Thank you all! alcan Very Intersecting, thanks to drop in and sharing your ideas!....are you new to this forum, ? I think, have never seen you here before....welcome! I hope, you get lucky with your crossings! I think I know your friend Claire, he comes to the fruit festival at Devonian Gardens for many years already. I know, he likes the Trailman Crab, one of the best apple up there! I sure like that one too. Not sure, have you seen the thread on Stella Cherry? I was able to graft some onto Evans and had fruits this year. I also have allot of Evans grafted to Pincherry and producing good, it makes them hardier then Evans on there own root! 2 days ago, I have taken these pictures on my remaining Apples, just to see, what one can expect at this time of the year, the condition they are in. Norkent, still crisp, the best keeping apple so far. Collet, good flavor, second best, but apple is soft already. Sunrise, soft but nice, this was a surprise to me, how long it still lasted. Goodland, soft too, nice flavor. Ruby Red, at the very end of storage life. Norland, past its storage life, just starting to rot from inside out....as one of the very first apple to pick, it did amazingly well!...but one has to pick them about 1 week earlier, before full ripe. Konrad

You can juice them however you wish but yes, you do want the sit period. The sediment isn't just a bit of pulp, it is the source of spoilage enzymes, bitterness, bacteria, poor quality flavor and very cloudy appearance. How much straining you do is your choice but experience will show you that you won't be happy with the result if you don't follow the standard directions. Most any fruit can be made into juice using your juicer but some fruits won't hold up to the heat of canning as it really changes the flavor - especially citrus. Trying to take shortcuts in home canning will almost always result in poor quality, wasted time, wasted energy, and pitched food. Dave

Thanks everyone for your help.....And Carol that peach and pepper relish looks great and may be up next for some trial runs. Here is what I ended up with (my heavily amended hab gold recipe..;)) 4 cups peach nectar (45%fruit juice) 4 cups apricot nectar (45% fruit juice) 1 cup black cherry extract 1 cup each diced finely (used food processer for finer dice) of dried peaches, dried apricots, and dried tart cherries 2 cup finely chopped onion 1/2 cup finely chopped fatalli peppers 3 cups vinegar 7 cups sugar *still let sit overnight like original recipe* I let the fruit juices simmer while I did the chopping and that reduced their volumes a bit. I found that using the food processor on the dried fruit worked wonderfully. I eliminated the red bell pepper because with the addition of all that fruit the flavor was lost plus I wanted to make sure you got some onion flavor and this allowed me to increase my onion amount. I used fatalli pepper which is awesomely hot (one of the very hottest habaneros) but with all that sugar which counteracts the capsaicin, it is actually only reasonably hot. I left the pectin out because with all that sugar I was able to just cook to 225 degrees or so and it turned out just syrupy/glazy just like I wanted. Plus the extra fruit juices added some volume so this batch was not soooo chunky and full as the last batch. Tried some on some shrimp last night and it was wonderful. We just used it as a glaze in the last few minutes of cooking time. I was licking my fingers the whole time. Thanks everyone again for your help Kendra

Cider is pressed from cold or room temperature apples. It can then be filtered for sediment (if desired) and pasturized (by heat or by UV filter) if desired. Juice is made pressing hot fruit. Both methods taste quite different. Cider is usually a raw product while juice is a cooked product. The teminology is a bit shady these days since so many now pasteurize the cider by heat but not at the high temps that processing juice usually occurs. I hate pasteurized cider when done by heat and prefer if done with UV filter for that old time cider taste. Better yet I hunt for non-pasterized cider which must be labeled as such at orchards that sell it in my state. Big warning on it that may be harmful to children or elderly as non-pasteurized. Recent studies show IF cider pressed with warm apples (yields more juice) and left to sit warm for a while and then frozen, this works as good as heat pasterization. The acidity and good bacteria will work to kill the bad bacteria with this method using warm apples. The final kicker is the freezing action. We made a lot of cider when I was a boy on a large cider press I built in woodshop while in high school. Years later I used to help make 250 gallons each week on a commercial press at an apple orchard I was employed at.