Effectiveness of screw press
Дмитрий Тихомиров
Dear colleagues,
I was wondered why nobody use screw press to get apple or pear juice. Screw presses are often used to receive juice from berries and so on. Nether Andrew Lea nor Claude Jolicoeur doesn’t mentioned anything about these type of press in theirs books.
Can you please comment why screw press cast away in cider production?
Best regards,
Dmitrii Tikhomirov
Claude Jolicoeur
Of all the cideries I have visited, only one used this type of press. And the main reason they got this press is because of its robustness, it can press frozen apples for making ice cider. This cidery is Saint-Nicolas near Quebec City.
I think the reason neither Andrew nor myself mentioned this type of press in our books is that they aren't often used. They are also very expensive and are only accessible to larger cideries. Both Andrew's and my book are rather aimed at smaller craft producers who couldn't afford it...
See picture below of the St-Nicolas press. You can also see on the left the elevator and the grinder on top of the press.
Claude
Le lundi 18 avril 2016 11:23:04 UTC-4, Дмитрий Тихомиров a écrit :
Dear colleagues,
I was wondered why nobody use screw press to get apple or pear juice. Screw presses are often used to receive juice from berries and so on. Nether Andrew Lea nor Claude Jolicoeur doesn’t mentioned anything about these type of press in theirs books.
Can you please comment why screw press cast away in cider production?
Best regards,
Dmitrii Tikhomirov
hifly
They have been talked about before as I questioned there use a few years ago, the consensus was that the small ones available from china did a poor job with apples are were not worth bothering with.
I had some contact with a cider maker who bought one from china and he was not impressed here is a quote from his e-mail to me.
“From the spiral juicer i got 1 liter juice from 3.5 kg apples, and i think that this machine is not quite profitable and i suggest you to search for a different juice technology (classical press) .”
I love the idea of putting apples in one end and getting juice and pulp out of the other in a continuous process but it seems the advertising is much better than the product.
I asked a number of Chinese sellers to put me in contact with some of their customers only 1 did and as I said above he did not think it was worth it.
Vince
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Nick Bradstock
In the late 60s, Taunton Cider used such a press for a while under trial from SPEICHIM, a French food industry machinery company, and to provide a first stage of juice extraction before the then conventional pack presses.
As Claude has said, such screw presses were expensive machines. They closely resemble the much cheaper steel and cast-iron Colin press used in France at the same period (perhaps still?) as a first stage in finally dewatering spent pomace after a 2nd or 3rd extraction of juice, often (then, perhaps) with the addition of water. The pomace at about 60/65 %w.w. moisture content would then be dried for sale as a base for pectin extraction and some other purposes. The high and ever-rising cost of fuel has since more or less put paid to that usage.
From memory, the Taunton experience of the SPEICHIM press was of periods of excessive slippage between the fruit mass and the internal screw and the enclosing screen. This was attributed to the presence of moderate to high levels of pectin in the fruit when slippage occurred and the practical result was that the pomace was churned by the action of the screw and did not move through the machine.
Generally speaking, cider apples (bitter-sweets/sharps, etc) with their more ‘fibrous’ texture pressed satisfactorily since they tended not to churn and I suppose the almost exclusive use of cider fruit in the main cider regions may have led to the system’s adoption among cider makers in France. The need in the UK to be able to press non-cider apple varieties meant that the machine was returned to SPEICHIM after about 3 seasons. The highly effective Bucher-Guyer rotating press that was introduced at about the same time was then enthusiastically adopted across the world – in spite of its even much higher cost......
The screw system should work and ways could be found to make it work but at the cost of process complication – which could be more or less ignored with the Bucher 5000 and its descendants.
Hope this reminiscence helps.
Nick
From: cider-w...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cider-w...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of ??????? ?????????
Sent: 18 April 2016 11:48
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Best regards,
Dmitrii Tikhomirov
Peter Barda
Dimitri and others
I use a small Italian semi-professional screw machine to crush and destem grapes. It’s capable of dealing with about 2 tonnes per hour.
The screw removes and spits out stems at one end, and begins to crush the fruit.
A set of fluted rollers counter rotating complete the crush, dropping the must in to a 500 litre tub.
The gap between the rollers can be adjusted although not by much – up to about 1cm. The gap varies with grape variety.
I have considered using it for apples but doubt that the screw would do much damage to the fruit, and am all but certain that the rollers would be unable to break up apples in to small enough pieces for pressing. I would expect the rollers would jam up with pieces of apple too small to pass through them.
Consider the sharp edges on all the hobby standard scratters’ rotors – they are absent from my screw machine and I guess other models as well.
They are needed to do the heavy work of breaking the apples in to small enough pieces for the press.
Peter Bārda
'Bigpond'
755 Sandy Creek Road
Quorrobolong NSW 2325
T: +61 (2) 4998 6251 F: +61 (2) 4998 6154 M: 0418 438 550 E: peter...@bigpond.com
