2025 Fruit Pressing season is upon us!
Hello fruit lovers. It’s hard to believe that it’s August 1st already and the season for golden cider is here. We’re announcing that our first pressing of the season will be Sunday, August 24th at the Marcola Roadhouse in Marcola. Start time will be high noon. In addition, we plan to post dates and locations for the entire season (late Aug through mid-Oct) sometime in the next couple of weeks. The intervals will be roughly every two weeks.
Many of you are familiar with the process we use to accomplish this, but as a reminder here’s how we do it:
1. The fruit. We press apples, pears and grapes. No stone fruit. For apples, it helps to have some idea of when they are normally ripe. Ultimately the best indicator is to monitor your drops off the tree and taste them. For early season summer apples they will begin to sweeten up. When this happens, start picking up your drops daily, wiping as necessary and put them into containers. They will keep for 2-3 weeks easily and just keep getting sweeter. (I’m starting to save my Fuji’s now). Late season apples will keep even longer (just don’t waste those drops!). Pears need to ripen off the tree and you can test them the same way you would for eating (checking the end for softness). Pears need to be ground ahead and treated with an enzyme (reach out and we’ll help you with that). Grapes MUST be de-stemmed before pressing.
2. The schedule. Reach out to us here when you want to be included in an upcoming session. Or you can reach out to one of our volunteers. We’ll need to know what you’ll be pressing and roughly how many 5 gal buckets you’ll have. We’ll give you a time slot for that day.
3. Containers. We will have sterilized 1/2 gal and 1 gal containers available for a donation of 50¢ or $1. Feel free to also bring your own. We will also usually have cider available to the public for a donation of $4 (1/2 gal) or $7 (1 gal). This includes our cost of the containers.
We have a dedicated small group of volunteers to provide this service to our community. No one is compensated. We also have around $5,000 invested in our equipment (hydropress and electric macerator) and other necessary stuff to do this. We have to replace/repair our stuff periodically and donations help us do this. Reach out with any questions, and we’re looking forward to seeing you all this year.
Also check out other Nonprofit events in Marcola.
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