Wine Making part two! Grapes to must!

Fill the bucket! Apparently about 30 lbs a piece.











Carry it all the way up to the home where awaits...

















A crusher de-stemmer! This device will swat the grapes off of the stems and spit the stems out of the side of the machine while the crushed grapes slide, or stick until they are pushed out of the little slough at the bottom of the machine. It takes about 2 minutes for 60lbs of grapes.

Our first batch of zin which was about 70 lbs took about 6 hours of combined work between my wife and I to de-stem and crush. It was a good exercise and really, the overly raisened grapes were easy to pick out and discard so it was probably a good thing we did it the old fashioned way but yeesh! It took forever. Books on tape were good here.

Also, not every grower will make a de-stemmer available to you. Especially for small batches it may not be worth the $30 you are paying for their grapes for them to clean there machine. You may be able to schedule a time when the grower knows that the machine will be in use for another larger buyer or, they may charge you an extra fee or you can commit and do it by hand. You could also rent one.

Next, Take the food grade bucket of smushed grapes home and sit it in a corner of the room and put the lid on tightly!
Fruit flys love grape juice! Those little buggers hone in on this stuff like pigeons to bread crumbs, then seemingly reproduce like caffeinated bunnies. All of a sudden you have a kitchen that is difficult to drink wine in much less make it.



Yeah, next time I'll take a little more time to clean up all sorts of little juice spots and I may just put the bucket on the porch or in the barn depending on the outside temp.
(Next! The gear you need to make this bucket of grape juice in to tasty wine!