Would you like to get delicious juice from your own apple trees? How about making your own cider?
If you are growing more fruit than you can eat, contact our juicing team to:
- Use our juicing service
- Exchange fruit for juice
- Donate your surplus
Use the Make an Enquiry button at the bottom of this page to contact the team.
Read on for full of all three options.
1. Pay us to press your fruit
Fresh juice from your own apples
We can press a minimum of 60 kilos of your own hand picked apples, into about 30 litres of fresh apple juice. This can be a mix of varieties, and they need to have been picked from the tree – that is, not rescued from the ground. Bring them to us, we’ll wash them and put them into our amazing Scratter to make apple pulp, then squeeze the juice out with our mains-water-operated Apple Press.
If you have less than 60 kg, you could:
- join up with other people’s hand-picked apples and share the product – it’s a great thing to do with friends and neighbours.
- have some of our hand-picked apples, at cost price, to bring the weight up to 60kg.
This Fresh juice will be supplied back to you in one litre plastic bottles, ready to drink or to freeze. Fresh juice must be consumed within 3 days, pasteurised or frozen.
Cider from windfall apples
Apples that have fallen or been blown down from trees cannot be used for making fresh juice for food hygiene reasons. There’s a danger of the ground being contaminated by animals and birds, and the moulds present on the ground can be toxic to humans.
Your windfalls can be juiced to for you to make your own cider – we will press them for you, though we can’t make the cider for you.
Again, we can press in 60 kilo batches, to make about 30 litres of juice. These apples can be mixed varieties and can include apples that you have picked from the tree.
Here’s a link to advice about making your own cider. It takes about 8 months, so by planning ahead you could be drinking it next summer!
Costs
We charge £1 per litre of fresh juice produced, including the plastic bottle (1 lire or 2 litre bottles available).
If you supply your own container, we charge 80p per litre for the juicing.**
** If you supply your own container:
- For Health and Safety reasons this can be plastic or glass, but remember that while plastic containers can be frozen, glass bottles shouldn’t be put into a freezer.
- It’s your responsibility to sterilise it, either with boiling water or with Milton-type of sterilising tablet/fluid.
- The juice for cider can be put straight into a glass demijohn, or a plastic container.
Join in!
You can join in with making your own juice at the Fruit Factory, with our supervision, using our equipment. This is a great ‘day out’ activity to do, educational and fun with your children, getting involved in the process of food production, and not letting any go to waste.
If you have a neighbourhood apple project we can come to your place, all we need is mains water, power and clean surfaces to do the bottling on. Get in touch and ask about our arrangements and charges.
2. Exchange your apples for juice
If you haven’t got 60 kilos of apples, you can still bring them and exchange them for juice. They can be used as ‘part payment’ for our fresh juice or our pasteurised juice. By giving us your apples, they will be added to the common pot for juicing on the day, and you’ll have juice that’s already been pressed or bottled.
Pasteurised juice is our fresh juice that’s been bottled and heated to a minimum temperature, sterilising the liquid and killing off any bugs. This gives it a shelf-life of about 18 months (the best-before date is clearly stated on the label). We also make a flavoured pasteurised juice range, such as spiced, minty, cinnamon, chili, and a mulled juice range for cold days.
Costs – our juices cost £3.95 per bottle whether fresh or pasteurised, so it depends on the weight you bring in exchange.
We’d still need to have the apples separated and labelled, either as hand-picked (for adding to our fresh juice) or noted as windfalls (for making our cider).
3. Donating your apples
A third way of supporting Brighton Permaculture Trust’s Scrumped in Sussex project is to simply give your surplus apples to us, as a donation, rather than let them fall from the tree and rot. There’s no material reward but you’ll have the satisfaction of saving your fruit from going to waste and supporting our charitable aims.
We’d be very happy to hear about pears, plums and other fruit going spare, as well as apples.
Please contact us via the Make an Enquiry button below for all enquiries about Juicing/Exchanging and Donating your fruit.