First time crushing / destemming

[gamo]

I have my first 8 crates of cabernet sauvignon due in the next week or two. Having never made wine from grapes before I purchased a used crusher ( stainless basket with hand crank and two nylon gears ) and a nice press. I thought my wife and I would spend a couple of hours to destem the grapes by hand first, and then crush them. I have read that I can crush then first into a milk crate and pull out the stems and the grapes would fall through. Do the grapes fall of the stems as they get crushed? Also the spacing between the nylon crushers is about 3/16". Is this correct? Thanks for any advice.

 

[robie]

I don't think you realize how much work it is going to be to destem 8 crates of grapes! I would not buy that crusher, but rent a crusher/destemmer.

I figure if you do destem by hand, it will be the last time you do. It will take both of you 8 to 10 hours to accomplish it, I'll bet.

But I know, a person has to do what a person has to do, so hang in there and do what you have to do.

 

[gamo]

Looks like I'll need some volunteers....

 

[Deezil]

Just be careful...

If they're dumb enough to volunteer to help destem grapes, they're smart enough to volunteer to help you drink it later

 

[grapeman]

Although not ideal, you can crush them first into the mild crate over some container like you say. Then you take the resulting clusters with a good share of the grapes off. Run them across the milk crate bottom and the grapes will fall through. It takes time but will work. The crusher/destemmer option is more desireable. It takes us about 2-3 minutes to run 8 crates through the crusher/destemmer which fills a 32 gallon brute about right.

 

[Rocky]

When we were kids, that was our job; to remove the grapes from the stems. We had purple hands for weeks afterward. I am sure that there were crusher/destemmers back then but Pap only had a crusher! The kids were the destemmers!

I do remember that some wine makers used to just crush everything into the "working barrel" and then remove the stems with a piece of wood with long nails pounded into and through one end making it kind of like a small rake. I think today a pasta server would work. Just a thought.

 

[spaniel]

Not much for you except to second (third? Fourth?) the sentiment that you are under-estimating the effort to manually destem. I manually destemmed enough to make 4 gallons of wine a few years ago, and that was the LAST TIME! Maybe 2-3 crates?

Now I crush the old fashioned way (feet) and then pick out/squeeze the stems by hand. Picking out the stems takes as long as crushing with the feet, but it does work.

 

[Arne]

As a first timer this year, I decided to try everything by hand. Grapes were given to me, went and picked them, took a couple of trips to get them all. Now understand there wern't that many. Wound up with 130 lbs. Spent hours picking the berries off the stems. Was a bit less than not much fun. LOL. Anyway crushed them with a plastic potatoe masher. Got most of the skins broken and some of the berries smashed. Put them in a fermenter, now got my first issue of winemakers mag. In one article it said many people put up to 10% of the stems back in. That really didn't please me as I spent many hours making sure there were no or very few stems. Anyway, waiting on the ferment to get down to 1.020 or so, then going to try pressing in the old apple press to get the rest of the juice out of the must. Will keep everybod updated. I have another thread in the grape wine forum about this. It is a fun first time, but has been a lot of work. I have made the statement that I almost hope this does not turn out very good. Then will not have to try it again. Take care and good luck with your grapes. Arne.