A bumper apple harvest keeps Estonian juice presses busy

Estonia’s exceptionally good apple harvest has kept juice makers busier than usual, with some expecting to work until the first hard frosts, ERR reported.

At the yard of the Räpina Creative House, bags of apples are lined up for Lea Pihlapuu, who has been pressing juice there for 11 years. The large crop means longer waits for people bringing in fruit. More customers are also asking to mix apples with chokeberries or grapes.

“There are really a lot of apples this year,” Pihlapuu said. Early in the month, she also pressed pears with apples and made chokeberry juice. A customer is due to collect grape and apple juice.

In Põlva, Ivar Kanarik has built a juice-pressing workshop in his yard and continues to improve its equipment. This autumn, he added a remote-controlled winch to lift heavy bags of apples to the crusher and spare his back.

Kanarik said his press has been upgraded from a manually tightened screw mechanism to a hydraulic system. The machine is also used to split firewood in winter.

He expects to stop pressing when temperatures reach minus five degrees Celsius, possibly between mid-November and early December.