Wines I'm Making: Cider Again, But This Time Using Fresh Apples

Last February I made some very tasty hard cider by fermenting store-bought organic apple juice. This year our apple tree had a lot of fruit, so I thought I'd try making cider from scratch, using apples from the tree. These pictured are "Pink Lady" apples from our back yard. Tomorrow we pick up a rented apple press and some more apples from my brother and from a couple of friends with trees. I figure we'll need about 200 pounds to make it worthwhile. 200 pounds of apples should yield about 10 gallons of juice. That will translate into 107 12-ounce bottles with a retail value of about $140. Renting the machine costs $45. The yeast costs about $8. So, for a little more than $50 (discounting time and labor) we'll get a more or less three-fold return. Hope it all goes well. More soon....