Bart,

.....I use three pails stacked with no problems, they could be clean
white drywall pails but I use 6 gallon food grade pails since I have
them. It does not look like they should stand the pressure, but I
press slow, it's never been an issue.

The base pail is the catch basin. I place about a 4" stand off in the
pail and follow it with another pail with 1/8" holes in the base and
about 4 to 6" up the sides as the press basket. Fill that with grapes
and follow it with another pail as the pressure plate. It's not
elegant but I get a dry press cake by stirring the cake as you would
in a real press. You could drill a 1/2" to 3/4" hole in the side of
thebase bucket and attach a hose to drain it directly into carboys if
you feel like it's worth it.

If you want to build it as a press:

You could build a 4 x 4 box frame with a double 3/4" plywood base and
top plate and use a bottle jack on top of this to apply the pressure.
If you made it from doubled up scrap 2 x 4's" it would cost next to
nothing. My pails are 18" high so if I did this the inner dimmension
would be about 4.5 to 5 feet. The bottom pail is not needed, I use it
to keep the splatter down. I usually do around 200 pounds of must per
cycle in this press, I get around 12 to 14 gallons (US) of free run as
I load it, a few more gallons of press wine from this. I would
estimate it takes at least a 50# charge of grapes. If you used
squatter buckets or built a wooden ram for the pressure plate you
could keep the hieght down to about 3 feet.

I haven't used the jack idea. I used a 6 gallon pail of water which
works out to about 50 pounds total, then I put a lid on it, add
another 6 gallon pail on top and fill it with water.

Another option is to stand in the top bucket. Either way works, one
is just faster. It's not something I would recommend, it's not to
stable.

It might be possible to use ratcheting tie down staps to apply the
pressure by wrapping them around the whole assembly, that eliminates a
frame if it works.

This is pretty much what I did last year to press around 200# of
grapes. Keep in mind I drain off the free run, so this does not take
a 200 pound charge of grapes, its more like 50 pounds of skins to
press.

3 water 3
3 3
3 3
3 3
23 32
23 32
23 32
23333333333332
2 2
2 grapes 2
12 21
12 21
1222222222222221
1 1111 1
1 1111 1
1 1111 1
1111111111111111

'1' is a catch bucket for the press fraction

'2' has 1/8 inch holes in the base and up several inches of the sides

'3' is the press 'platten'; if you put a lid on it you can stack
others on it.

It's not pretty but it's free and I know it works, I've used it
several times. I got the idea from Lums book, as usual I needed to
press and was not ready so had to improvise.

Hope this helps.
Regards,
Joe




"bwesley7" > wrote in message news:<YsBNc.14444$fB4.2586@lakeread01>...
> I tried to find that posting... no luck. Can you send it again?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Bart
>
> "Joe Sallustio" > wrote in message
> om...
> > Bart,
> > I guess you could do that, but it seems like a lot of effortthat could
> > be combined in one sitting. Freezing the grapes will break them down
> > a bit anyway, why not do it all at once and onle have to clean up
> > once?
> >
> > I posted directions (more or less) on how to make a press out of a
> > surplus pail under 'tube for a basket press'; it's not pretty but it's
> > free.
> > Regards,
> > Joe
> >
> > > OK, I was thinking we might wind up "pressing" a small batch at a time
> in a
> > > bag; I don't expect to get super-efficient juice extraction on this
> initial
> > > batch.
> > >