While envisioning the cheese press, it occurred to me that I could probably use the press for making cider and getting liquids out of other solids if I had a different mold system to put into the press.
So I looked around at tractor supply and found some food safe buckets and tubing:
I accidentally bought the wrong hardware to connect the tubing so I made a quick morning run today to Home depot and picked up a brass connector. (Check that your connectors fit the Inside dimensions and not the outside dimensions, sigh)
Then I determined how tall I wanted to make the whole thing. Ideally I’d like to use it with the cheese press I made yesterday, so I measured the outside height to be able to fit comfortably within the press, in this case 8 1/2 inches. I may find I need to cut this down a little in the future, but for now it seems to work. This was the largest it could be. Drilled a hole and used the jig saw to cut off the top of the bucket:
(there’s a hole in this bucket dear Liza dear Liza)
Using the outside as the guide I then cut the second bucket to fit just inside the first. I may need to add some sort of handle to this follower as it’s really hard to get out of the bucket when nothing is in it. Another potential problem is that the buckets don’t go all the way to the bottom of each other so there will always be a 2 inch gap at the bottom, which shouldn’t be a huge problem with cider, but if I am using it for whey collection it might be problematic.
I then drilled a 1/2 inch hole on the bottom of the outside bucket and using plummer’s tape inserted the tube fitting. I then pushed the tube onto the fitting and cut it to about three feet, which should allow it to be used on the counter and then drain into a milk jug or something else for collection.
The idea being that you’d take apples, peel, core and put into food processor, then put them into a muslin/cheese cloth bag and put them in the bottom of the outer bucket. Put the follower bucket on top with its lid on, and put the whole thing into the cheese press, which should extract most of the juice out of the apple mash. (or anything else you put into it!)
Caitrin
Stephanie (Curiositykt)
dharvill
Painted wings and giant rings 
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