Crusher question

I can agree with you one the nostalgia of using your Grandfathers equipment.

You can destem by hand but if you are doing very much you will probably only do that one time and swear never to do it again.

I have never seen a stemmer without a crusher. One of these days I am going to get just a crusher as it would be very useful with other fruit.

Ray

Last year I used my uncle's crusher which we think originally belonged to my grandfather. It hadn't been used for 28 years. It is also made of wood with steel rollers. It cleaned up very nicely. It is powered by an electric motor which is probably circa 1940 which I had rebuilt. It worked very well. We were able to dump 42# boxes of grapes in and watch them quickly disappear through the rollers. We crushed Cab and Zin. We destemmed by hand, rubbing the grapes off the stems using a stainless steel pan with 5/8" holes drilled in the bottom. The stems were very clean and we did not have any drop through. We crushed and destemmed

1800 lbs of grapes in about 6 hours. The wine has exceeded my expectations. The bonus was that my grandfather, who I never met, and my uncle, who I used to help make wine when I was a kid, were both with me through the whole process. See also the "Destemming by hand" thread from early July.

Steve

Paul - I have a crusher without destemmer. Mine has rubber rollers and sometimes I pass the grapes through more than once since some with tough skins pass intact. After crushing I destem by rubbing the crushed grapes/stems over a two mesh SS screen (two holes per inch). I built a frame, which the screen is attached to, that fits over a 32 gallon trash can. Works well and I remove most if not all the stems. Crushing takes minutes, destemming takes a few hours but I only make wine a couple of times a year.

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

Run the clusters through the crusher and fish the stems out of the must with a rake and/or hands. You don't need to get them _all_.

Tom S

Remove stems in the must with an oak plank that has non-galvanized, non-aluminum nails pounded through it at opposing angles. Or a rake as Tom S suggests or by hand or do as I did and leave them in through the entire process. I've not tasted all my 2003s extensively but the few I've tried, I've not noticed a stemmy, green or overly-tannic structure.

My musts tend to be very chunky and looking at pulling out the stems seemed an exercise in futility as it all looked like stems before fermentation began and opened everything up.

I don't think you have to be super, super clean and worry that you used commercial oak or a rake that you've not soaked/cleaned every crevice as the contact with the must will be minimal.