Steam Juicers

Canning, Dehydrating, Freezing, Fermenting, etc.

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Re: Steam Juicers

Postby paulbee » Sun Aug 26, 2012 1:11 am

I am surprised folks are using these for wine making.

Grapes are one of those super fruits that come with their own yeast. Meaning, if handled nicely, the you don't need to bring in wine yeast when wine making.

I'd think the steaming process would negatively impact the yeast and require putting store bought strains in your batch. I do this routinely with other fruits, including notably apple. Dosing fruit with foreign strains can be a fine art as well as a bad experiment. Depends on the source fruit usually and people tend to stick to tired "proven" yeast types.

As for jelly, sure, steam would work real well.

It would work for juice storage also. Never can have enough winter storage.

Bet it is very simple to steam juice.

I haven't tried this, but a simple juicer to deal with pulp, seeds, etc. would be a juice press with a cheesecloth or similar fine fabric. Put grapes in the bag and bring the press down. Solids should stay in the bag.

I have a fancy pressure juicer (hydraulic). We use it to juice hard stuff like carrots so grapes should be real simple. Grapes tends to get eaten by my critters on the vine or by kids. So never really had chance to juice them.

There are plans out there for DIY projects involving care bottle jacks and stainless steel plates. Couple that with the cheesecloth or other material and you have a fairly rapid and pulp/seed free end product.
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Re: Steam Juicers

Postby GrahamB » Sun Aug 26, 2012 3:53 pm

I haven't made any wine for a few years now, but I intend to get back into it soon. Of all the wines, beers and mead that I did make, the best ever batch I had was a 'dirty mash' I made with some blackberries and a few black grapes. I did it as an experiment because I got to thinking about all the wine that had been made over thousands of years and they never had yeast extract or all the other chemicals we are told to put into our sterile buckets these days. I'd also talked with an old farmhouse cider maker and they had always just pulped and pressed the apples and then put them straight into the vat.
It got me thinking that all these sterile procedures that the winemakers do these days are just to ensure that the product that the suppliers sell will work, and if the beginner manages to get a batch of wine out of a kit, then they will buy more. I myself started out that way. I guess if I had made my first batch and it had turned to vinegar, then I would have thought twice about buying another kit.
It seems to me, although I have no experience with one of those steam juicers, that you would produce a pasteurized fruit juice, that would be excellent for the 'sterile' type of wine making, but me being a qualified tightwad, I think I will make some more dirty wine. :D
No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you are still way ahead of everyone who isn’t trying.
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