Steam Juicer Or Conventional Fruit Press ??????

[davemo]

Wife and i have planted 6 elders and 6 blackberries 3 aronias and 2 sandcherries last yr and plan on getting some rhubarb, and honeyberries next year.My question is do any of you use a steam juicer? This method seems better than conventional pressing in some respects but is the juice diluted to much for good full flavored wine and mead production? Any advice on steam vs conventional juicing??????

[fatbloke]

Well I've found steam juicers work fine - well with elderberry anyway.

With country wines, because of the nature of the fruit when compared to grapes/juice, you wouldn't usually use 100% juice. 5 litres wine from grapes is a doddle, have you thought about how long it would take to pick enough fruit for 5litres of blackberry wine ?

Hence, with the steam juicer, say your recipe wants 4lb of fruit in a gallon, well just put that weight in the steam juicer. You can let it finish producing the juice, then add a bit more water and run it again. You will get some second run that'd pick up colour, tannins etc and mix that with the first lot.

You will then be pretty close to the amount of juice you get from using the same weight of fruit anyway..... Without any of the issues of using fresh fruit.

Just remember, steam juicers are for.making juice, not wine making concentrate, but they can make life easier and more convenient for the home winemaker who doesn't have a mountain of kit.....

[Cellar_Rat]

Found it .. old thread with bags of info.

http://www.winesathome.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?6337-Methods-of-Juice-extraction&highlight=colin

[goldseal]

In my experience:

Rhubarb - use the freeze-thaw method for juice extraction ... superb results

Elderberry/blackberry - I have made wine from both pulp and stem-juiced fermentation, using about the same weight-to-volume ratio. The steam-juiced version was drinkable far earlier (12 - 18 months after starting) but lacked body and depth. The pulp-fermented wine, was a far 'bigger' wine, but required 3-4 years of ageing.