Juice bucket and grape lug advice/suggestions.

[Jim Welch]

With the exception of one batch of banana wine I've only made kit and canned base wines so far. I want to take the next step and make some wine with 6 Gal. Chilean juice buckets and grapes this spring. I use 10 gal. Brute containers to ferment in and wondering approximately how much volume an 18 Lb. lug of grapes will add, I don't want to overfill the fermenters. I imagine one lug would fit but not sure if I can get two lugs in there without it being too full and risking a foam overflow while stirring during fermentation.
Also, I'm looking at making a Merlot batch and a Zinfandel batch. The place I'm looking at ordering this is offering Merlot grape lugs for order but not Zinfandel grapes. The grapes they offer are: Carmenere, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec. Merlot, and Syrah. I imagine any red grape is better than none but wondering if one of these listed would be a better choice for the Zinfandel batch than the others. Thank you for reading and any advice/suggestions you may have.

 

[Ohio Bob]

Wine maker magazine has a good article.
https://winemakermag.com/article/674-the-joys-of-blending
CabSauv is a component of Zin and Merlot blends so that could be a path.

Regarding the fermenter size, you could always keep some in the 6g bucket. Pouring back and forth daily to mix/oxygenate might not be a bad thing.

 

[crushday]

I’ve never purchased lugs of grapes but I did find this on the site: Calculate gallons of must

 

[Jim Welch]

Thank you men. That info gets me close enough. Looks like one 18 Lb. lug per 6 gal of juice will work for my equipment.

 

[heatherd]

With the exception of one batch of banana wine I've only made kit and canned base wines so far. I want to take the next step and make some wine with 6 Gal. Chilean juice buckets and grapes this spring. I use 10 gal. Brute containers to ferment in and wondering approximately how much volume an 18 Lb. lug of grapes will add, I don't want to overfill the fermenters. I imagine one lug would fit but not sure if I can get two lugs in there without it being too full and risking a foam overflow while stirring during fermentation.
Also, I'm looking at making a Merlot batch and a Zinfandel batch. The place I'm looking at ordering this is offering Merlot grape lugs for order but not Zinfandel grapes. The grapes they offer are: Carmenere, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec. Merlot, and Syrah. I imagine any red grape is better than none but wondering if one of these listed would be a better choice for the Zinfandel batch than the others. Thank you for reading and any advice/suggestions you may have.

I've done that process before. I was making Nebbiolo and Carmenere juice buckets and they only had Carmenere grapes. I ended up splitting the 18# lug between the two buckets. Turned out great!

 

[Jim Welch]

@heatherd thank you Heather, I was also wondering if 18 Lbs would be enough. If you had great results with 9 Lbs in each then that tells me it should be fine.

 

[heatherd]

@heatherd thank you Heather, I was also wondering if 18 Lbs would be enough. If you had great results with 9 Lbs in each then that tells me it should be fine.

Yes, it was plenty of grapes. It was an amount that's easy to crush and press by hand, too. I've done it a bunch of times now and like that I'm able to use fresh juice and fresh grapes.

I did MLF on them, using VP41. I added the VP41 at the same time as the yeast, which was RC212.

 

[BMarNJ]

With the exception of one batch of banana wine I've only made kit and canned base wines so far. I want to take the next step and make some wine with 6 Gal. Chilean juice buckets and grapes this spring. I use 10 gal. Brute containers to ferment in and wondering approximately how much volume an 18 Lb. lug of grapes will add, I don't want to overfill the fermenters. I imagine one lug would fit but not sure if I can get two lugs in there without it being too full and risking a foam overflow while stirring during fermentation.
Also, I'm looking at making a Merlot batch and a Zinfandel batch. The place I'm looking at ordering this is offering Merlot grape lugs for order but not Zinfandel grapes. The grapes they offer are: Carmenere, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec. Merlot, and Syrah. I imagine any red grape is better than none but wondering if one of these listed would be a better choice for the Zinfandel batch than the others. Thank you for reading and any advice/suggestions you may have.

I have made a few batches (cabernet) with a juice pail and 18lbs of grapes, but it yields an odd quantity for your carboys. I use a 5L jug and some extra wine bottles. A juice pail and 36lbs of grapes will give you a nice 8 gallons which works for me with 5 and 3 gallon carboys.