I've picked a bushel of fallen apples, in variable stages of having been picked at by insects, mice, birds.

The insect eaten ones don't concern me, but I'm wondering if it's safe to press/juice the ones picked at by mice and birds.
thanks in advance
hermit

There's a very small possibility you could catch a disease from mouse spit, so if you're worried, you could pasteurize that juice.

Fermentation should also take care of any sanitation problems. If you pasteurize it, don't let it get too hot, and it will taste okay--not as good as fresh, but not too bad.

The insect (if not wormy inside) should be ok, I would cut out the bird-pecked and mouse eaten ones. I would probably make apple sauce out of those instead. (heated is the ideal on the eaten ones.)

Good luck with your harvest projects! I'm ready to start picking my peaches and will be in canning and freezing mode this week. (peach butter and frozen peach slices for pies/desserts for this winter.)

Blu

When I make fruit wine from the 1000's of pounds of asian pears I get every year, I don't use the rotten ones, but I throw the rest of them, worms and all, into the grinder. I keep the very best ones for canning and drying.

I put the pulp/juice into plastic barrels and use just enough sulfite to prevent browning. I use a titrette kit to do this, I cant smell or taste the sulfur. I also add about 1/2 the amount of citric acid needed. This drops the PH and between the sulfite and the acid, the bacteria and wild yeast don't have much of a chance.

I figure the worms add protein for the yeast, so I can use less yeast nutrient. Also, after the pectinase has worked a day, and they get run through my press (I have a large hydraulic frame and rack cider press), the juice is tasty and sweet. The kids love it.

I've done this with apples too, when I can get enough of them to make the effort worth it. This makes good juice and cider. I rarely boil juice, unless I'm trying to sterilize it. I'm usually making wine, and wine yeast strains are pretty robust. If I was going to bottle straight juice and store it for a long period, I would boil it. If I was going to make wine out of it, I would freeze it.

IMO, boiling juice prior to winemaking diminishes the quality of the finished product, because so many of the volitile oils are lost with the steam.

Just made some hard cider from winfdals - i've left it for 4 weas in old coke bottles to finsih and tried three pints. A good night I'll drink 10 pints of stronbow and walk home feeling OK. I had three pints of my 'scrumpy' and nearly fell over haven't measured the sg but its more like wine than cider - must be the worms. BTW used champagne yeast.

1. Wash apples in a washtub of water with some bleach added. Rinse, grind, and press.

2. Heat cider to 200 degrees F. Do NOT boil!

3. Ladle hot cider into hot 1/2 gallon Mason jars. Put on lids and screw bands.

4. Process in hot water bath -- 190 degrees -- for half an hour.

Keeps in cool storage indefinitely. Nice to have bottled cider in winter.

I did something similar a year ago. I got some cider, added 2 lbs of honey and fermented it in a 3 gallon glass carboy using champagne yeast. The flavor was similar to wine, with an alcohol content equal to or probably slightly exceeding wine. I think its the yeast type that does it. Anyway, the first night I tested it out I was at a party, wound up consuming a liter... I had a fun but early night

Killjoy, it's nice to see you're not advocating some form of cider Russian roulette!

MMM-mmm.

deadfall=e-coli

Drew

Wouldn't want the jars to explode, either!

If you are processing fruit because you are starving then certainly, save the bad ones.

If it's just for practice then go to the Safeway, buy a bag for $5, and have fun while learning.

You don't mention the yeast? How do you get the alcohol?

You beat me to writing that. Plus the alcohol will kill the mouse spit germies.

It's canned sweet cider, not hard cider.

Hard cider is pressed and fermented in a "carboy."

We can fresh pressed (pasteurized) cider to have as a beverage through the winter.

Hard cider is a special process...

We watched our neighbors gather windfall apples where chickens roam. I made the comment that it was not a good idea to do that for pressing juice. Lots of apple washing ensued.

KillJOY is mostly correct in sanitizing with bleach, but a person can go crazy by adding too much--thinking more is more-- rendering the food more toxic than the bacteria.
Bleach sanitizing rules for utensils and food here: http://osuextra.okstate.edu/pdfs/FAPC-116web.pdf

Follow all rules regarding dilution and water temperature. It's a waste of chlorine to overly heat it or over-extend its time tested efficacy.

We sometimes use a Grape Seed extract for sanitizing veggies, followed by a clean water rinse.
Also vinegar is a good surface sanitizer.
At home, a substitute for eliminating bacteria is a vigorous rubbing of the surface using a cloth and water. Practical on cooking surfaces but not so much for bushels of produce.
I will add that I've not heard of any illness from the pressed cider our neighbors produced. We've consumed it too.
I am not a believer of overly sanitizing everything and I rarely use bleach at home so do some reading and decide for yourself.

cynthia