Pulp Up The Volume
A Lesson in Fresh Fruit Cider Making
Lessons Learned
After each new homebrew, I sit back and consider what went well and, for future reference, what could be improved.
It’s a common step in project management, also referred to as a retrospective, a continuous improvement technique of which I’m a fan.
It’s no surprise that the practice carried over into my homebrewing adventures and a technique that I also included in my YouTube channel videos. The opportunity to review all the brewing steps a few weeks after the actual events themselves helped identify further improvements that I had not spotted at the time.
My previous article Homebrewing Lessons: Getting Started focused on the lessons from my very first homebrew. Given my complete noob status at the time, the truth is that everything I did was a lesson learned.
Today, I leap forward to more recent activities fermenting fresh fruit ciders to share a crucially important, but missing, element from my first attempt.
The Setup
Despite being around my family for over 50 years, it wasn’t until I started homebrewing that I took notice of the presence of apple and pear trees. Not a green thumb. This year, however, spare fruit was an opportunity to try my hand at a fresh fruit cider.
I had the basics (sanitiser, demijohn, airlock, yeast, yeast nutrient, funnel) from my turbo cider and beer brewing and had purchased and assembled a fruit press in readiness. I was ready for action.
The Number One Fresh Cider Lesson is: Pulping
Having chopped up the apples, see the picture at the top of this article, I transferred them to my new fruit press and started turning the handle. Much grunting and puffing later, I had extracted a thimbleful of juice.
I felt like I’d been doing a workout, I think I’d drank more while attempting to press the fruit than liquid produced. I moved to google to find out what I was doing wrong.
The problem was not pulping the fruit. Coarsely chopping simply wasn’t granular enough to produce the needed juice.
The Quick Fix was a combination of a nutri-bullet home juicer and a cheese grater, it wasn’t a pretty option but it got the job done.
The Full Solution is a pulping bucket. I purchased one humbly called the Pulpmaster, it is an 8 Litre Bucket, a Lid with a Central Hole, and a Chopping Blade that is fed through the hole and is attached to a drill.
This fast and effective solution chops up the fruit, reducing it to the required pulp:
It was a simple first-timer mistake, that was easily overcome with some basic kitchen equipment and elbow grease. My exercise workout continued as I grated my way through the insufficiently coarsely chopped fruit.
The pulping bucket is an inexpensive addition to my homebrew paraphernalia that quickly and effortlessly pulps the fruit.
If you’re thinking of pressing fruit for the first time, also consider the benefits of a pulping attachment for your drill.
Please share your first-timer lessons learned in the comments.
Happy Homebrewing Everyone
Rob
