I hope I`m OK to put this in here. I know a little off topic for a project/machining forum but I wanted to share and keep a record of my latest project, cider brewing! I have a small crop of apples and so does my grandad. This isn`t much at all but since I`ve had to hand press them it has been enough! Last year all the apples got rotten and fell on the floor so this year I thought I`d try some cider to use them up. This is the initial crop:

I basically chopped them all up and pulped them in the blender:

Popped the pulp into a fine cloth bag and gave it a GOOD squeeze:

I then re-filtered this through another fine cloth

And after just short of three hours I ended up with just short of 1 gallon of the apple juice, note the apples left are from my grandma as I was to save her some! I have added pectinase to break up any particles that are in there and also reduce the haze and I have added just short of 1 camden tablet to kill any bacteria but sadly also the naural yeast, I`ll add my own soon. I`m now leaving it until tomorrow or maybe even Thurday night as it took longer than I expected. The airlock is there simply to seal the container, I hope it doesn`t start fermenting since there is a camden tablet in there!

So that is what I have done so far but it was quite a bit darker than I expected but after leaving it to settle for a while the top area is becoming more of normal apple colour I would expect. There is now a quick thick seddiment falling to the bottom:

I think I`m going to have to filter it again tomorrow perhaps a drip filter through double cloth.
Although this is my first home brew, I`m actually going to go down the route of a cider/beer brew - so there will be a little hops in it and also some boiling up of the hops and brew later in the week before fermentation starts.
I haven`t got an aweful lot of apple juice here, just under a gallon (3.5L) so I`m going to top up with shop bought carton apply juice. As long as it is UV pasturised and not chemically done it is fine to use. This is cheeting, I just don`t have enough apply juice and besides a better cider can be achieved with a good mix of apples. Besides, our home grown apples are a little tart so hopefully adding a carton of apple juice will sweeten it up a bit.
Like I said before, hope I`m OK posting this here. anyone else into home brew - this is my first attempt!