About a half tablespoon (no more than 1 tablespoon) of bleach per gallon for a chlorine dip. Soak for at least 30 minutes. Effectiveness is a factor of both concentration, soak time, and temperature. You might want to adjust the factors until you get the results you want. With correct concentration and soak time the sooty blotch will fall off the apple without scrubbing. Flyspeck is more rooted and won't come off without scrubbing.

After dipping, rinse thoroughly or soak in tub of cold water to remove bleach residue.

Cut off off any injured areas where bleach solution soaked into the flesh. You can see how far it soaks in. I cut a little more than the affected area.

Washing large quantity of apples in tub will bruise them as they bang into each other. They shouldn't be washed any sooner than a day before they are used. I often wash the night before I press.

Thanks for that tip NYRF. Hope it really works.

Johnthecook, what type of cider press will you use? Thanks, Mrs. G

Right now a cuisinart and my 9 year old squeezing the juice out of a towel. Not sure what I will do for the future. investing in a cider press may be the way to go.

Might a juicer work? I've never owned one so I really do not know. Mrs. G

Most juicers shred the fruit and then use inadequate centrifugal force to extract the juice. Much is wasted. I think there may be a new design that actually presses the pulp.

I don't think you need to worry about the sooty blotch unless it is really terrible.
Most years we do15-20 gallons of cider (hard and sweet) for ourselves and friends run another 20 or so through the gear. Been doing it about 15 years.

One of the great things about cider is that it can use sub par fruit that would never store, and might even be visual unpalatable. The bulk of the pomice comes from feral apples (I just can't see grinding the beautiful clean fruit from our cared for trees) We shake trees out and scoop up the drops. Sooty blotch, mild scab, minor insect damage, fresh bruising....all fine. Nothing that has been rodent chewed, old bruising, or shows insect frass. And of course nothing that has come in contact with deer feces.

We give apples a quick soak in fresh water, the move them into another bin full of water and roll the around with each other as a scrub. This pulls off road dust or any other minor dirt/mud
They then get pulled and dropped into a milkcrate. At this point your looking for any fruit that is still dirty or that should not have been picked up to begin with.
The milk crate gets a final rinse from the hose and in they go to the grinder.
Water in tubs is frequently changed.

Are we grinding up some bugs....sure, does anybody care....no. Everyone we know begs cider from us as it blows the socks off the sweet insipid stuff from the commercial orchards. The fact that's it organic is nice too.
To be fair to the commercial places, they are required to pasteurize, and that's hard on flavors....but most of them are running single variety table fruit and that tends to be pretty boring from the start in cider.

If your using a juicer I would probably be a lot fussier, as you will be rendering the skin into the finished product. But with a traditional crushing grind and press that's not the case.

I have an expensive juicer and It does alright, but you still have to squeeze out the left over pulp and a Cuisinart is quicker for pureeing the apples quickly and then you just put the apple in a clean towel and squeeze hard.

I was reading the reason for pasteurization was because an orchard that I believe was in the Midwest put out some bad apple cider and people died from it. So now apple cider must be pasteurized.

There have been a few cases of E. coli linked to cider over the years. I don't know if deaths resulted. I believe it was theorized that it was a combination of deer feces and drops. Now all commercial cider is paturized, and commercial orchards are not allowed to use drops for sweet cider.(but they can sell you drops if you pick them yourself which i never quite understood)

With care the risk is very small, but everyone needs to decide what they feel is acceptable risk in this life

I hope no one from the Harvest forum reads this thread. I rinse my sooty apples and press them. Most of my cider goes to the fermentation carboy, but some went to jelly this year and some we just drank. Most of the drops I use are the ones I see fall while I am picking, but I will use the really good looking ones if they haven't landed in anything too disgusting.

Chuck