As the seasons turn and the days start to get shorter, we are enjoying the bounty of ripe fruit and vegetables in the garden. Every year, we like to usher in the autumn with an apple cider making activity. Each 6th grade class gets to make fresh pressed apple cider using a wooden, hand-cranked press. Students wash the apples, drop them into the machine, use their muscles to crank the apples into a pulp, and then crush them into a delicious, amber-colored juice.
Students compared the weight and volume of the apples with the weight and volume of the cider, and many were surprised to see that twenty pounds of apples were reduced to about half their weight in juice. The dry, spongy apple pulp left over was deposited into the worm box so that the worms could feast on the by-products of the cider-making process and make fresh castings to fertilize the apple trees and other plants in the garden.
At the closing circle of each garden class, students shared their impressions of the cider. Many said it was one of the best drinks they had ever tasted. Some of my favorite descriptions were, “alive,” “silky,” “thick,” “golden,” “better than the juice in the store,” “flavorful,” “sour and sweet all at the same time,” “natural,” “like drinking the nectar straight from a flower,” and “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”
We couldn't bear to juice this Cox's Orange Pippin from one of our espaliered trees!
The spinning cider press blades
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Apple Cider Making
As the seasons turn and the days start to get shorter, we are enjoying the bounty of ripe fruit and vegetables in the garden. Every year, we like to usher in the autumn with an apple cider making activity. Each 6th grade class gets to make fresh pressed apple cider using a wooden, hand-cranked press. Students wash the apples, drop them into the machine, use their muscles to crank the apples into a pulp, and then crush them into a delicious, amber-colored juice.
Students compared the weight and volume of the apples with the weight and volume of the cider, and many were surprised to see that twenty pounds of apples were reduced to about half their weight in juice. The dry, spongy apple pulp left over was deposited into the worm box so that the worms could feast on the by-products of the cider-making process and make fresh castings to fertilize the apple trees and other plants in the garden.
At the closing circle of each garden class, students shared their impressions of the cider. Many said it was one of the best drinks they had ever tasted. Some of my favorite descriptions were, “alive,” “silky,” “thick,” “golden,” “better than the juice in the store,” “flavorful,” “sour and sweet all at the same time,” “natural,” “like drinking the nectar straight from a flower,” and “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”
We couldn't bear to juice this Cox's Orange Pippin from one of our espaliered trees!
The spinning cider press blades