So this evening I am proud to say I now have 2 fermenters with a combined total of 30 litres of apple juice in them. I needed to tweak a few things with the press as I went along but it all worked pretty well once we got going. Got a bit of a fright early on with a flying car jack
but I steadied some things up and everything went much smoother after that. I still have another 2 sacks of crab apples to process but i have no more fermenter room at the minute so I might see how things are at the weekend and if I can find some room somewhere.
As for a design Dan I saw a few pictures of one online and used that design as much as I could but improvised some other parts. I wrote up a bit of a blog about building it if you want to have a look
http://myovercrowdedgarden.blogspot.ie/2013/10/building-my-cider-press.htmlI plan to put up another blog about extracting the juice and making the cider, but that will now be tomorrow, as right now I have some Champions League football and a bottle of elderflower wine that need my attention
EDIT: I uploaded a quick video of the press in action if anyone is interested
http://youtu.be/qZlc9GXbahI