How to Build a Cider Press

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Before the advent of the pop bottle and urban sprawl, just about every farm had a cider press. These machines were lovingly built by highly skilled craftsmen called coopers, who also constructed the casks and barrels in which families stored flour, sugar, corn, water, beer, pickles, nails and many other commodities.

Nowadays, it's well nigh impossible to come by an old-fashioned barrel press. The very few that still exist are either quietly handed down from one generation to another within families or sold at outrageous prices in antique shops. Which means that if there's an apple orchard in your back pasture and you'd rather high-grade all that fallen fruit into cider than let the cows eat it, you'll have to break out the carpentry tools.

Now, I'm not a cooper (heaven forbid!) and wouldn't know where to begin when it comes to bending barrel staves into compound curves, but I have built a cider press that—while not the world's prettiest or most sophisticated—gets the job done, and cost me only about $30 to assemble. Besides that, the unit is so stout that I'll betcha someday a father will point his finger at the machine and proudly tell his son, "My grandpappy built that press."

YOU CAN BUILD ONE, TOO

My little cidermaker's not at all difficult to build. Take a look at the accompanying diagrams and photographs to get a general idea of how the press is put together. There are essentially just four components: [1] A supporting frame made of 2 x 4's and 4 x 4's, nailed and bolted together, [2] an open-ended "basket"—in which the apples are crushed (made of vertical wooden slats held in place by two horizontal metal hoops), [3] a screw to deliver the squeezing force, and [4] a trough to collect the drippings. Since the basket is probably the most demanding of the four sub-assemblies to construct, I'll start the instructions with that item.

THE BASKET

You'll notice that in the "List of Materials" I've specified hardwood for the basket's slats. This is because softwoods—pine or fir, for example—are likely to impart undesirable flavors to the cider. Thus, make a maximum effort to fabricate this part of your press from hardwood, preferably maple or oak, that has NEVER been soaked in a preservative. Scrounge a little. I cut my basket's slats from a pair of old breadboards that had been collecting dust in my garage.

Bear in mind, as you build the basket, that the spacing between slats (on the inside of the hoop looking out) should be very close to 1/16" after everything has been assembled. If the gaps are much more than 1/16" wide, bits of peel and core will escape through them and end tip floating in the cider, while, if the spacing is much tighter, you'll probably need a bicep transplant after your first attempt at turning the crank of the fully loaded press.

The slats on my machine's basket are 5/8" thick (a thickness, I've found, that can be cut from most breadboards). If you're forced to use wood of another dimension, however, go ahead. First, though, sit down with a pencil and paper and figure out how far apart the holes in the metal straps will have to be in order to maintain the 1/16" spacing between slats on tile finished basket.