2023 White Wines - finally!

[winemaker81]

This thing really moves the wine at 15 gallons a minute (full speed).

My problem when looking for a pump was finding one that was slow enough. My barrels are 54 liter, and the carboys are 19 and 23 liter. You and I are on different ends of the situation.

 

[ratflinger]

Wow, this is all really nice. I could drive 8 hours in any direction and not find grapes outside of a grocery store!

 

[ibglowin]

Wow, this is all really nice. I could drive 8 hours in any direction and not find grapes outside of a grocery store!

 

[crushday]

Wow, this is all really nice. I could drive 8 hours in any direction and not find grapes outside of a grocery store!

Head West (young) man... New Mexico Wine Trails - Heart Of The Desert

 

[mainshipfred]

Update:

I pressed the juice off the grape matter this morning. A couple key learnings:

1. Pressing at 1 bar left a bunch of juice in the must
2. Pressing at 2 bar and 3 bar produced the same results. Even a 3 bar, there was undamaged whole grapes from the crush. The last picture was taken after pressing at 3 bars.

I figure I gave up 6 gallons of wine from each tank. I'm ascertaining this from the weight of the basket after the press.

The juice volume for the Marsanne/Roussanne was right at 45 gallons.
The juice volume for the Viognier was 50 gallons.

A few pics:


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Commercial wineries use horizontal presses. Once the intended pressure is achieved the bladder is deflated and the drum rolls to loosen the grapes then pressed again. Unfortunately it's much more difficult with a vertical press. My press is only a 40 liter ( much smaller than yours) but I always remove the grapes, fluff them and press at least once more. It's amazing the amount of additional wine you get pressing at the same pressure. My thought is fluffing and returning reintroduces the channels allowing more wine to flow. With the quantity you process and the size of your press this is probably not an option.

 

[ratflinger]

Yeah, wineries & vineyards are 2 different things. There are plenty of both but none I see are selling grapes. The vineyards fall into 2 categories - a small vineyard making small batch wine or custom growers for the likes of Beckers or Llano