Juice yield from Dabinett apples

[Cider Nick]

I have pressed about 1.5 tons of  Dabinetts this season and they gave a juice yield of around 56% (i.e.. 56l per 100kg fruit) using my Vigo rack and cloth hydraulic press. In comparison I got about 75+% yield from some Cox's earlier in the season. can anyone tell me if the Dabinett yield is in the expected range or am I way below expectation?

Many thanks

Nick

[Andrew Lea]

That is a very low yield. Were the Dabs ripe? When did you press them?
Did you do a starch test first? Did the fruit hold the imprint of a
thumb if you pressed into it? That's the old cidermaker's way of judging
ripeness!

Andrew

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

[Rich Anderson]

 

Sounds pretty low, we find our Dabinetts a bit chewey, but seem to have yeilds similar to other apples. You did not say what type of press you use, but if you use cloth was it clean? We found that some of the X6 bags were not getting cleaned properly and slowed the pressing considerabley as well as being messy, needless to say changed the cleanup to remove the accumulated pulp after each day of pressing.

[Cider Nick]

Andrew - Yes, I had thought is low. I have a young orchard and did not get many apples this year so bought some Dabinetts from commercial orchard in Herefordshire. This was end of October and they were harvested the day before I collected them. They were machine harvested, covered in mud and may with damaged skins.  I had to get on a press promptly to avoid rotting. Stupidly I did not do a starch test. I am sure they were under-ripe. Juice SG was 1053.

Question: Are there any particular issues I need to look out for in the fermenting juice, given that the fruit were under-ripe?

Many thanks

Nick

[Pete Connor]

I had a 14% reduction in juice this year from dabs, apparently due to the hot autumn the apple's were more dehydrated this year