Harvesting and Juicing Your Apple Crop

Knowing When Your Apples Are Ready

The single biggest mistake made by first-time apple growers is picking too early. An apple that leaves the tree before it is ready will never ripen properly — unlike a pear or a banana, it will simply soften, turn mealy and lose what little flavour it had. Patience at this stage pays dividends right through to the glass.

The first clue is the pips. Cut a representative apple open and look at the seeds: while they are pale cream or greenish, the fruit is still growing. When they have turned a rich dark brown, you are usually within a fortnight of picking. Colour is the next signal, though it varies enormously between varieties. Heritage cookers such as Bramley's Seedling or Lord Derby stay green even when ripe, so don't rely on blush alone.

Test for ripeness by cupping an apple in your palm and lifting it gently. A ripe apple parts from the spur with only the lightest twist, bringing its stalk away cleanly. If you have to pull or tug, walk away and come back in a few days. Fruit growing on the sunny south side of the tree will be ready first, so pick in stages rather than stripping the whole tree in one afternoon. Store only sound, unblemished specimens and eat the rest fresh or juice them straight away — late varieties such as Ashmead's Kernel and Egremont Russet are the ones worth keeping in a cool, dark shed.

Sorting the Crop: Keepers, Eaters and Juice

Once you have a few crates on the kitchen table, sorting becomes the most important job of the day. Work through the fruit in three piles, and be ruthless — one bruised apple can taint a whole box in store.

• Keepers: perfect, unmarked fruit with the stalk intact. Wrap each in newspaper or store in slatted trays somewhere frost-free, around 4°C, and check every fortnight for rots.
• Eaters and cooks: sound but slightly small, misshapen or over-ripe fruit for immediate use in crumbles, chutneys and pies.
• Juicers: bruised, scabby, bird-pecked, codling-moth damaged and windfall apples. These are perfect for pressing and freezing.

That third pile is where the real value lies. Most gardeners lose more fruit to windfalls than they ever pick, and there is a quiet satisfaction in turning what would otherwise go on the compost heap into something genuinely delicious. Scab and cosmetic blemishes are fine; just cut away any rot, brown flesh or maggot damage. A soft, pulpy apple is still perfectly good for juice as long as it is not actually decaying.

Washing, Scrubbing and Milling

Before anything touches the press, everything needs a good clean. Windfalls come in with soil, leaf litter and the occasional visitor, and unwashed fruit can carry wild yeasts that make juice ferment in the bottle rather than freeze cleanly.

Fill a large tub or sink with cold water and add a splash of food-safe steriliser or a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice. Rinse each apple, rub off any stubborn dirt with your hands, then drain and dry roughly with a clean towel. Cut out the stalk, blossom end and any damaged sections; there is no need to peel or core for juice — the pips contain a little amygdalin and too many will add a bitter note, so remove the cores of larger cookers if you are pressing in bulk.

Next comes milling. A proper scratter or apple mill does the job in minutes, but a sturdy food processor or a heavy chopping knife will serve for small batches. You are aiming for a coarse, pulpy mash rather than a fine purée, because the pulp needs to release its juice freely through the press cloth. Work in batches and press or juice as soon as you have milled, as the pulp browns quickly once exposed to air.

Pressing, Juicing and Blending Varieties

If you own a fruit press, line the basket with a clean muslin or pressing cloth, ladle in the pulp, fold the cloth over and apply pressure slowly. Rushing the press forces bits of pulp through the cloth and clouds the juice. Let it settle for a minute or two between turns. A good yield from ripe fruit is roughly 500–650ml of juice per kilogram of apples.

No press? A masticating or centrifugal juicer will handle a household's worth of fruit very well. Feed the apple pieces in slowly, alternating hard cookers with softer eaters, and clean the machine every few kilos to stop it clogging. If you have a very large crop and a modest kitchen, many allotment associations and small rural cider-makers offer community pressing days, which is well worth asking about.

Flavour is where heritage varieties really shine. A blend of one sharp cooker to two or three sweet or bittersweet eaters gives a balanced, drinkable juice. Try Keswick Codlin with Discovery, or Bramley softened with a handful of Sunset. Taste as you go and adjust the blend before bottling rather than after.

Freezing and Storing Your Juice

Fresh apple juice is at its best within a few hours of pressing, so drink some warm from the press and deal with the rest promptly. Pour it through a fine sieve or jelly bag if you prefer a clear finish, though cloudy juice is perfectly good and keeps a little better in the freezer.

Leave an inch of headspace in every container, as juice expands as it freezes, and use rigid plastic bottles, bags or lidded tubs. Label with the date and the variety blend — you will be grateful next spring when you cannot remember which batch was the good one. Juice keeps for up to twelve months at -18°C, though it is best drunk within six. Thaw overnight in the fridge and use within three or four days. If you would rather not freeze, pasteurising at 71°C for a few minutes and bottling hot will keep juice for several weeks in a cool cupboard, though it does dull the fresh flavour a little.

There is something deeply satisfying about a freezer shelf lined with bottles of your own juice in the depths of January. A tree you tend, fruit you pick and a glass you pour — the whole cycle in one honest mouthful.