On Mar 21, 3:22*pm, "Paul E. Lehmann" wrote:
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 - Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Excellent point.

Child Labor eh?

I could trade grape destemming time for Xbox-time with my boys