Just used the new Kegland grinder this weekend (after renting a slightly different grinder for the last few years). Overall happy with the purchase. It easily kept up with our pace of work (45 gallons of apples over the course of a couple hours, dropping in about 4 apples at a time until we’d filled the press with about 4 gallons of pulp - pasteurizing is the limiting factor).
It does a decent job grinding as well. Seems like the pulp may be slightly larger than the other grinder offered for rent at Home Fermenter, but not significantly larger. Our yield this year was 0.92 qt juice / 1 gallon apples. In previous years we’ve gotten up to 1.2qt/gallon, but I blame that more on the weather and not much on the grinder. The internal baffles dig great at keeping the pulp inside the machine. We did get one or two small bits of apple bouncing out once every five gallons or so.
Two minor complaints tho:
1) there is a “flat spot” on the motor. If you try to start the motor while it’s sitting in that spot, it won’t start. We had that happen twice. I needed to unplug the grinder, pull off the chute, rotate the motor a couple degrees, put the covers back on, and then it would start.
2) there are lots of sharp edges throughout the machine. I don’t think any effort was made to de-burr or smooth any of the cut edges of sheet metal. Use extra during handling and especially when cleaning. I’ll probably take a file to all the sharpest edges this winter… or not.
