Our apple juicing process: all the best tips and tricks

Apple juicing day is such a highlight for me. It feels like our official kickoff to fall and there’s nothing better than making the most amazing drink but also doing it with a bunch of friends. Many hands make light work right? And you need many hands (and strong arms) for this process (at least the way we do it) because it’s a lot of labor crushing tons of apples down. Buckle up because I want to share the whole process with you.

This is our 5th year juicing. There are 5 families, including us, that we gather together with for this whole process. We all meet up and go pick apples on the same day, then usually about a week or so after we gather for the juicing portion. In between that time everyone has made their fair share of apple crisp, apple chips, apple butter, apple bread, etc. You name it- someone has probably made it. It’s a ton of fun cooking with such fresh produce.

Now for the juicing process:

Step 1: wash and clean the apples

You want a bucket of lukewarm water for this. Just dump a bunch of apples in, then pull them out one by one and scrub them dry and clean with a towel. This is a quick process but we try to keep a couple bins full of clean apples so whoever is doing the next step never runs out.

Step 2: crush the apples into pulp

This is where the strong muscles come into play. We bought an apple crusher (also called a mill) and it has worked great for us for 5 years. Ours isn’t sold anymore but there are 2 options for you here and here. We also have 4 of our huge restaurant mixing bowls to rotate around for the whole process. You can get different sizes too which is nice (smaller here, bigger here).

One by one you put apples into the crusher and one person spins the crusher while another person smashes the apples down. Some of the bigger apples you need to cut in half, but most of them all go in whole. The apples go through the crusher, and funnel out the bottom and drop into one of the big bowls.

Step 3: Press the Apples to juice

Once the bowl is full of crushed apples, you move to the apple presser. This is the one we have. We dump the whole bowl into the apple presser and one person spins the press to push it down consistently. The presser also has a spout so the apple juice comes right out the bottom and pours into a big bowl sitting right underneath it.

This is the part where all the kids come into play. They all get their cups and get the juice straight from the press-there is just nothing better! As you can imagine, Tim just likes to open his mouth up straight under the spout. No need to waste a glass!

Step 4: strain and pasteurize

That big bowl of juice that we just pressed outside? That is now brought inside and poured through a strainer (get a pack here) right into a big cooking pot. Once the process got going, we had 6 pots on our stovetop all heating the juice. To pasteurize the juice, you need to bring the temperature up to 165 degrees. We pasteurize for a couple reasons- it destroys bacteria and it also allows you to freeze it safely for up to a year with great results.

Once the pot of apple juice has reached 165 degrees, we move to the final step.

Step 5: pour into jugs

The final step is pouring the juice into clean jugs. Everyone has different methods and we choose to do it this way. We buy new, empty jugs from the grocery store each year. Much easier than saving and cleaning old jugs- it works for us.

We strain the apple juice once more while pouring into each jug. Pro tip: leave a good couple inches in the jug empty at the top for expansion when you freeze them. We’ve unfortunately learned that one from experience. Once we fill a jug- we set them in another area, and put the caps on a couple hours later once cooled down.

Process done!

For reference, this year we made a total of 42 gallons of fresh apple juice. We had 5 families and worked straight for about 6 hours. I’d say that’s a pretty good return!

I hope you enjoyed reading about our apple juicing process, it’s fun for me to share. If you have any questions or you’re confused by any of the steps, feel free to ask and I’m happy to help in any way.

xo, Sarah

Shop the Post: