Making Apple Juice

Team Bride takes place in my fictional British Columbia town, Riverbend, in the fall. One of the things I associate with fall here is making apple juice, so I had to feature it in Team Bride. It’s hard to describe the process fully in the course of a story without bogging down the narrative, so here’s a pictorial description in case you are curious!

I see I didn’t take any photos the last couple of times we had juicing day on the farm, so the following are a mix of my own from various years, and those of my daughter from 2012.

First comes picking the apples. We get organic or unsprayed apples if we can, but that’s not always possible.

After the apples are washed, they are ground into pulp using this grinder.

The pulp gets plopped and spread onto these brown canvas cloths. The cloth gets folded up, a slat goes on top, then another layer of pulp in cloth until they are all full.

Here’s an overview of the area, showing the large CLEAN garbage cans we fill with juice before dividing it for canning or freezing. Many hands make light work!

Within the press, a small hand jack is used to push down on the pulp that is layered in the cloths. Juice pours out the bottom into a stainless steel bucket. My oldest granddaughter, age 2.5 (she’s now 5.5!) shows how delicious she finds the juice.

In 2009, my niece’s husband shot the following video which features juicing that year at our farm. This was before any of our grandgirls were born. The little guy shown in the video is my grephew.