Pressing cider is an excellent way to preserve fresh apples through the winter. You can can cider as fresh juice, freeze it, or ferment it into hard cider — each method keeps for months or longer when stored properly.
A quality commercial cider press can be expensive. After years of saving, a double-barrel press was a birthday promise for me — they aren’t cheap. Fortunately, you don’t need to spend much to get excellent results. A reader, Sasha, shared a brilliant, no-cost method she assembled from recycled materials that produces yields comparable to my fancy press.
Sasha described her setup: “The press is two buckets inside of each other upside down in a stockpot to catch it. Then I stand on it, then my husband does and then we stand on it together. I’ve been able to get about 3 quarts each time out of a reusable bag full.”
How to Build a DIY Cider Press for Free
Materials:
- 5-gallon bucket
- Slightly smaller bucket or large storage container
- Flour sack or sturdy pillowcase
- Large stockpot or an even bigger bucket to catch the juice
- Body weight (people to press)
Begin by chopping the apples as finely as you can. Using a food processor on short pulses or hand-chopping works. Sasha mentioned her apples had frozen accidentally before pressing; freezing can help rupture cell walls and improve juice yield.
Place the chopped apples into the flour sack or pillowcase. Then set the smaller bucket upside down inside the stockpot and put the sack of apples on top of the inverted inner bucket.
Fit the 5-gallon bucket over the smaller bucket and sack of apples. Because the inner bucket is smaller, there is a gap between the two buckets that gives the expressed juice a path to flow down into the stockpot. Think of it as a simple press: apples are contained and squeezed while juice drains away.
Apply weight gradually: sit on the top bucket, then stand, and finally have two people stand to increase pressure. Sasha consistently reports about three quarts of cider from one filled reusable grocery bag of chopped apples, with the spent mash still retaining moisture that can be used for other recipes.
Sasha shared more detail about her setup: she used a large Tupperware that had previously stored flour, adding towels inside to support the bottom so it wouldn’t bow under pressure. The smaller bucket came from a bakery; the lid sealed well so towels stayed dry. She used a flour sack as the primary container for the mash and doubled another cloth as a filter when pouring into jars to catch stray solids. From one bag of chopped apples she typically got about three quarts of cider. She then ran the still-moist mash through a small squeezer to produce roughly another quart of mash suitable for apple butter.
After filtering the finished cider through a fine mesh cloth or cheesecloth to remove any remaining solids, Sasha canned three quarts for home storage and set aside one quart of concentrated mash for apple butter.
Thanks to Sasha for sharing this simple, effective method for turning apples into cider without a costly press. If you have limited tools but want good results, this bucket-sandwich approach is an easy, low-cost option.
Other Ideas?
Have you built your own cider press? Tell your experience in the comments. If you’d like your photos and process published, send them to the author at the contact address listed on the original site and your story may be shared so others can learn from your design.
