Can I press fresh cherries with a winery bladder press?

[JudyP]

I have the opportunity to pick a few tons of rainier cherries this week and I am wondering if I can use my winery bladder press to press them? Has anyone ever used a bladder press on cherries? Any advice would be helpful. For instance press program, length of time, pressure settings, etc.  Thanks.

[Dougal]

You are asking a cider group about pressing cherries in a wine press?

[JudyP]

Yes, I am planning to make cherry cider and wondering how to best get the juice from the cherries.

[Andrew Lea]

There is no such thing as cherry cider. Cider is made from apples not cherries. 

However if you plan to press cherries in a bladder press to make a fruit wine from them, I have heard anecdotally that you must remove all the stones (pits) first. Otherwise you will puncture the bladder under pressure. 

Andrew 

Sent from my iPhone

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[Jody Scott]

Oh dear........

Asking craft cidermakers about pressing for cherry cider in a wine press.

I'm not sure how much experience of this you're hoping to find I here. 

I expect it will be fine but the make and model of the press might give a clue. Is this on a commercial scale?

Sent from my iPhone

[Yann F.]

You will want to put them through a crusher de-stemmer before pressing to remove the pits in order to prevent damage to the bladder. You may also want to mill the cherries.  Press hard, as you would apples, until you feel most of the juice has been extracted. You will probably need a liner for your wine press to hold in the milled flesh.

Yann 

[David Llewellyn]

Yann I’m risking putting my head on the block here, but are you just guessing with that advice you have given? A grape crusher de-stemmer will not remove stones from the cherries. It may even crush the stones, or be damaged by the stones, which could be disastrous for the cherry wine or the machine respectively! Someone has asked advice (on a topic which this group would have little/no experience of), but lets not guess at answers and give them with the implication that they are authoritative! That would be misleading to the asker, and could cause them to have very unpleasant results.

 

David Llewellyn

Tel: + 353 87 2843879

www.llewellynsorchard.ie

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[Dick Dunn]

How much longer before we can kill off this thread as entirely OT? Whether
people know the answers or are merely guessing, the discussion doesn't
belong here.
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Dick Dunn rc...@talisman.com Hygiene, Colorado USA

[Andrew Lea]

On 04/07/2015 23:45, Dick Dunn wrote:
> How much longer before we can kill off this thread as entirely OT? Whether
> people know the answers or are merely guessing, the discussion doesn't
> belong here.
>

I'm not sure that I'd be quite as harsh as Dick! Whether we like it or
not, we know that a lot of New World cidermakers do use other fruits in
cider as adjuncts, and surely better to use fresh local cherries than
someone else's cherry concentrate? So I think the question is a valid
one. (As I already said, and Yann agreed, I have been told that bladder
presses cannot be used for this without prior de-stoning.)

A lot of stone fruit pulp and juice is made in Europe, much of it for
the 'nectar' trade, and also the trade in sour cherry juice concentrate.
Here's a link to the purpose-built Voran kit which is used for the
purpose - effectively it's a large sieve with rotating blades inside.
There is also a video to show it in operation
http://www.voran.at/en/machinery/machine-database/menu/obstverarbeitung/category/entsteinanlagen/product/entsteinanlage-ep1000/

Andrew

--
near Oxford, UK
Wittenham Hill Cider Portal
www.cider.org.uk

[Yann F.]

David, I would not give advice based on conjecture. While I have never pressed them myself, I have experience working with cherry juice to make a US style fruit cider and since the goal of this board is to share information I thought it appropriate to weigh in. This is how a trusted local winery has told me they press cherries. Their crusher de-stemmer does remove pits, and without breaking them or the machine itself. Another orchard in the area simply puts the cherries through a hammermill, then straight to their squeezebox press. Regarding pits, some sources suggest breaking around 10% of the stones which supposedly improves the complexity of the juice by adding vanilla notes.

Yann

[David Llewellyn]

Very interesting Yann. Thank you for that. There’s probably a world of information out there on the Net if the original poster searched there under key words like ‘cherry wine’ etc. Tasted some wine made from sour cherries many years ago in Germany, and at the time I remember it tasting somewhat port-like and very pleasant. At the risk of annoying Dick (sorry Dick, but let’s hope this thread ends soon!), can I ask you whether you know if your wine-making friends use sweet cherries or sour cherries for their wine?

 

David

 

David Llewellyn

Tel: + 353 87 2843879

www.llewellynsorchard.ie

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[Yann F.]

I believe their cherry wine is made from tart cherries. While pleasant, it is much too sweet for my palette. The unfermented juice is heavenly to drink however.

Yann

[Barney]

I would like to add a quick note to this discussion - slightly out of the realms of cider but one that will hopefully give food for thought in this age of chucking all kinds of things into our "cider" fermenters! I would be very careful about the idea of crushing pits in cherry wine. It releases a number of compounds including cyanogenic glycosides, mainly amygdaline (providing a bitter almond note). The problem with amygdaline is that it is decomposed through enzyme action into a range of compounds including hydrogen cyanide, this being toxic. In the presence of alcohol it can react to form ethyl carbamate, an unpleasant carcinogen. There was a great deal of worry about this is stone fruit distillates for a number of years. Advice now suggests that a maximum of 5% of stones are broken during processing. Distillation has one disadvantage, it concentrates both flavours and toxins (depending where the cuts are made). However, the use of copper in still manufacture (and devices called "catalysts" which create fine networks, and a large surface area, of copper) help to avoid this problem as cyanide and sulphur compounds react with  and are bound to the copper. 

This is not a "do not do this" post, but it is best to be informed on all of these aspects!

All the best,

Barney