Press Day at Pfeifer's: Goldrush 2024 Part 1

Ran up to Pfeifer’s today, to draw off a couple dozen gallons of their late season Goldrush pressing. Sam and the crew up there were kind enough to hold off the Pink Lady bin so I could pull a nice single varietal out. Brigid came with, I figured it like a homeschool field trip on her day off from preschool, as every Wednesday is. She spent most of the time playing with the big dumb black lab who keeps the press barn tolerable on down days. Trent Beers (real name) snagged a GLINTCAP gold medal on a Goldrush batch from Hugus. That was the ‘23 competition, so would have been the 22 vintage. That reminds me, I need to write up a Back Porch Thoughts about the 2024 growing season later this month or next.

Pfeifer’s recently installed a nice belt press setup. Compact, efficient, easy to operate, high yielding, easy to clean, a lovely lovely setup if you have the money and the proven market for high volumes of cider. They’d been using a bog standard rack and cloth rig the last decade or so. Sold it off to am Amish family in Upstate New York. Wanted a couple grand more for it than we could spare, and we don’t have 220, or any power, run to the pressing shed. Our electrician wanted a couple thousand more than we could spare for that too! So we are probably going to settle for a nice German hydrobladder press. I was hesitant to pull the trigger on hydrobladder, because while an affordable and efficient option, we don’t have great pressure off our well setup to feed it. But I think we can rig up a nice rainwater runoff capture system into an elevated tank that can provide enough weight and drop pressure to push 40-50 psi into the bladder. My garage-built grinder rig runs on 110V0, so the whole outfit can run off a single thick extension cord out from the garage. I like that better than paying five grand we don’t have to run power to a old goat shed that we’re hopefully outgrowing in 2 seasons.

I’m been wary of belt presses. The trouble is lack of opportunity to macerate prior to pressing. If you haven’t had the chance to see one in action, whole apples are run from wash tub, up to the grinder, and directly from the grinder onto the belts in a single, continuous flow. There is no holding tank, like the French do, which I think is a bit much, nor a chance for the pumice to oxidate and brown up and macerate while the cheeses are being built.

I had been concerned with the speed of the press. Rack and cloth will press out over an hour or more. The old building-sized monsters in Asturias sometimes take multiple days to press out a single cheese, or so says Claude Joliceur, who, let’s be honest, certainly would know from firsthand experience. Slow-pressing has a few advantages, or so I thought, primarily related to clarification later in the process. I was worried fast-pressed belt-fed juice would come out cloudy, requiring addition of a precipitation agent, which for us would be pectic enzyme. As our entire philosophy is predicated upon minimum intervention across orchard, press room, and cellar, this adds another touch point and chemical addition that we would rather avoid. I also like “slow pressed” as a label call-out, there’s something mysteriously upscale about it.

Both concerns turn out to be completely unwarranted.

This Goldrush, my lord, it is lovely. It will clear up with even minimal cold-crashing. SG 1.0065-70 on a Brix of 16-16.5. pH reads at roughly 3.8. I don’t bother taking titratable acid readings nowadays, especially on single-varietal batches. My testing kit isn’t accurate enough for actionable insight, and even if it comes out low, I’m not adding any malic acid either way. I like to think I have a generally good tongue for a good juice after all these years, and I can tell you, this one is highly flavored, well balanced, very sweet, with a syrupy texture just like the 2023 Harrison had. That Harrison was slow-pressed in the wood basket press we rigged up, after thawing out from deep freezing. Come to think of it, that batch was unusually clear off the press too. The 2024 Harrison was much more turbid, and was coincidentally pressed a a much higher ambient temperature. Pfeifer’s pressing room was pretty cold today. I wonder if there’s something to that correlation.

In any case, we sulfited tonight, very modest amount, and will pitch Friday the 20th. Next BPT will explore yeast and nutrition management, and our cellar plan, when we will rack, into what material, and so on etc etc.

Warm Regards,

Stephen Martinek

Prop, Swigart Farms and Lammes Creek Ciderworks