Fruit Pressing

Once crushed, the apples can be pressed. Fruit is poured into the cage of the press (the barrel-like part) and pressed by a wooden piston. The piston is pushed down, putting pressure on the fruit, forcing juice out through the gaps in the cage staves. The staves are positioned closely to reduce the escape of pomace, pips and skin and a press liner bag can used to further reduce the amount of solids in the juice. The juice flows onto the base plate of the press and out through the lip or drain hole into a jug, bowl or bucket. Once the pomace has been pressed dry the mechanism is unwound, the cage lifted off the base plate and the cake of dry pomace pushed out. The presses require minimal maintenance: a rinse with fresh water and a touch of vegetable oil to the screw thread is all that is required. The pressed pomace can be composted or fed to livestock.

With practice you should be able to do three or more pressings in an hour. Apples will yield up to 50% or more juice by weight and grapes considerably more. As a rough guide, 20 lbs of apples will yield up to about one gallon of juice. Thus, for example, a 12 litre press used with apples will give an hourly output of around 3 gallons (14 litres).

We have arranged the presses below starting with the smallest press and progressing to the larger. All of our basket presses are equally efficient in terms of percentage yield but larger presses will give higher hourly outputs. The Rack & Cloth Press and the Hydropresses used in conjunction with a centrifugal mill produce a higher yield by weight of apples than the basket presses.