Wayne Harris wrote:

On Mar 21, 11:35*am, "Lum Eisenman"
wrote:
"Wayne Harris" wrote
in message


...

I have not searched the archives of this
group, apologies if this has
been covered.

I have neither a Crusher/de-stemmer nor a
grape press.

Does anyone ever use a standard basket wine
press for both roles?

Can I get by with doing the initial crush
with a light pressing in the basket press?

-Wayne

Wayne,
Small quantities of grapes can be crushed by
hand and the stems removed using the following
technique. *Put a clean, plastic milk crate on
top of a suitable container (a new, 33-gallon
trash can). *Pickup a few clusters of grapes in
both hands. *Place your hands in the bottom of
the milk crate and squeeze the grapes. *Then
make a scrubbing motion and the crushed fruit
and juice will drop through the crate into the
container. *Discard the stems from the crate
and repeat the process. Good luck with your
winemaking, Lum

I plan on making about 75 gallons of Cab this
fall. I think that will require about 1200 lbs
of grapes. Off-hand, that sounds like too much
to process in this fashion. thoughts?

I'm in a bit of a financial funk. 1200lbs sems
too much to do by hand, and too little to
justify a 500 dollar crusher/destemmer.

Have you considered child labor or the help of
your wife or significant other. My Significant
other use to help me crush grapes by hand but
that got old fast so she helped contribute to the
purchase of a stemmer crusher.

Sometimes you just have to look at it as a
pleasurable past time and not something that you
have to justify the cost for every purchase.

I have my own backyard vineyard. Friends often
want to buy my wine. I tell them two things 1) I
can't sell it legally 2) if I could sell it, they
could not afford it because if I had to pay
myself for labor, etc that it takes to grow the
vines and make the wine, I could not even afford
to drink my own wine