How does one Process Previously Frozen Apples - cleaner copy

[Charles Claus]

Hi there,

I have three smaller apple trees on which the apples froze to a low of - 7 C. We have had freezing night time temperatures for the past week. It has barely thawed up during the day. 

Just after the apples thaw out I plan to wash them, grind them up and press them in our 80 L (volume of unprocessed apple pulp) bladder press. I do not have access to a screw press to experiment with pressing partially frozen apples and I think processing partially frozen apples is beyond the capacity of our bladder press. There are probably about 250-300 lbs of apples. One apple is Egremont Russet, the other an older version of Red Delicious and the last one is Schmidt Berger.  

Any advice on how to proceed in making cider in this manner would be appreciated. 

Charles Claus, Terrace, BC, Canada 

ReplyForward

[Kirk Evans]

My understanding is that once apples freeze, the cell walls break, so you have to press them whole (as opposed to grinding them) once they've thawed a bit. If you ground them frozen, I have no idea what would happen. 

I've pressed frozen and thawed apples before with my bladder press (as well as a standard screw press) and the juice yield was the best I've ever had at home, and had far fewer solids than typical maceration/press...it was also a lot less messy. I imagine you could do this with a rack and cloth as well if that's your pressing equipment.

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[Kirk Evans]

I meant to add, if you grind the apples after thawing, it would just turn to mush.

[rkreev...@gmail.com]

Most of the cider apples I process are (intentionally) frozen for later processing. I have pressed them both thawed/whole and thawed/milled.  Although I have no empirical data to show it to be so, when pressing whole it seemed I was not getting the full yield from the fruit. More specifically, although the apples leave the press quite flat, the pulp within seems to have a rather high residual moisture content. On the other hand, milling frozen/thawed fruit has not caused me any handling difficulty, i.e. "mushy" pulp plugging press cloths, etc. Further, the fruit pulp after pressing is quite dry, almost flaky, and easily handled, so this is the process I normally use.  A caveat might be that I am processing traditional cider varieties which seem to me to be generally more dry and fibrous than typical dessert types which may or may not cause difficulties that I do not experience. Lastly, up to now I have never used pectic enzyme in the pulp prior to pressing, only the juice phase. I intend to change this in the future as I have read I might be leaving aromatic precursors behind in the pulp. Adding enzyme to the pulp may have a negative effect on the ease of processing I currently enjoy.