“Homemade” apple juice

My step mum have two apple trees on her allotment. One little one and one big brute of a tree! Somewhere along the way she decided it be a good idea to pick the apples, but she didn’t want any.. would I?

Saturday last weekend, a friend of mine and me, moseyed over there and picked the trees clean. With the exception of about 6 apples hanging so high there was no way I was going to get to them, without risking my “life”. Yes.. had a little “scare” when my ladder started to slip because a branch gave in, or rather to be absolutely frank with you, it broke! Not a comfy feeling let me tell you 😉 So I caved and left the last ones on the tree. Better safe than sorry.. right? 😉

There are a couple of places in town that lets you do something about your apples.

One place will exchange 1,25 kg of apples for a 0,7 litre bottle already made apple juice (of the type that has been treated to last a while). You pay for the juice, but you pay less than normal, since you are bringing the apples.

There is another place in town where they will press apples into fresh apple juice for a small fee. Since this is not treated apple juice (pure fresh, as if you used a juicer yourself) they will only last a few days, so you will be needing some room in your freezer for storage.

Since this was the first time ever, trying this (and we had no clue if the apples were good or not), we decided it be a good idea to try both of the options above.

So off we went with about 60 kg worth of apples 🙂

We delivered about 38 kg to the “swap” place! Which amounted to 30 bottles of juice at reduced price. But since we had no idea if that juice was any good or not, we decided to buy only 15 bottles this time, which gives us a another 15 we can buy later.

Then we delivered  22/23 kg at the apple press place, and would you believe it, it amounted to about 17,5 litres of freshly pressed! Woohoo 🙂 How’s that for utilising our resources, and they are guaranteed organic (since nobody have done didli squat with the trees in years) 🙂

Which one tasted the best? As nice as the juice at the swap place is, I have to admit the freshly pressed is way better. So guess which version I’ll be doing next year? Yepp, the freshly pressed way (depending on how much room I can borrow in my friends freezers 😉 )

Did we save some? Yes, off course! The little tree had some really nice red tasty apples, and these are kept outdoors in my garden box. So right now, I’m eating apples like a crazy person 😉