for a few weeks.

"I have a friend that always harps on me about the fact that juice only uses up 1/3 of the apple."

Would he rather you waste 100% of the apple because they rot faster than you can eat them?

Wasting 33% isn't that bad when you consider that 25% of an apple is air and how much other methods that toss the core are wasting.

Harp on him about how much similar plant fiber he wastes when he mows his lawn, and he's not even saving the juice.

Axel_sc: how exactly do we order this thing? What's it called? I cant find it on Google.