hand pressing

Yep -- I usually take a plastic barrel or pail, line it with a cloth sack that my wife sewed, and use a plastic coated wire strainer on top. Pour the wine through it, and squeeze the bejeebies out of the pulp with my hands. The straining through the cloth gets the finer stuff that the strainer doesn't. I have used this with my chokecherry and grape wines this year and it worked pretty well.

Here is picture if it helps:

Now I know why I like this group, not only do you get an answer but a picture to go with it. Thanks Greg.

Don

Don, Pressing by hand is even simpler than that. In general, there is no need to destem. The stems tend to facilitate juice removal. lum

Lum, So basically squeeze the stemmed grapes over a sieve and off we go into the carboy for fermentation.

I checked my foot size and sure enough I can step into a 6 gal pail (even if they did call me pontoons in high school). Perhaps the old ways are best, that way I'd have 240 pds of press.

Don

Hi Don, Man has been making wine for thousands of years, and equipment did not exist most of that time. The juice can be extracted from a few pounds of grapes by hand without much effort. But, those 240 pounds help, so stomping grapes is much more efficient. lum