Meerkat Cider: Day 2 - Industrialisation

I am officially knackered. After an hour long soak in the bath, my hands still look dirty.

We went shopping at B&Q this morning to get some extra stuff, notably 2 clamps.

Got home and after drilling some holes in a bit of wood, the cider press was attached to the Black & Decker workmate, via the piece of wood, 3 bolts, and 2 clamps.

This now meant that we could leverage a lot more pressure, and as a result one pressing was now half filling a demijohn - whereas yesterday it was about 5 pressings (so on that basis I wasted about 2 gallons of potential cider yesterday - ARSE!).

In addition me newer more powerfull drill proved yet again how crap it is with it's chuckless drill bit housing - meaning it's bloody difficult to get a drill bit in tight. I didn't realise that yesterday it was not spinning a lot of the time.
Today I switched to the old drill, and suddenly it was lot more pulped apple going into the press; so much so that even before we starting spinning the press down there was juice coming out.

So now that we were producing on a larger scale I realised the demijohns where not going to suffice!

After 6 hours solid I think I've ended up with potentially 50 pints of cider.

F*** knows what it tastes like (will try it tomorrow before the yeast is added).

Think it's quite a high acidity level (PH 3), and a hyrdo rating of 1.045.

So I'll try and keep you updating on how it goes.