While we are collecting fallen apples for the production of ethanol, we are also collecting those that are ripe for human consumption. So as to avoid contamination we rented a commercial device very similar to ours which runs off an electric motor.

Despite this device using an electric motor, the process of mascerating the apples and then pressing them took about as long as if we'd used our own manual contraption. The motor often jammed; each time this occured we had to remove the apples and refill the funnel.

The device did have many desireable traits however. The barrel which collected the mascerated apples was on the same platform as the pressing barrel; this made sliding one over to be swaped out very easy. Also the device was on wheels making it portable.

We filtered out the pulp of the cider using cheese cloth, and sealed each bottle by baking them at 200 degrees farenheit in the oven. In total, over the course of 4 hours we produces approximately 12 gallons of cider.