Basket Press vs Crusher

Some wineries do what is called whole cluster pressing and do not crush first. I believe this is done for varieties like some whites and Pinot Noir. If you are making a red, the basket press will not remove the stems, however, so you need a way to get most of them out of there. With whites, you are interested in the juice only so the skins and stems are discarded. With the reds you will have to add the skins back into the pressed juice. You might see if there is a local winemaking store or club near you. Maybe you can rent both for a short time.

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.

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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 :)

Excellent point.

Child Labor eh?

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

There you go. Problem solved; plus you would give them an experience that they would probably remember a lot longer than xbox-time.

the past couple of years I have been making wine from about 75 Kg (165 lbs) of grapes. It takes about 4 hours to pick out all the stems and "crush" by hand squeezing with two people working and one person "helping".

If I could get it here I'd buy the crusher.

Bruce-in-Bangkok (correct email address for reply)