My new must pump unboxing

[balatonwine]

AKA -- how to waste three minutes of your life. Once I start picking, crushing and pressing I will also post a video how well it works (or not).

 

[Johny99]

Very pretty Kevin. Be sure to let us know how it works.

 

[balatonwine]

Gave the pump a spin (pun intended), this week with the first harvest. Works well. Self primed a 19 mm (0.75 inch) wide, by 5 meter (16 ft) long hose from the crushing bin and lifted the must 1.5 meters (5 feet) to the primary fermenter.

Was too small a harvest to bother making a video. The pumping was done in less than a minute. Will make a video of it in action during one of the still to do crush and press work in the next week or two.

 

[Johny99]

What did you harvest already?

 

[CK55]

AKA -- how to waste three minutes of your life. Once I start picking, crushing and pressing I will also post a video how well it works (or not).

hey i can waste 3 minutes in worse ways.

 

[balatonwine]

What did you harvest already?

My Turán. It is a Hungarian grape. And always the first I harvest.

Will be harvesting my Pinot gris tomorrow.

Expect to harvest all my varieties by the first week of September, which is ridiculously early. But the numbers (acidity and Brix) and the physical state of the grapes are all saying i need to harvest sooner than later this year.

 

[Johny99]

Hope you have a good harvest! I haven’t measured yet. I did get an email from a local grower. They are showing 17-19 Brix on early whites. We’ve had tons of smoke and cooler weather, so seems we may up on a normal schedule after all.

 

[balatonwine]

Hope you have a good harvest!

Thanks.

The harvest went well.

My harvests have gone much faster and easier since I started using field bins. Fewer trips to the cellar to dump off grapes.

My tractor battery died, that is the only drawback, and a new one available locally was just silly priced. I found one online cheaper, but could not arrive for the Pinot gris harvest. So used a wheel barrel to bring in the bins.... and that worked rather well actually.

I haven’t measured yet. I did get an email from a local grower. They are showing 17-19 Brix on early whites. We’ve had tons of smoke and cooler weather, so seems we may up on a normal schedule after all.

Actually, we had veraison two weeks early on all varieties this year. And heat wave for the last 4 weeks. I was expecting an earlier harvest. But so far, my harvests dates have been about the same time as prior years. Of course, due to an extraordinary variation in ripening between grapes due to the weird weather I lost a lot. My Turán yield, for example, was only 1/2 what it was last year.

 

[balatonwine]

Here is the video of my first trial with the pump.