2007 cider season by the numbers

For six weekends I ran the mill this past season. That’s no days off for six (actually seven) weeks. What came of it all? Here’s 2007 by the numbers:
Four good local news stories, the best and cheapest advertising I could get. An emailed press release is a powerful thing.
About 700 gallons of juice squeezed, half of that fermenting stock. Sold out most weekends.
$1330 net profit.
65 gallons of the good stuff for my own use, 13 gallons of sweet juice frozen or canned.
Met some nice people, and spread the goodness of real cider to ‘the masses’.
Got some nice trades; a belly full of fresh raw oysters, and several folks offering up their own brews.

All sounds like a rousing success, no? Well the mill needs just shy of $1000 in improvements, which I could realistically put into it every year for the next few. Stainless press pan and plastic racks, for starters. Some welding and tweaking to the press itself. Epoxy coating the walls and sealing of the garage. Patching and sealing the concrete floor. Installing hot water. Then of course there’s the grinder which, while it is the most efficient garage-press unit I’ve ever seen, could use a major overhaul. New steel table with stainless top. 35 gallon conical bottom complete drain hopper, direct dumped from the grinder. Then the big kicker, a stainless pomace pump to fill the racks without any buckets. Of course that would also require some electrical work. And finally a washline for incoming fruit would be an excellent addition.

Presently I have the efficiency of the mill dialed in to commercial standards, and no backyard screwbox can touch it in terms of gallons of juice per bushel. I feel very good about mill sanitation when I am using my own fruit, and in the way that I operate it. Still, most of these improvements are geared towards two goals: further improving sanitation, and speeding cleanup time. Once these parts are tweaked I should be able to squeeze more in less time and clean up in an hour, as opposed to the three-plus it takes now. Then I might be able to take a day off in the fall, or squeeze more, including taking in people’s fruit for custom pressing.

So $1300 doesn’t sound like so much now, does it? I would do that in a month of bartending back in the day, and those few customers who always turn out to be pains in the ass at least weren’t standing in my driveway. I also didn’t have to invest almost three grand to get there (not including the real estate of the garage, or even my orchard costs) with continued investment of $500-1000 for each of the foreseeable seasons.

Why do I do this? Maybe Julie’s right, that I’m trying to live out my little orchard/cider dreams. I know that I would be making cider for myself no matter what, so it makes sense to do it right and spread the goodies around. . I’ll go on about those (sweet juice) customers that make me question the worth of it all in another entry. But still I could do this by sticking only to the hard cider end of things, which would be a hell of a lot easierBut then I wouldn’t have the satisfaction of having a stranger call me out of the blue to tell me that my sweet cider is the best stuff they’ve ever tasted. And I wouldn’t have Alice standing next to the press with her cup, catching any drip she can get to, with that big juicy grin on her face.