? About steam juicing!

[CChampion]

Is their advantages or disadvantages to using one of these to process your fruit for makIng wine? I am wanting one because I also like making jellies and heck it seems really handy and efficient. I guess what I am asking is if you don't have the fruit pulp in the wine for the primary are you hurting the outcome of your wine? I know I could really free up freezer space by canning my juice.

Also, do I need to stay away from the aluminum juicer and is the stainless one just that much better?

Thanks guys and gals,

Clark

 

[Cracked Cork]

Clark it depends on the fruits you want to steamjuice. We juice elderberries, we get about a gallon of juice from 10 pounds of berries, leaving the pulp behind leaves a lot of the tannins so we can get a lot of flavor without making it really tannic. You still have to add pectinase and check the acid levels. The steamed juices may need some body boosting if you like a lot of body.

Stainless steel is the way to go, last longer and easy to clean. Put some marbles in the bottom and make sure to listen to them jiggling, if they stop you are running out of water and need to add some.

Good Luck

Crackedcork

 

[CChampion]

What does tannic taste like? I am new to all this and really didn't understand that. I understand the purpose of tannins to the wine but really don't know what it would taste like. Thanks for your reply and your help. I had read on here that you could freeze the pulp and throw it in for some added uses, have you ever done that or do you prefer the lack of tannins.

Thanks again,

Clark

 

[Cracked Cork]

Hi Clark, it all depends on the fruit. With something like blackberries all there is left is some goop,, I throw that out, with elderberries I drain the pulp after steaming to let anything left over drain out but I dont put the pulp back in otherwise what was the point of steaming them? Another option is to crush the fruit and macerate overnight with enzymes and KMeta, from there you can either do a full pulp ferment or sqeeze the juice out and go with a juice fermentation. CC

 

[Tom]

As most know here I use a steam juicer.
The biggest advantage is if you dont or cant get enough fruit for a batch. Or, maybe no time to make it when the fruit is available. Oh, You may not have a fermentor/carboy ready.
So, what to do? Well ... Duh..

 

[Waldo]

Steam juicing is the ultimate in my opinion

 

[gaudet]

+1 on steam juicing......
+2 on stainless, it doesn't pit or oxidize easily and clean up is easy...

If you want to ferment on the pulp of your steamed fruit, you can always add it to a strainer bag or nylon stocking and put it in your fermenter.......macerate them with pectic enzyme and k-meta for 24 hours and you are golden